In the aftermath of conflicts, refugees are often treated as helpless victims of trauma in need of international aid and intervention. Refugees can and do however move beyond the culture of dependency to create sustainable existences within their new environments. While much attention is given to the politics of displacement, humanitarian intervention and human rights of refugees, little is written about the ways in which refugees actually live, particularly those who have chosen to settle themselves rather than allow outside powers to intervene in their settlement choices.

In contrast to the story of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan as an epiphenomenal event of independence, this article suggests that the division of British India signaled a unique rupture in which the creation of borders became the defining traumatic event of that history.

The Partition of India (1947) is commonly understood as a violent territorial and political separation of peoples, their forced evictions and migration as well as communal upheavals. But India's Partition can be seen as something more than separation of communities and the creation of distinct national identities. This paper suggests that refugee rehabilitation, one of the important processes of the post-Partition years, formed the rubric through which we remember 1947.