Articles

When a Border Becomes the Frontier

Vostok/Oriens '2014, №4

 
The Partition of India became one of the main subjects in the contemporary literatures and cinema of the Indian Subcontinent. It is hardly possible to name a notable Hindi, Urdu, Panjabi or Bengali writer who did not pay tribute to this historical tragedy. In most of their literary works the plot is developed at the border between two new states which can be understood as a civilizational frontier or a metaphor of ethnic, national and confessional division between India and Pakistan. In the present article “border” and “frontier” dichotomy and its metaphorical meaning are represented as a show-case including the short-story “Toba Tek Singh” (1955) by Saadat Hasan Manto, the novel “Train to Pakistan” (1956) by Khushwant Singh, and the novel “Bhowani Junction” (1954) by John Masters screened in 1956 by George Cukor

Keywords: The Partition of India in 1947, state border, frontier, types of identity, the orientation metaphors

Pages: С. 107–112