It's a question that has continued to haunt till today, even after 75 years of the Partition. Cyril Radcliff, whose fateful line of demarcation divided the Indian territory into a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan, had never before been to India, nor had he the necessary skills for drawing a decisive border. But it was he who emerged as the destiny in the history of Partition that involved gruesome sectarian violence, persecution of minorities and wide-scale migration whose legacies (unfortunately) are visible even to this day.
"The Bleeding Border - Stories of Bengal Partition" (Niyogi Books) is an anthology of 24 partition stories written by both prominent and lesser-known authors from West Bengal and Bangladesh. The poignant descriptions of various forms of violence, tension and anxiety at the porous border of two countries make these stories disturbing reading. They delineate the ghastly communal riots at various places and the trauma and disruptions of memory caused by them, the exodus of the 'refugees' from the then East Pakistan and their fierce struggle for survival in newly mushrooming colonies at unknown terrains, and above all, the nostalgia for an imaginary 'desh' (motherland) that defies cartographic barriers.
