Partition Memories Exhibition
Partition Memories captured in an exhibition in the Lady David Cases, SOAS Library. On until 31st December 2023
On the 16th August, Farzana Qureshi (SOAS Arts and Humanities Librarian) and Dr. Aditi Kumar (Post Doctoral at Warwick University) held a walk and talk event in SOAS library, around the Lady David Cases. Thirty-five people attended the afternoon, from the British Library, SOAS staff and students and family members whose stories are shared in the exhibition.
Together, they have curated a Partition exhibition centering around inter-generational families, a literary discourse connecting migration, displacement, homeland and a sense of belonging. The content includes the Hindu Sindhi narrative and the diasporic communities that formed across the world. Resistance poetry to express the trauma experienced during and after Partition. An oral interview (as a transcript) conducted by Farzana with a Partition survivor, who at the age of twelve had to cross the border from Rawalpindi, in what is now present day Pakistan to Delhi.
Farzana’s father’s Partition survival memories are gathered too in this space, alongside some archival photographs. She also shares extracts of her paternal Uncle’s manuscript, where he reflects on homesickness for relatives as he remained in India, while the rest of his family all left for Pakistan. Citizenship, borders and visas are examined in this commemoration of the largest mass migration at one time in human history.
It was a very moving and emotional day. Please spread the word and pop by to see the exhibition, it is on until the 31st December. There are plans to run another walk and talk event in November. Please email Farzana on fq@soas.ac.uk to find out more.
Farzana Qureshi (Arts and Humanities Librarian)
