To examine the Indian partition fiction in English and in English translation in relation to consequences of the partition was one of my aims as I was a victim of the partition in 1947. I was born in Calcutta in January 1948 immediately after the communal divide of this country. Since my infancy, I breathed in a family environment of harrowing tales of emotional suffering, immeasurable loss of property and writhing pain of rootlessness. Day after day, month after month, year after year I heard my grand father recall nostalgically his association with the Anushilan Samity, his pride in being imprisoned and his determined struggle for the freedom of India. Mahatma Gandhi visited Noakhali in 1946 and spent a night in our house at Deopara. I heard every detail of the conversation between my grandfather and Mahatma Gandhi at least a hundred times if not more. The traumatic effect of the Indian partition has been ingrained in my emotional life since my boyhood. The partition of India in 1947, I confess, is my obsession. In addition, this obsession went deep into my inner self during my one-year stay at Noakhali in 1956 when the Passport and the Visa formalities had not been introduced. Feelings of anguish at the fact of partition and of happiness in the shared memories of our life at Noakhali clash in my mind and I thank myself for having been able to write this book on partition fiction in the context of the Indian partition history.

The present work, I fervently hope, will evoke a note of interest among scholars and academicians in India and abroad. There are many books on the Indian partition history. However, the number of books on Indian partition fiction in English and in English translation with reference to the partition history is very limited. Almost all Indian universities have included partition fiction as one of the major components in undergraduate or postgraduate syllabus. Some Universities in the U.S.A. where there is an India Study Program include Khuswant Singh's Train to Pakistan or Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man or Chaman Nahal's Azadi.

Over the last couple of decades more the more social scientists have turned to what I have descibed as “The other Face of Freedom”. This has paid rich rewards. Our understanding to the partition is enlarged by the use of literary soures.

                It is, therefore, a matter of great satisfaction that Professor Basudeb Chakraborti has ventured to write a book on partition fiction in English. He has covered much new ground, using the writings of Chaman Nahal, Khushwant Singh, Baspsi Sidhwa, Bhishan Sahani & Khalid Hasan. Even though the range of secondary reading in limited, Dr. Chakraborti shows awareness of them in his narrative.             

 I am quite hopeful that this book will generate interest amongst serious scholars and historians.

Professor Mushirul Hasan

Vice-Chancellor

Jamial Millia Islamia

New Delhi - 110 025

              Basudeb Chakraborti has producd acomprehensively researched and invaluable book for anyone interested in Partition Fiction. He has handled a difficult subject with sensitivity and insight and I appreciate the emphases he has placed on the plight of women during that harrowing period.

Bapsi Sidhwa

Houston,

U.S.A