MEMOR(IES) OF PARTITION IN THE POLITICS OF SIKH IDENTITY

The long-awaited independence of India came with the undesirable fruit of the Partition. The power was transferred to two sovereign unions – India and Pakistan. West Pakistan was carved in the north-western part of the country, leaving Punjab province vivisected. The present paper attempts to delineate the ways in which twonation theory and the concomitant prospects of partition implicated the politics of Sikh identity in the late colonial Punjab province. Furthermore, it explores the role of the memory of partition in conditioning the public opinion and political attitudes in the post-colonial Indian Punjab.