Partition in art

Just arrived. Partition: a painting, based on a famous photograph by Margaret Bourke White. The artist is Leeds based, Suman Kaur.

It aroused some very complex emotions in me. What really got me was this. I know, as a historian and from the fact of being the child of refugees of from both sides of my family, that partition was a brutal, violent affair that consumed over a million lives, most of them in Punjab. It was a harrowing time for survivors who, in the words of my mum, "were lucky to escape with the clothes on their back." What made it worse for many was the fact that. again as my mum explains, most people thought it was an ill wind that, like many before, would just blow over. The suddenness of it left people unprepared. It has left a deep imprint on me and has shaped many of my attitudes. I've never wavered from my intense dislike for and opposition to communalism and communal based partitions.

And yet in the midst of such turmoil, violence and displacement, there also existed among those affected, such great forbearance, resilience, stoicism and dignity so perfectly exemplified in my memory of my grand father Bulaka Singh, himself a survivor of the industrial scale slaughter that was WW1 on the Western Front, that this work captures. That's why I bought it. It is not a big piece of art. But I will have it framed to occupy pride of place in my study.