Conceptual analysis reveals how historical Partition memory shapes modern Indian sovereignty and borders, highlighting the co-constitution of national and international politics.
Key Points
To examine how the 1947 Partition functions as an enduring constitutive afterlife in Indian political thought by linking domestic nationalism to international border conflict.
Synthesized Indian political thought with critical border scholarship and memory studies frameworks.
Analyzed foundational constitutional debates on citizenship and equality alongside spatial practices including refugee rehabilitation, urban transformation, border rituals, and the Kashmir dispute.
Demonstrated that Partition was directly inscribed into the core constitutional language and institutional definitions of secular citizenship and minority status in India.
Showed that national borders operate as dynamic memory practices continually reproduced through urban planning, state rituals, and geopolitical conflict rather than static lines inherited in 1947.
Identified connected and plural memory as an alternative analytical model to move beyond rigid nationalist enclosures and statist closure.