Book Launch - Unbordered Memories August 22, 2009

Book Launch - Unbordered Memories by Rita Kothari. Shri Pradip Khandwalla will launch the book.About the book: If Partition changed the lives of Sindhi Hindus who suffered the loss of home, language and culture, and felt unwanted in their new homeland, it also changed things for Sindhi Muslims. The Muslims had to grapple with a nation that had suddenly become unrecognizable and where they found themselves to be second-class citizens. Not used to the Urdu, the mosques and the new avatars of domination, they were bewildered by the new Islamic state of Pakistan. Sindh as a nationhad simultaneously become elusive for both communities.In Unbordered Memories we witness Sindhis from India and Pakistan making imaginative entries into each other's worlds. Many stories in this volume testify to the Sindhi Muslims' empathy for the world inhabited by the Hindus, and the Indian Sindhis' solidarity with the turbulence experienced by Pakistani Sindhis. These writings from both sides of the border fiercely critique the abuse of human dignity in the name of religion and national borders. They mock the absurdity of containing subcontinental identities within the confines of nations and of equating nations with religions. And they continually generate a shared, unbordered space for all Sindhis- Hindus and Muslims.A compassionate look at the feeling of alienation faced by Sindhi Muslims and Sindhi Hindus by the Partition A fierce critique of the abuse of human dignity in the name of religion and national borders. For the very first time a collection of Sindhi Partition stories from both India and Pakistan.About the author: Rita Kothari is the author of Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English and The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat. She has translated widely from Gujarati into English. Some of her translations of note are The Stepchild: Angaliyat and Speech and Silence: Literary Journeys by Gujarati Women.Kothari is currently working on a study of border communities in Kutch, Gujarat, and co-editing a study on Hinglish. She teaches at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad.

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