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Book Review: Michael Gottlob, History and Politics in Post-colonial India

Indian Historical Review, 41, 1 (2014): 103–141 dissenting memories or ‘fragments’ resist the construction of a homogenised history of nation. Nair thinks that her fragments do not always resist the whole, but constantly interact with it and come to terms with it. However, she also thinks that this diversity of memories which she uncovers ‘afford(s) us the ground on which to combat the teleology of nationalist histories’ (p. 254). To this reviewer this polemical battle seems to be a little tenuous. But that notwithstanding, this chapter brings out interesting details about how the Punjabi Hindu refugees remember their pre-Partition days, their relationships with the Muslims, their decision to leave West Punjab, the experiences of displacement and migration, and subsequent struggle to find a niche in postcolonial India. These diverse memories indicate, according to Nair, that ‘at the moment of founding, the nation was severally imagined’ (p. 255). It is in this emphasis on the heterogeneous history of nationalism and Partition, and in its contestation of the exclusivity of categories like communal, anti-colonial or nationalist that this book can claim its distinctive place in South Asian historiography. Not that these ideas are very new or original, as in recent years a number of historians have argued about the nation living in heterogeneous time. This book buttresses that argument with significant empirical evidence, culled from conventional archives as well as retrieved through oral history methods. In that sense, it is an important addition to the genre of Partition literature.