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the nation

Historic Trauma and the Politics of the Present in India

Author(s): 
Pradip Datta
Publisher/Sponsor: 
Taylor and Francis Online
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13698010500267942

Abstract: India has had a very different history of violence and conflict from South Africa's, yet each democracy has had to face questions of how to deal with memories of past suffering, which bear directly on the quality of political life in the present. In India, the dream of national independence in 1947 rapidly changed into a nightmare of religious and ethnic violence. Britain's empire in the sub-continent was divided into two countries, Muslim-based Pakistan and constitutionally secular India, amid horrific massacres of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.