Partition’s fratricide turned subcontinental nationalism into mourning and self-critique.

Evidence

The ‘nation’ indeed became the primary ideological problematic in Urdu literature only at the moment of Independence, for our Independence roo was peculiar: it came together with the Partition of our country, the biggest and possibly the most miserable migration in human history, the worst bloodbath in the memory of the subcontinent: the gigantic fratricide conducted by Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communalists. Our ‘nationalism’ at this juncture was a nationalism of mourning, a form of valediction, for what we witnessed was not just the British policy of divide and rule, which surely was there, but our own willingness to break up our civilizational unity, to kill our neighbours, to forgo that civic ethos, that moral bond with each other, without which human community is impossible. A critique of others (anti-colonial nationalism) receded even further into the background, entirely overtaken now by an even harsher critique of ourselves. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 465

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the reader’s claim that collective identity need not rest on innocence myths: here collective self-description was held together precisely by refusing self-forgiveness. — connects to: Partition politics absorbed caste identity and drew Untouchables into Hindu militant mobilization. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 427

Broader Connections

• Partition politics absorbed caste identity and drew Untouchables into Hindu militant mobilization. #exemplifies (0.75) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 427