Volume-X, Issue-V, September 2024 |
Paradoxes of Partition and Railways: A Symposium of Cinema and Literature Identity in Twentieth Century India Sudipta sardar, Vice Principal, Rabindra Bhararti Mahavidyalaya, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, India |
Received :03.09.2024 | Accepted: 10.09.2024 | Published Online: 30.09.2024 | Page No:147-154 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.10.issue.05W.015 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
Railways had been the mainstream transportation medium in India since it's inauguration in middle of the nineteenth century under the colonial Government. Railways form a very crucial link between the communities and several geographically differentiated places in India. Railways link all of them under the same thread. And thus railways had been a much talk about phenomenon in Indian society, and thus it would be never a surprising matter to find railways in the cinemas and literary practices. Thus there had been always a contradictory view point of railways in Indian society, in one view the railway proved to be source of joy and comfort and in another view the railway becomes a messenger of death, specifically in the partition scenario in India, which took place in the middle of the twentieth century. From then on, the contradictory or even paradoxical views about railway became very prominent and at sometimes became misleading to know about the impact and scenario of railway traveling at the time of Partition, in Cinemas and literature. This paper would point out the paradoxical dimensions as seen in the existing literature and cinema at the time of partition. This paper would try to reveal the process of amalgamation of literature and cinema with the historical aspect of railways at the time of partition. However, this paper would bring out the contribution and contradictions presented by the cinema and literature in understanding the impact of partition of the railways and would also bring out its paradoxical nature in bringing out the historical aspect of it. Thus, this paper would be very crucial in pointing out the paradoxical view point of Partition and it representation in the films and literary practices. And in doing so, this paper would point out certain questions and would also try to find out the answer. Questions such as: How literature reflected the paradoxes of the partition? How film and literature represented railways to project several things such as communal unrest, political unrest and several other things of the society? What was the role of cinema and literature in bringing out the history of railway at the time of Partition? How the representation of the railways impacted historical account of the railway at the time of Partition? Keywords: Partition, Railways, Contradictions, Violence, Paradoxes, Communal unrest, ambivalent presentations. |