2017 marks the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India 1947 into India and Pakistan (including what later became Bangladesh).
Imagined Homeland Symposium will discuss the historical journeys that formed the largest mass migration in human history, dividing the country into a nationalist struggle with mass abduction and savage sexual violence.
It had a huge impact on contemporary South Asian communities, as well as its international diasporas, and how global communities continue to be fractured by the recent refugee crisis of the 21st Century.
The symposium will bring some of the most imaginative speakers of our time, and will feature artists, historians and award winning novelists and writers like Professor Yasmin Khan, Dilip Hiro, Balraj Khanna, Navtej Purewal, Shezad Dawood and with local poetic respondents including Yandass Ndlovu, Elmi Ali, and Isaiah Hull.
Imagined Homeland Symposium is a trailblazer of Asia Triennial Manchester 2018, Manchester Metropolitan University.
This event is funded by MMU and supported by Manchester International Festival 2017 and HOME.
This novel approach to memory and commemoration is designed to provoke a different reaction to the historical event of Partition, and challenge the audience into considering how the events of 70 years ago are still pertinent today.
Keynote speaker for the event is Professor Yasmin Khan, Associate Professor in British History at the University of Oxford, whose work focuses on the history of the British in India, South Asian decolonization and the aftermath of empire.
