Conclusion: Retelling South Asian Stories, Magar Pyaar Se (with Love)

My conclusion discusses the implications of this book within the context of contemporary reflections on painful pasts, most spectacularly exemplified by the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United States, which has forced many in the country to confront the legacies of slavery and demand justice, reparations, and a radical re-thinking of how we organize our social worlds. As it argues, the partition is connected to ways in which religious and ethnic identities were articulated at a moment of intense nationalist fervor, which continues to frame our present. However, the experiences and narratives of partition migrants remind us that religious identities did not always predominate in sociability and peaceful co-existence. We need to celebrate those multiple affiliations of region and language and love of cultures that do not align neatly with national belonging.