The Delhi University will set up a Centre for Independence and Partition Studies to facilitate research on the “high voltage politics” accompanying Partition and how the then central leadership failed to contain the “germs of separatism”, documents show.
It will also focus on the “non-insistence of central leadership on having the Frontier Province with India” and the way the “Congress Working Committee consented to Partition without consulting (Mahatma) Gandhi”, according to the documents. These “priorities” for research subjects were part of a draft concept note for setting up the Centre for Independence and Partition Studies. The eight-point concept note stressed how Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2021 emphasised on “revisiting and remembering the horrors associated with the partition of India”.
It noted that different departments in Social Sciences and Humanities at the university briefly touch upon the history, politics, and literary narratives around Independence and Partition but that is hardly based on field research, dedicated archival sources or the studies of affected groups.
