UNMAKING THE MONOLITH: A CRITIQUE OF PARTITION’S POPULAR CULTURE AND LOCATING THE ‘OTHER’ IN POST-PARTITION INDIA

Abstract

The politico-historical catastrophe of partition of India into two separate nations based on Hindu and Muslim district majorities resulted in the greatest mass migration across the border that witnessed intense violence and loss of life. Memories of pain and atrocity of both the nations due to partition in the name of religion continued to evoke antagonistic  attitudes towards each other  involving in systematic discrimination of marginalized minorities by  egregious caste-based cultural practice where various forms of popular culture of the nations  prioritize  the culture of  dominant castes and tend either to invisibilize or to represent Dalits, Adivasis, the denotified tribes, Muslims and others  stereotypically as poor, villains and ugly in cinema, songs, cartoons, tv shows, newspapers etc. This paper, by developing an understanding of Indian popular culture in reshaping the notion of political nationality (under the politics of difference set by the regimes of power till date ) will explore  the representation as well as the exclusion of the minorities in the space of cultural artifacts of static  popular discourse that we consume each and every day.