Bleeding Border: Stories of Bengal Partition

When Mr Radcliffe was asked by the British rulers with tacit concurrence of the Indian leaders to draw a line of demarcation for two communities living in India, hardly a living soul could imagine the vast devastation and catastrophe it would bring upon the people of India in its wake and how the Partition tragedy will pan out.

The poignant descriptions of various forms of violence, tension and anxiety at the porous border of two countries make these stories disturbing reading. They delineate the ghastly communal riots at various places and the trauma and disruptions of memory caused by them, the exodus of the ‘refugees’ from the then East Pakistan and their fierce struggle for survival in newly mushrooming colonies at unknown terrains, and above all, the nostalgia for an imaginary desh that defies cartographic barriers.

Reviews

‘The Bengal Partition has been studied extensively by historians and the earlier adage that it produced very little literatured of the division now stands completely dismantled.
The Bleeding Border is one such anthology of stories that will appeal to a wide range of readers and scholars who want a more than passing acquaintance with partition literature from this region. The stories have a range and versatility that bring to a curious reader all the best that Bangla has produced from 1940s onward on an event that has left deep wounds among millions of people. Literature remains the best testimony of that unwritten history.’ –
Dr. Debjani Sengupta, Author, Academician and Partition scholar.