Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, communities, families, and relationships were destroyed. Yet, more than half a century later, little is known of the human dimensions of this event. In The Other Side of Silence , Urvashi Butalia fills this gap by placing people—their individual experiences, their private pain—at the center of this epochal event.Through interviews conducted over a ten-year period and an examination of diaries, letters, memoirs, and parliamentary documents, Butalia asks how people on the margins of history—children, women, ordinary people, the lower castes, the untouchables—have been affected by this upheaval. To understand how and why certain events become shrouded in silence, she traces facets of her own poignant and partition-scarred family history before investigating the stories of other people and their experiences of the effects of this violent disruption. Those whom she interviews reveal that, at least in private, the voices of partition have not been stilled and the bitterness remains. Throughout, Butalia reflects on difficult questions: what did community, caste, and gender have to do with the violence that accompanied partition? What was partition meant to achieve and what did it actually achieve? How, through unspeakable horrors, did the survivors go on? Believing that only by remembering and telling their stories can those affected begin the process of healing and forgetting, Butalia presents a sensitive and moving account of her quest to hear the painful truth behind the silence.

    While Partition sounds smooth on paper, the reality was horrific. More than eight million people migrated and one million died in the process. The forced migration, violence between Hindus and Muslims, and mass widowhood were unprecedented and well-documented. What was less obvious but equally real was that millions of people had to realign their identities, uncertain about who they thought they were. The rending of the social and emotional fabric that took place in 1947 is still far from mended.While there are plenty of official accounts of Partition, there are few social histories and no feminist histories. Borders and Boundaries changes that, providing first-hand accounts and memoirs, juxtaposed alongside official government accounts. The authors make women not only visible but central. They explore what country, nation, and religious identity meant for women, and they address the question of the nation-state and the gendering of citizenship. In the largest ever peace-time mass migration of people, violence against women became the norm. Thousands of women committed suicide or were done to death by their own kinsmen. Nearly 100,000 women were "abducted" during the migration. A young woman might have been separated from her family when a convoy was ambushed, abducted by people of another religion, forced to convert, and forced into marriage or cohabitation. After bearing a child, she would be offered the opportunity to return only if she left her child behind and if she could face shame in her natal community. These stories do not paint their subjects as victims. Theirs are the stories of battles over gender, the body, sexuality, and nationalism-stories of women fighting for identity.

    Radhika Singha looks at law-making as a cultural enterprise, one in which the colonial authorities were compelled to draw upon normative codes of rank, status, and gender so as to realign them to a new, more exclusive definition of the state's sovereign right.

    It is his genious to record on paper the words that convey tha sounds of deafening winds on Mount Kailas or the melodies that emanate from the waves of the great Indus River in Pakistan. He has lived up to the challenge of being a superb story teller. I trust he is as good with the knife-he is a surgeon- as he is with his pen. He uses a vast canvass where he is equally at ease exploring the Indus River, hunting deer in Pennsylvania, narrating the dynamics of the Afghan war in the eightees and writing about the sacred icon of Judiasm.

    Featuring over 100 color and black-and-white photographs, this is the most comprehensive account of Pakistani cinema yet written.

    Though written two or three years before the assassination, they are largely premonitory and speak of a life of loneliness and separation.

    The glowing capital of Sindh is loved in spite of its glaringshortcomings. In the imagination of its people it stands for a lifestyle that is at once modern and yet more leisured than the frenetic megacities elsewhere.The citizens of this megacity are capable of dealing with their problems. Karachi is a new city but it is old in its wisdom and tolerance. Above all it is a cosmopolitan city which demands civilized attitudes from its most unruly citizens. It is this mainstream Karachi that this book is about.Karachi - Megacity of Our Times is the story of transformation of a sleepy town of under twenty thousand people into a vibrant metropolis-one of the largest in Asia today. Thirteen prominent writers of Karachi take the reader through post-independence development in politics, economics, the arts, demography and architecture. Some of the articles are very personal, evoking nostalgia for the Karachi that was; others are analytical drawing on available data to predict the course that this turbulent city will take in the future. A part of the book is devoted to the 'long nineteenth century' whenthe Englishman ruled and divided the city into 'white' and 'native' quarters. There is also a section on people who have contributed to the welfare of the city. The book is profusely illustrated with maps, photographs, and illustrations

    The author, a member of the ICS posted at Bahawalpur, offers an analysis of the Partition, describing the manifestations of communal frenzy, the efforts made to stem the terror, and the breakdown of government.