A City in its Re-incarnation
Sudipto Basu
DELHI REBORN: PARTITION AND NATION BUILDING IN INDIA’S CAPITAL by By Rotem Geva Stanford University Press, 2022, 368 pp., $30.00/ INR 599.00
September 2024, volume 48, No 9

The Partition was a momentous and tumultuous period of modern South Asian history that soured the experience of Independence. Over the decades, the why and how of Partition has been well discussed, in fact at times over researched. There has developed a considerably rich historiography of Partition, and it has formed a different genre of history itself. From discussing the elite or high politics of Partition in the works of Mushirul Hasan, to looking at the rise of political parties and their influence in Partition politics like in the case of the Muslim League in works of Ayesha Jalal or Venkat Dhulipala, or area studies done by the likes of Joya Chatterjee and David Gilmartin to the more recent emphasis on popular histories, memory and rehabilitation studies that look into the larger impact of the Partition on people and places as represented in the works of Gyanendra Pandey, Urvashi Butalia or Vazira Zamindar, Partition studies have become an interdisciplinary field of study encompassing the subject realms of history, sociology, anthropology and literature. Delhi Reborn by Rotem Geva is a useful addition to this genre. This work tries to take up from the earlier works and look at the transformation in the social and political life of the city. The author states at the outset that her aim is to link the different levels of Partition and post-Partition politics, to see how elite understandings of the state and the nation impacted the lower levels of community life, like the neighborhood.

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