Inherited Memories – The Third Generation Remembers Partition in Bengal

Seventy years after the violence and trauma of Partition, the living memories of that time are beginning to disappear as the men and women who lived through it are reaching the end of their lives. Many survivors have not wanted to speak, preferring to put aside the memories of trauma and violence; others have spoken, but often into a void, as their children, busy with their own lives, have preferred not to listen. Sometimes, survivors have found it difficult, almost impossible to speak, for there are often no words to describe that which is so unspeakable. The result of a memory project, this book turns its attention to the impact of the Partition of India in Bengal. In a set of moving and revealing dialogues, it brings together different generations who together unravel long buried memories and crucial, often heart-wrenching stories of a traumatic moment in the history of India.