Sam Dalrymple and Naeem Mohaiemen - What Is Partition?

Why It Matters

Reframing partition as a multi‑century, trans‑regional process reshapes how policymakers, educators, and artists address border disputes, migration, and collective memory in South Asia and its adjoining regions.

Key Takeaways

• Partition is a fluid concept beyond 1947, spanning centuries.
• Five historic partitions reshaped South Asia into twelve nation‑states.
• British Indian Empire once included Gulf princely states like Oman and Yemen.
• VR project Dastan reconnects refugees with lost homes through technology.
• Scholarly silos obscure the interconnected history of South, Southeast, and Middle East.

Summary

The seminar brought together historian Sam Dalrymple and artist‑researcher Naeem Mohaiemen to interrogate "partition" not as a single 1947 event but as a recurring, conceptual rupture that has shaped South Asia and its peripheries for a century. Dalrymple’s new book *Shattered Lands* maps five distinct moments of division—from the 1905 Bengal split to the post‑World War II creation of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Gulf states—showing how the British Indian Empire once legally encompassed territories as far as Yemen, Oman, and Burma.

Key insights include the revelation that the modern India‑Pakistan border is the only visible line from space, that the India‑Bangladesh barrier is the world’s longest wall, and that a nascent fence on the India‑Myanmar frontier now rivals the U.S.–Mexico barrier in scale. Dalrymple also highlights his VR‑based Project Dastan, which uses immersive technology to reunite partition‑displaced families with their childhood homes, illustrating how digital media can repair fractured memories.

Memorable moments from the talk feature Dalrymple debunking the myth of the Great Wall’s visibility, displaying a 19th‑century Indian passport stamped “Indian Empire,” and quoting a 1926 newspaper that placed the Indian National Congress’s independence demand alongside a BBC plea to contact aliens—underscoring how partition narratives were once peripheral to imperial self‑image.

The discussion urges scholars to dissolve disciplinary borders between South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern studies, arguing that a unified historiography can better illuminate contemporary border tensions, migration flows, and identity politics across the former empire’s vast footprint.

Original Description

Considered the most defining experience of twentieth century South Asia, what if “partition” was unhinged from the date 1947? The authors of two extraordinary recent books join us for a conversation on their historical imagination and creative rethinking of a region and its painful past. Sam Dalrymple is the author of the expansive Shattered Lands (2026), and the artist Naeem Mohaiemen presents a surprising art history through Midnight’s Third Child (2024). Join us for a conversation with the writer and the artist of two different kinds of accounts of a past and their conceptions of a region.