Ismat Chughtai

It is no surprise that India is a Big Brother-esque figure in South Asia, especially, in histories of nation-building (the Partition, the 1971 Bangladeshi War of Independence, the decades under IPKF in Sri Lanka are just the tip of the iceberg), as researchers, we carry these legacies on our bodies and words. What kind of “secular” feminism are we advocating, if this “secular” voice comes from one platform only? Who talks of one kind of history only? What happens when this margin is speaking to you and you don’t have enough slots to categorize them? Why are stories of the Partition by Indian authors the narrative that we are mostly familiar with (Shauna Singh Baldwin, and Bhism Sahani come to mind here)—no matter how sympathetic they may be to other margins?