Divided Homelands, Fragmented Lives: Partition Narratives in Hindi Parallel Cinema

Abstract

The year 1947 was a defining moment in history for South Asia when India became
independent from the British Raj. The Partition of India and the subsequent violence
and mass migration created an unending trauma, memory and identity issues. This
paper explores how Hindi parallel cinema represents the Partition of India through
a close analysis of two specific films, Garam Hawa and Tamas. The study adopts a
qualitative, interpretive approach to examine how cinematic texts in these films
mediate experiences of violence, displacement and belonging. The study reveals
that Partition trauma is articulated not only through the narrative content but also
through the aesthetic strategies such as fragmentation, silence, spatial dislocation
and narrative ellipsis. Both films present an alternate form of history, as Garam Hawa
presents a personal and intimate representation of the aftermath of Partition while
Tamas presents a broad multi-narrative perspective on the communal violence and
breakdown of society that resulted from Partition. The study highlights the relationship
between formal structure and historical experience, as well as contributing new
insights to the fields of film studies and trauma theory through an analysis of culturally
relevant accounts of the Partition using realist cinematic practices to convey historical
trauma.