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The first of its kind, this book studies the psychological impact of Partition through medical and psychiatric perspectives.

The Partition of India was a partitioning of minds as much as it was a geographical division. But there has been little discussion in mental health discourse on the psychological scars it caused. This book examines the partitioning of human experience and its impact on social life and psychological health. The chapters track, through various approaches, the breakdown of civic life and society during the cataclysmic event, the collapse of medical services, the violence against citizens and the reflection of these events in writings of that era. The book draws attention to the urgent need for a humane understanding of persons with mental illness and psychological distress in the context of their lived history as much as their sociocultural identities and roots.

Contents: Foreword. Preface. 1. Setting the Stage: The Partition of India and the Silences of Psychiatry/Alok Sarin and Sanjeev Jain. 2. The Partitioning of Madness/Anirudh Kala and Alok Sarin. 3. Balm and Salve: The Effect of the Partition on Planning and Delivering Health Care/Sanjeev Jain. 4. Partitioning of Minds and the Legitimatisation of Difference/Moushumi Basu. 5. Borderline States and Their Interface with Psychiatry/Sanjeev Jain. 6. Writing and Rewriting Partition’s Afterlife: Creative Re-enactments of Historical/Trauma Tarun K Saint. 7. Refugees of the Partition of India: Trauma and Strategies of Recovery/Hina Nandrajog. 8. Anger Is a Short Madness/Anjana Sharma and Gopa Sabharwal. 9. “Are We Women Not Citizens?” Mridula Sarabhai’s Social Workers and the Recovery of Abducted Women/Ayesha Kidwai. 10. The Rhetoric of Violence: Cultures of Affect in Resistant Nationalism and the 1947 Partition/Sukeshi Kamra.11. Looking Within, Looking Without/Pratima Murthy. Index.