RESEARCH
The 1947 Partition of British India A research project that seeks to develop a rich and empirically grounded understanding of the 1947 Partition of British India by exploring its demographic and humanitarian consequences. / Project Leads JENNIFER LEANING SHUBHANGI BHADADA / Contributors ORNOB ALAM DIANE ATHAIDE TIARA BHATACHARYA UMA CHAKRAVARTI MARIAM CHUGHTAI MEENA HEWETT ZEHRA JUMABHOY NADHRA S.N. KHAN TARUN KHANNA SANJAY KUMAR KARIM R. LAKHANI RAHUL MEHROTRA RIMPLE MEHTA OMAR RAHMAN NAVSHARAN SINGH RUIHAN WANG RITA YUSUF
T
he Mittal Institute’s research project on the 1947 Partition of British India explores many of the unanswered questions that surround the demographic and humanitarian consequences of this largest instance of forced migration in world history. Under the direction of Jennifer Leaning, Senior Research Fellow at the FXB Center at Harvard University and retired Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and through its affiliation with the Mittal Institute, the project has expanded to become an international and interdisciplinary project that aims to deepen understanding of the 1947-48 mass displacement and its myriad of consequences.
Expanding Scholarship and New Directions In their research on this project, scholars and researchers from across the subcontinent have drawn from a variety of sources including demographic analyses, archival records, collected narratives, urban geography, historical archi-
tecture and contemporary art. This data has allowed researchers to construct multi-layered understandings of the intense stress that such a cataclysmic crisis of forced migration imposes upon a population and the complex social adaptations that may follow the initial crisis.
Collecting Narratives and Crowdsourcing Memories Tarun Khanna, Director of the Mittal Institute and Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, participated in this project by enlisting Karim Lakhani, Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, to collaborate with him. Together, they collected and analyzed more than 2,300 oral narratives from survivors of Partition across the three affected regions of the subcontinent (now Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan). The narratives were collected by using a modified form of crowdsourcing with the help of volunteer ambassadors. These focused on outreach to poor populations and underrepresented voices, spanning gender, religion and caste,
The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University
