There Were Etchings on the Wall

Exploring Margins Through Embodied Experiences of Lived Trauma in Graphic Narratives on Partition

Abstract

The negotiation between memory and silence is a pivotal point of discussion in any scholarly discourse concerning the history of Partition. However, as Urvashi Butalia argues, in ‘traditional’ sources of history, “there is an immediate clamouring of ‘voices’ that demand to be ‘heard’. These ‘voices’, according to her, speak about the histories of individuals who have been condemned to occupy a ‘peripheral’ space and have been glossed over by the larger canon of history. Thus, to successfully negotiate the politics of memory, it is perhaps essential to focus one’s vision on the lived experiences of the otherized. In a 2022 Stanford Report article on Tom Mullaney’s (Professor of History, Stanford University) approach in incorporating graphic novels to teach world history, Melissa De Witte writes that these narratives are “exceptionally good” at portraying “mundane moments” that present “powerful opportunities for inquiry,” holding a mirror to the truly horrifying experiences. This paper would thus attempt to examine how graphic narratives on Partition could serve as etchings that are well-suited to illuminate the conscious reader about the lived trauma of marginalised voices and their quest to resist the methodical epistemic violence that they have been subjected to by popular history.