Partition by Sujata Bhatt Flashcards
What is the poem about?
-The poem is about how wars and conflicts can segregate and divide up land against the will of the people who lived in India and the destruction and misery this can bring.
-Her aunty goes to provide food and water for the refugees in railway station, but the neice who is telling this poem felt scared due to all the loud noises and didn’t go to provide help. But now because she didn’t provide help or do anything about it she feels regret.
-The tone is of deep regret and guilt, but also bafflement at the way political events were mismanaged during the partition of India and the effect it had on the people there.
-Simple title of poem ‘partition’ highlights how even though simplistic would give many unpleasant memories such as guilt for many.
Key context about the poem:
→ Huge numbers of people had to migrate (were displaced) in order to move to
the country of their religion, resulting in about 14-15 million people losing their homes
→ The journey killed many people - about 1 million.
→ Two white British men were the main orchestrators of the partitioning: Lord
Mountbatten (last Governor of India) and Sir Cyril Radcliffe who had never
been to India before.
What is the poem about?
-The poem is about how wars and conflicts can segregate and divide up land against the will of the people who lived in India and the destruction and misery this can bring.
-Aunty goes to provide food and water for the refugees in railway station, but the neice who is telling this poem felt scared due to all the loud noises and didn’t go to provide help. But now because she didn’t provide help or do anything about it she feels regret.
-The tone is of deep regret and guilt, but also bafflement at the way political events were mismanaged during the partition of India and the effect it had on the people there.
-Simple title of poem ‘partition’ highlights how even though simplistic would give many unpleasant memories such as guilt for many.
‘She could hear the faint cries of people’
Shows the pain caused to the residents the of India by partition, and past tense shows it’s an unpleasant memory.
‘her aunt would go to the station every day with food and water but she felt afraid// so she stood in the garden listening’
-Shows the fear of a young child through such a turbulent period of history.
‘even the birds sounded different’
Birds sing a melody, so it shows that before India was melodious and positive but now it was destroyed and the melody and peacefulness is gone.
‘each day she wished she had the courage to go with her aunt’
Shows how innocent she is, and shows how it is not pleasant in the station which is why she is scared.
‘each day passed with her listening to the cries of people’
Cries of people’ repeated twice in the poem showing how partition has had a negative impact the people around her.
‘now when my mother tells me this, she is 70 and india is 50, but India is older than that’ -
in the eyes of Indian people, partition was not the beginning of India, India existed long before this.
‘but how I wish I had gone with my aunt to the railway station —’
Pause that she did highlights her guilt, and as a child she couldn’t have done much, but she believes that she could have done more to support those suffering from the Partition at the moment.
and then she asks me ‘how could they let a man who knew nothing about geography divide a country?’ -
the ending being a rhetorical question seems like the poet herself challenging why partition was done by British men who didn’t even live in the country themselves. She leaves us on a poignant question regarding how destructive war can be!
“Stood” “hear” “felt” - semantic field of passiveness
Passive verbs ( eg. Listening is active vs. hearing is passive»_space; no action)
Shows the helplessness she feels - she’s not doing anything about it, she wants to help, but she can’t because she was afraid (fear).
