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ID: 145457

Paper rights: the emergence of documentary identities in post-colonial India, 1950–67 / Roy, Haimanti

Roy, Haimanti	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

This essay contextualises the emergence of a document regime which regulated routine travel through the deployment of the India–Pakistan Passport and Visa Scheme in 1952. It suggests that such travel documents were useful for the new Indian state to delineate citizenship and the nationality of migrants and individual travellers from Pakistan. The bureaucratic and legal mediations under the Scheme helped the Indian state to frame itself before its new citizens as the sole certifier of some of their rights as Indians. In contrast, applicants for these documents viewed them as utilitarian, meant to facilitate their travel across the new borders. The contrast and contestation between such different perceptions helps us to understand the continued significance of documentary identities in contemporary India.

Key Words

Migration ; Partition ; India ; Bangladesh ; Pakistan ; Border ;
Visas ; Passports ; Post-Colonial ; Hindu Citizenship ; Muslim Citizenship

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ID: 091662

Partition of contingency: public discourse in Bengal, 1946-1947 / Roy, Haimanti

Roy, Haimanti	Journal Article
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2009.

Summary/Abstract

The historiography on the Partition of Bengal has tended to see it as a culmination of long-term trends of Hindu and Muslim communalism within the province. This essay offers a counter-narrative to the 'inevitability' of the Partition by focusing on Bengali public discourse in the months leading up to the Partition. The possibility of a division generated a large-scale debate amongst the educated in Bengal and they articulated their views by sending numerous letters to leading newspapers, district political and civic organizations and sometimes published pamphlets for local consumption. A critical examination of these public debates for and against Partition reveals the countdown to August 1947 as a period of multiple possibilities. Rather than being pre-determined, the stands for a separate or a United Bengal were contingent in nature. Understanding the genesis provides the starting point and the necessary corrective to evaluate India's path to post-colonial nationhood

Key Words

Partition ; Contingency ; Public Discourse - Bengal ; Nationalist India

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