Divided By Partition United By Resilience 21 Inspirational Stories From 1947 Ahluwalia by Ahluwalia, Mallika 9789353041427, 9353041422 instant download after payment.

There are many ways that the history of a nation can be told—either through the experiences of rulers, or the experiences of the ruled. For a long time, there was a belief, not just in our country, but abroad as well, that the history of a nation is that of the ruler—their victories and defeats and their attempts at nation building. No one was really recording the history of the people, and certainly not the history of the common people. It is only in recent years that we have found the immense value of trying to understand how people lived in different centuries—and sadly, while we can find the clothes and jewels of the emperors and nobility, we rarely find records of the lives of ordinary people.

Therefore, even in museums, we find enormous stone sculptures, grand paintings, and speeches and proclamations—but little evidence of how people were reacting to them. As we now know, there is often a vast difference between what is ‘officially’ out there and what actually happens. In this book, the CEO and curator of the award-winning Partition Museum, Mallika Ahluwalia, has compiled select stories from the thousands of Partition stories the Museum has recorded (and continues to record) to bring to us some truly inspirational stories. These stories are important because they speak of the triumph of the human spirit. In the world we live in today, with all its insecurities and upheavals, these stories are an important and inspirational reminder of how people have overcome their grief to emerge even stronger.

Sometimes people forget that this history of the Partition of India is not very old. All this happened just seventy years ago—and yet we did our best for many decades to airbrush it away. We, in fact, were doing great disservice to those who had gone through Partition as they were forced, by our silence, to also keep silent about what they had seen and what they been through.

They lost their homes, livelihood and friendships. Many saw extreme violence