Dr Rita Kothari explores Idea of border and trauma of Partition

A search for something unusual beyond the static idea of what a nation is, seems to drive the writings of Dr Rita Kothari, associate professor, humanities and social sciences department, IIT, Gandhinagar. Her new book, Memories and Movements, was launched on Saturday at the Crosswords bookstore in the city by eminent sociologist Dr Ghyanshyam Shah, writer Achyut Yagnik and Gandhi scholar Tridip Suhrud.

The book, which concerns itself with social and cultural history, speaks to cultural historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists. “In this book, I have attempted to delineate the cultural history of Gujarat and questioned the seriousness we attach to notions of territory, borders and boundaries,” she explains.

The book is an account of Banni, a region in Kutch district, which offers a multi-layered identity to what constitutes India. Banni becomes a symbol for the rest of India in terms of social change in Kothari’s book, as the author illuminates what that mosaic India is, especially within the pocket where Banni is located.

Kothari is passionate in re-examining the idea of regions, communities, languages and the role of Partition. Kothari is a Sindhi married into a Gujarati family and her unique position allows her to examine various static concepts and notions like borders.

In an attempt to preserve her identity and legacy as a Sindhi, she has been able to intensely feel the statelessness, displacement and process of migration. “The Sindhis’ experience of migration has never received the attention it deserves. In my work, Border of Refuge, I had tried to understand the ramifications of migration for the lives of Sindhis and their process of settling down in Gujarat,” the author said.

Kothari’s writings comprise what are known as ‘cultural histories’ — a new technique of telling history through stories, folk tales and community tales. But why not through novels? “The form of the novel doesn’t come to me naturally. I cannot suspend reality, thinking process and hardcore anguish within a sphere of pure imagination, as required by the novel form,” requires,” Kotharis says.

Kothari’s writings revolve around the theme of Partition and how it shattered the lives of ordinary peoples on both the sides of the border.

She has studied and narrated tales of Partition to show how Hindu families felt and how Muslim families felt them across the borders in her works Burden of Refuge (2007) and Un-bordered Memories (2009).

Once there was land with no borders. Communities were without a bounded identity. This was lost amid rules of territoriality. Kothari’s tale is how elasticity became fixity. She is an imaginative narrator and a gifted translator
—Jan Breman, Emeritus Professor, University of Amsterdam