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ABSTRACT
India and Pakistan are entrenched in an antagonistic relation that is constantly on the verge of, once more, developing into an armed conflict. There are, presently, no signs of conciliatory initiatives on the level of state-to-state interactions, which, contrariwise, tend to uphold incompatible conceptions of regional order, nationhood and the Partition as a constitutive moment. The latter further adds to the main obstacles to dialogue and cooperation, which include emphatic disagreements on territorial claims. It, moreover, reifies ideas of national belonging along communal lines. The article analyses the Partition Museum in Amritsar as a rare opportunity to, in an agonistic manner, challenge and undo the antagonism that was enacted in 1947 and that has deepened ever since. While it succeeds in actuating a shift away from rigid friend-enemy imageries and dichotomous views of wrongdoing, it fails to decisively critique and unsettle the originary binary that underpins and propels the conflict.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Fikr Taunsvi, The Sixth River: A Journal from the Partition of India (New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2019), 67.
2 Paul’s inventory of the main impediments to ‘a permanent resolution’ remains valid, viz. ‘unsettled territorial issues, political incompatibility, irreconcilable positions on national identity, and the dearth of significant economic and trade relations’. T.V. Paul, ‘Why Has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been so Enduring? Power Asymmetry and an Intractable Conflict’, Security Studies 15, no. 4 (2006): 601.
3 Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Ted Svensson, Production of Postcolonial India and Pakistan: Meanings of Partition (London: Routledge, 2013); Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000).
4 Katharine Adeney, ‘A Move to Majoritarian Nationalism? Challenges of Representation in South Asia’, Representation: Journal of Representative Democracy 51, no. 1 (2015): 7–21; Catarina Kinnvall and Ted Svensson, ‘Misrecognition and the Indian State: The Desire for Sovereign Agency’, Review of International Studies 44, no. 5 (2018): 902–921; Ted Svensson, ‘South Asian Nationalisms: Concluding Reflections’, Asian Ethnology 80, no. 1 (2021): 217–238.
5 Meenakshi Mukherjee, ‘Dissimilar Twins: Residue of 1947 in the Twenty-First Century’, Social Semiotics 19, no. 4 (2009): 449. See also Ted Svensson, ‘Frontiers of Blame: India’s ”War on Terror”’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 2, no. 1 (2009): 27–44.
6 Ashutosh Varshney, ‘India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies of Nationalism’, Asian Survey 31, no. 11 (1991): 998.
7 Rosemary E. Shinko, ‘Agonistic Peace: A Postmodern Reading’, Millennium 36, no. 3 (2008): 475.
8 Paul, ‘Why Has the India-Pakistan Rivalry Been so Enduring?’, 602.
9 While most of this literature is referred to in the present study, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to a recent special issue on the theme. See Third World Quarterly 43, no. 6 (2022).
10 Where, as the epigraph conveys, even time has ‘got stuck’.
11 Lisa Strömbom et al., ‘Agonistic Peace Agreements? Analytical Tools and Dilemmas’, Review of International Studies 48, no. 4 (2022): 691.
12 Lisa Strömbom and Isabel Bramsen, ‘Agonistic Peace: Advancing Knowledge on Institutional Dynamics and Relational Transformation’, Third World Quarterly 43, no. 6 (2022): 1237–1238.
13 Strömbom et al., ‘Agonistic Peace Agreements?’, 690.
14 Ibid. As of yet, agonistic peace has not been presented and construed as a strict and replicable model for peacebuilding. However, Strömbom et al. have recently – in a promising first step – suggested how peace can be achieved through the presence and activation of three ‘tangible elements’, viz. ‘contestational dialogue, pluralism, and incorporation of dissent’. Ibid., 693.
15 Ibid., 694.
16 Ibid.
17 Sarah Maddison, ‘Can We Reconcile? Understanding the Multi-Level Challenges of Conflict Transformation’, International Political Science Review 38, no. 2 (2017): 163.
18 See Audrey Reeves and Charlotte Heath-Kelly, ‘Curating Conflict: Political Violence in Museums, Memorials, and Exhibitions’, Critical Military Studies 6, nos. 3–4 (2020): 244.
