This article will address the themes of partition, gender and trauma within two independent films from Pakistan, Sabiha Sumar's Khamosh Pani (2003) and Mehreen Jabbar's Ramchand Pakistani (2008). The article will consider how the events of 1947 Á partition of India and creation of Pakistan Á recur within the films as disruptive trauma. The article will consider what an engagement with the characteristics of trauma such as involuntary recall and disruption can bring to my readings of the films. Connections are established between women's experiences of ethnic tensions within the contemporary settings of the films and the gendered experiences of 1947. These are expressed in distinct ways, however; the prominence of the themes of trauma within both work to create a powerful presentation of women's subjectivity in Pakistan. Further to this, they draw attention to the possible inevitability of trauma being central identities and locations forged out of a partition that entailed border creation, large-scale disruption, and violence. The article will conclude that close readings of both films highlight the role of the traumatic in the formation of gendered national identities.
This article explores the Partition narrative put forward by Mumtaz Shah Nawaz's novel The Heart Divided (1948), which is set in 1930s and 1940s colonial India. It argues that the novel's teleological narrative proposes both the inevitability and desirability of Pakistan as it emerged from and through nationalist liberation movements for Indian independence. It utilizes theories of affect to illuminate the ways in which affects of belonging power much of the drive for the creation of Pakistan in the novel, and are used to consolidate a sense of Hindu-Muslim difference. The article furthermore proposes that emotions exist in tension with bureaucracy, and that affects of belonging to the nation repress the violence that characterized Partition. The analysis engages with the novel as a Partition narrative that does not address the human cost of Partition.
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