Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the narratives of some Partition (of India) survivors who spontaneously drew maps whilst remembering their abandoned homeland, this paper analyses the rhetorical and semiotic intricacies through which these maps represent a memorialisation of space and a spatialisation of memory.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on a year (2017-18) of ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and is part of a doctoral research project that aims to compile an ethnographic oral history based on first hand survivor accounts of the Partition of India. In this paper, I focus on the narratives of some of my informants who felt inspired to draw maps while remembering the Partition.

I analyse this spontaneous turn to mapmaking using Michel de Certeau's theorisations of space and place. My analysis treats these maps as 'speech acts' and 'acts of enunciation'. These maps and the way my informants explained them while drawing them, follow the structure of a tour. These maps do not just outline the lay of the land, but follow the structure of a predetermined itinerary in their retelling; guiding the listener's attention from place A to B. One of my informants, used spatial metaphors drawn from his childhood and described the Dera Ghazi Khan city-grid as 'hopscotch-like' and explained his map using the structure of a commute; a recursive tour-like structure that always returned to his home before embarking on a fresh route that led to marking a new location on the map.

Therefore, drawn from memory, these informal maps are best understood as documents of displacement that represent a memorialisation of space and a spatialisation of memory. Ultimately, remembering the Partition through discussions of place and space provides us with an alternative theoretical frame for discussing the experience of Partition displacement.