19 For more on the latter, see ibid.
20 See Ayşe Betül Çelik, ‘Agonistic Peace and Confronting the Past: An Analysis of a Failed Peace Process and the Role of Narratives’, Cooperation and Conflict 56, no. 1 (2021): 27.
21 Annika Björkdahl and Johanna Mannergren Selimovic, ‘A Tale of Three Bridges: Agency and Agonism in Peace Building’, Third World Quarterly 37, no. 2 (2016): 321–2, 331.
22 See Lisa Strömbom, ‘Exploring Analytical Avenues for Agonistic Peace’, Journal of International Relations and Development 23, no. 4 (2020): 949.
23 See John Nagle, ‘From the Politics of Antagonistic Recognition to Agonistic Peace Building: An Exploration of Symbols and Rituals in Divided Societies’, Peace & Change 39, no. 4 (2014): 485.
24 See Nagle, ‘From the Politics’, 486.
25 Ted Svensson, ‘Curating the Partition: Dissonant Heritage and Indian Nation Building’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 27, no. 2 (2021): 224.
26 For the cited formulation, see Nilanjana Premaratna, ‘Theatre for Peacebuilding: Transforming Narratives of Structural Violence’, Peacebuilding 8, no. 1 (2020): 16–7.
27 Strömbom, ‘Exploring Analytical Avenues’, 955.
28 See Betül Çelik, ‘Agonistic Peace’, 31.
29 See Anna Cento Bull et al., ‘War Museums as Agonistic Spaces: Possibilities, Opportunities and Constraints’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 6 (2019): 612.
30 See Gail Ritchie, ‘Aporia: A Room for Dwelling and Doubt’, Critical Military Studies 6, nos. 3–4 (2020): 423.
31 As late as in 2009, Mukherjee contended that ‘it is difficult to imagine ever having a Partition Museum anywhere in India or Pakistan, not because the wounds are yet to heal but for reasons that go deep into the roots of our cultures, which traditionally posit less value to material artefacts than to an aural archive consisting of stories, songs, legends and folklore’. Meenakshi Mukherjee, ‘Dissimilar Twins’, 447. These assumptions were clearly wrong.
32 See Debbie Lisle, ‘Sublime Lessons: Education and Ambivalence in War Exhibitions’, Millennium: Journal of International Relations 34, no. 3 (2006): 850.
33 Chris Reynolds and William Blair, ‘Museums and “Difficult Pasts”: Northern Ireland’s 1968’, Museum International 70, nos. 3–4 (2018): 15. While a recent initiative by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to designate 14 August as ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’ has generated a lot of negative and sceptical reactions, especially relating to the fact that Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on the same date, media representations of the Partition Museum have, since its opening, consistently been highly positive and appreciative.
34 Ian Talbot, ‘A Tale of Two Cities: The Aftermath of Partition for Lahore and Amritsar 1947–1957’, Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 1 (2007): 151–185.
35 Patrizia Violi, ‘Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum’, Theory, Culture & Society 29, no. 1 (2012): 39.
36 See Filip Ejdus, ‘Abjection, Materiality and Ontological Security: A Study of the Unfinished Church of Christ the Saviour in Pristina’, Cooperation and Conflict 56, no. 3 (2021): 267.
37 Stefanie Kappler and Antoinette McKane, ‘“Post-Conflict Curating”: The Arts and Politics of Belfast’s Peace Walls’, de arte 54, no. 2 (2019): 5.
38 Joanna Tidy and Joe Turner, ‘The Intimate International Relations of Museums: A Method’, Millennium: Journal of International Relations 48, no. 2 (2020): 120.
39 Hans Lauge Hansen, ‘On Agonistic Narratives of Migration’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 23, no. 4 (2020): 559.
40 Cf. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004) and Rama Lakshmi, ‘Curating a Bhopal’s People’s Movement: An Opportunity for Indian Museums’, The Museum Journal 55, no. 1 (2012): 35–50.
41 For these formulations, see Reynolds and Blair, ‘Museums and “Difficult Pasts”’, 14, 21.
42 Adrian Franklin, Anti-Museum (London: Routledge, 2020), 4; see also Violi, ‘Trauma Site Museums’, 37.
43 Tanja Aalberts et al., ‘Rituals of World Politics: On (Visual) Practices Disordering Things’, Critical Studies on Security 8, no. 3 (2020): 256.
