'Postcards From Home': 47 Artists From India, Pak Document Stories of Partition

'Postcards from Home' is a project about the Partition as experienced through the perspective of artists.

'Postcards from Home' exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Britain’s Oxford.

Photo: Manisha Gera Baswani (Altered by: Namita Chauhan/the Quint)

"Since borders were difficult to cross, I decided to use technology as my bridge to bring the 47 stories together. A number thoughtfully chosen as was the name, 'Postcards from Home'. So was born this little child of a project and even I did not see the giant within. Artists photographed by me in their studios reminiscing a 'Home' lost," Baswani says.

"We, the kin of the hapless victims of 1947, also carry collective grief that persists. I ask myself if my kids and their kids will grieve the way we do, for that generation. I don't have any answers, only prayers that they inherit a beautiful, simple and peaceful world, one that still lives in our parents' memories," she adds.

Though it is somewhat unjust to only include India and Pakistan when mentioning Partition. A nation like Bangladesh went through Partition twice (1947 and 1971). The exhibition fails to include voices from the Bangladeshi communities for whom the scars are more recent and but often ignored in the conversation on Partition.

Artist Manisha Gera Baswani came up with the idea after an emotional encounter with fellow artists across the border.

The exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Britain’s Oxford displays pictures from 47 artists from both sides of the border.

"Wounds do not heal easily,” Sana Rizvi, a 23-year-old MPhil student at the University of Oxford, said.

The postcards, a reminder of the shared history of India and Pakistan, tell stories that seamlessly traverse borders and make it impossible to divide or nationalise histories.

In her postcard, Saba Iqbal, a Karachi-based artist, writes about friendships that thrive across borders. It reads:

The Indian artist Krishen Khanna writes about Renu, whom he first met at Pahalgam in Kashmir at the age of eight. “At 93, I still have Renu and I am as crazy about her as I was when she was six. And I do miss Lahore …"

Nilima Sheikh recounts the story of her grandfather and Lala Lajpat Rai.

“The exhibition spoke not only to me but also of me. And that is the beauty of it,” a British Indian member of the audience said.

"I dream that our nations bridge back the brotherhood that was broken. Nations need boundaries … Love does not …” artist R M Naeem writes.

The exhibition is being held as India and Pakistan mark the 75th anniversary of their independence from the British rule.

Postcards show that on both sides of the border, the unifying mood was one of tremendous grief, nostalgia, longing, and affection for what was once 'Home.'

"My mom said, 'Yeh project tujhse khuda ne banwaya hai (God has made you work on this project)," says Manisha Gera Baswani.

The idea came During Baswani’s visit to Karachi in 2015, where many Pakistani artists who, upon hearing she was Indian, would recount the stories of the time their families spent in pre-Partition India.

Baswani herself has grown up with stories of partition - her parents lost their home in Quetta and Sargodha during the partition.

"These stories rang in my head like an echo of my own thoughts. I felt compelled to etch these tales, so they live beyond the teller,” says Baswani.