Review: Haimanti Roy’s Partitioned Lives

Studies on the Partition of India have generally focussed on the western front and taken 1947 as an end point in the narrative of that story. The splitting of Punjab was accompanied by large-scale migration, savage violence and frenetic rioting, which led to the death of at least a million people. Perhaps that is why the focus of a lot of Partition studies has remained on the western front, whereas the eastern front (the division of Bengal) has not attracted similar attention.