44 While a detailed account of the museum is conveyed in this article, for an even more comprehensive description of its layout and content, see Svensson, ‘Curating the Partition’.
45 Franklin, Anti-Museum, 5–6.
46 See Jenny Kidd, ‘With New Eyes I See: Embodiment, Empathy and Silence in Digital Heritage Interpretation’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 1 (2019): 55.
47 Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp, ‘Heritage as Future-Making: Aspiration and Common Destiny in Sierra Leone’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 21, no. 6 (2015): 610.
48 Cento Bull et al., ‘War Museums’, 614.
49 Deepra Dandekar, ‘Zeba Rizvi’s Memory-Emotions of Partition: Silence and Secularism-Pyar’, Contemporary South Asia 27, no. 3 (2019): 393.
50 Ibid., 393–394. Dandekar is rightly worried that ‘objectified and musealized individual oral narratives are in danger of being coopted and deployed within Indian and Pakistani nationalist agendas’. Ibid., 394–395.
51 Ibid., 403.
52 Cento Bull et al., ‘War Museums’, 612.
53 See Sarah Maddison and Rachael Diprose, ‘Conflict Dynamics and Agonistic Dialogue on Historical Violence: A Case from Indonesia’, Third World Quarterly 39, no. 8 (2018): 1627.
54 See Karin Aggestam, Fabio Christiano, and Lisa Strömbom, ‘Towards Agonistic Peacebuilding? Exploring the Antagonism-Agonism Nexus in the Middle East Peace Process’, Third World Quarterly 36, no. 9 (2015): 1739.
55 Lisle, ‘Sublime Lessons’, 851.
56 Audrey Reeves, ‘Mobilising Bodies, Narrating Security: Tourist Choreographies at Jerusalem’s Holocaust History Museum’, Mobilities 13, no. 2 (2017): 217.
57 Efrat Ben-Ze’ev and Edna Lomsky-Feder, ‘Remaking Generational Memory: Practices of De-Canonisation at Historical Museums’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 26, no. 11 (2020): 1079.
58 For more on the latter, see Lisle, ‘Sublime Lessons’, 861.
59 Violi, ‘Trauma Site Museums’, 37.
60 Elizabeth Dauphinee, ‘Narrative Voice and the Limits of Peacebuilding: Rethinking the Politics of Partiality’, Peacebuilding 3, no. 3 (2015): 265.
61 Ibid., 268.
62 Anna Cento Bull and Hans Lauge Hansen, ‘On Agonistic Memory’, Memory Studies 9, no. 4 (2016): 399.
63 See ibid.
64 See ibid.
65 Cf. ibid.
66 See Lisle, ‘Sublime Lessons’, 861.
67 See Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 110.
68 Shruti Kapila, ‘Ambedkar’s Agonism: Sovereign Violence and Pakistan as Peace’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 39, no. 1 (2019): 185.
69 Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998); Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); and Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998).
70 Whereas the Partition Museum would ideally welcome more visitors from Pakistan, the current border regime that is in place between the two states neither allows for nor facilitates cross-border journeys and everyday engagements between ordinary citizens. From the perspective of agonistic peace, this, however, merely reinforces the need to provide ample room for and recognition of witness objects, oral histories, etc. that originate from the Pakistani side of the border and it, moreover, strongly implies that the museum – as long as actual travelling is obstructed – ought to have as much online and digital presence as possible.
71 Anindya Raychaudhuri, ‘Demanding the Impossible: Exploring the Possibilities of a National Partition Museum in India’, Social Semiotics 22, no. 2 (2012): 178.
72 Cf. ibid., 179.
73 See Maddison and Diprose, ‘Conflict Dynamics’, 1623.
74 See ibid.
75 See Cento Bull and Hansen, ‘On Agonistic Memory’, 395.
76 For the cited formulations, see Reeves and Heath-Kelly, ‘Curating Conflict’, 245.
77 Ibid., 246.
78 See Erica Lehrer, ‘Can There Be a Conciliatory Heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 16, nos. 4–5 (2010): 282.
