Researcher to Discuss Partition of India Oct. 23

Oct. 15, 2008 -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology history professor Haimanti Roy will discuss "The Partition of India and its Aftermath" from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, in the University of Wyoming Union Senate Chambers.

The partition of 1947 was a watershed moment in the history of South Asia and the world, she says. It marked the end of the British Colonial Empire and the birth of two new nation-states: India and Pakistan.

"The impact of partition persists within regional politics and popular consciousness in South Asia, reinforced by family and personal memories of violence, exile, movement and resettlement," Roy says.

Roy's research centers on how governments affect an identity change in their citizens when overnight these citizens are supposed to become members of a new country. She examines how India and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) legitimized and symbolically reproduced markers of national identity.

Both India and Pakistan had to develop policies about passports, border control and refugee rehabilitation. They also had to cope with perpetual small-scale violence targeting minority populations that occurred in both countries.

The talk is sponsored by the President's Council on Minority and Women's Affairs, the Departments of History and International Studies, and Milaap (the Indian Student Organization).

For more information, call Professor Bonnie Zare at (307) 399-6281 or e-mail at bzare@uwyo.edu.

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Haimanti Roy will speak from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23, in the University of Wyoming Union Senate Chambers.
 

Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008