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Commemorating Partition could be therapeutic – but Modi wants to use 1947 to fan hate politics
To be able to forget, you need to remember. To be able to forgive and move on, you need to confront the truth, your own and that of others. Any situation involving trauma is addressed by the need to confront the source of trauma and then make peace. For years, those of us who work on Partition, and especially since many of us have come from families that went through the experience of Partition, have been both advised and done this advising.
However, memories are double-edged swords, they both rake up and heal. The journey to the past needs to be made with the responsibility of an adult and not the reactiveness of an adolescent. It’s a highly difficult process accessing memories and emerging unscathed from that encounter. Scholars on Partition have commented on the psychic effects of Partition and how both the Indian and Pakistani states needed to have instituted therapeutic practices.
Seventy five years after Partition, we are left with the disappearance of the generation that needed this the most. However, even the witness generations that grew up in insecure and paranoid families that could not understand why reactions to random events triggered off strong sentiments go through trauma at a…