79 See ibid.
80 Cf. Aggestam, Christiano and Strömbom, ‘Towards Agonistic Peacebuilding’, 1738 (emphasis added).
81 Andrew Schaap, ‘Agonism in Divided Societies’, Philosophy & Social Criticism 32, no. 2 (2006): abstract.
82 Cf. Alexander Keller Kirsch, ‘Introduction: The Agon of Reconciliation’, in Theorising Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Agonism, Restitution and Repair, ed. Alexander Keller Kirsch (London: Routledge, 2012), 4.
83 Cf. Marie Paxton, Agonistic Democracy: Rethinking Political Institutions in Pluralist Times (New York: Routledge, 2020).
84 See Schaap, ’Agonism’, 258.
85 See ibid.
86 Benjamin Moffitt, Populism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 97 (emphasis added).
87 Bonnie Honig, Antigone, Interrupted (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 8.
88 Ibid., 26; see also ibid., 79.
89 See ibid., 26.
90 See ibid.
91 Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 9.
92 Rumelili and Strömbom have, for example, argued that ‘agonistic recognition […] may allow for the preservation of ontological security’, thereby accepting as desirable what they, with Giddens, refer to as ‘“a formed framework” for existence’ – one that ‘allows actors to bracket certain existential questions about themselves, others and the object world’. Bahar Rumelili and Lisa Strömbom, ‘Agonistic Recognition as a Remedy for Identity Backlash: Insights from Israel and Turkey’, Third World Quarterly 43, no. 6 (2022): 1362, 1364 (emphasis added).
93 See Honig, Political Theory, 75, 186; and Bonnie Honig, ‘An Agonist’s Reply’, Rechtsfilosofie en Rechtsteorie 37, no. 2 (2008): 188–9.
94 Bonnie Honig, Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 3; see also Sofia Näsström, ‘What Globalization Overshadows’, Political Theory 31, no. 6 (2003): 820.
95 Honig, ‘An Agonist’s Reply’, 192.
96 Ibid., 187.
97 Lindahl, Hans, ‘The Opening: Alegality and Political Agonism’, in Law and Agonistic Politics, ed. Andrew Schaap (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 63.
98 Aggestam, Christiano and Strömbom, ‘Towards Agonistic Peacebuilding’, 1740 (emphasis added).
99 See Sarah Maddison, ‘Relational Transformation and Agonistic Dialogue in Divided Societies’, Political Studies 63, no. 5 (2015): 1015.
100 See Lindahl, ‘The Opening’, 65.
101 See Keith Breen, ‘Agonism, Antagonism and the Necessity of Care’, in Law and Agonistic Politics, ed. Andrew Schaap (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 138.
102 See Maddison, ‘Relational Transformation’, 1015 (emphasis added).
103 Cf. ibid., 1016.
104 Cf. ibid, 1021; see also Aggestam, Christiano and Strömbom, ‘Towards Agonistic Peacebuilding’, 1739.
105 See Shinko, ‘Agonistic Peace’, 480.
106 Cf. Maddison, ‘Relational Transformation’, 1023.
107 Cf. Betül Çelik, ‘Agonistic Peace’, 29.
108 See Tom Bentley, ‘When is a Justice Campaign Over? Transitional Justice, “Overing” and Bloody Sunday’, Cooperation and Conflict 56, no. 4 (2021): 396.
109 Juliet Flower-MacCannell, ‘Lacan’s Imaginary: A Practical Guide’, in Jacques Lacan: Between Psychoanalysis and Politics, ed. Samo Tomšič and Andreja Zevnik (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 78–9.
110 See Maddison and Diprose, ‘Conflict Dynamics’, 1623.
111 See Maddison, ‘Can We Reconcile?’, 163.
112 See Betül Çelik, ‘Agonistic Peace’, 31.
113 See Shinko, ‘Agonistic Peace’, 491.
114 See Raychaudhuri, ‘Demanding the Impossible’, 183.
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Ted Svensson
Ted Svensson is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden. His publications include Production of Postcolonial India and Pakistan: Meanings of Partition (Routledge 2013) and articles in Review of International Studies, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, and Governance.