The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Marina Wheeler
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:336
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 153
Category/GenreMemoirs
Colonialism and imperialism
Local interest, family history and nostalgia
ISBN/Barcode 9781473677753
ClassificationsDewey:954.042092
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Imprint Hodder & Stoughton
NZ Release Date 30 March 2021
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

On 3 June 1947, as British India descended into chaos, its division into two states was announced. For months the violence and civil unrest escalated. With millions of others, Marina Wheeler's mother Dip Singh and her Sikh family were forced to flee their home in the Punjab, never to return. Through her mother's memories, accounts from her Indian family and her own research in both India and Pakistan, she explores how the peoples of these new nations struggled to recover and rebuild their lives. As an Anglo-Indian with roots in what is now Pakistan, Marina attempts to untangle some of these threads to make sense of her own mother's experience, while weaving her family's story into the broader, still highly contested, history of the region. This is a story of loss and new beginnings, personal and political freedom. It follows Dip when she marries Marina's English father and leaves India for good, to Berlin, then a divided city, and to Washington DC where the fight for civil rights embraced the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. THE LOST HOMESTEAD touches on global themes that strongly resonate today: political change, religious extremism, migration, minorities, nationhood, identity and belonging. But above all it is about coming to terms with the past, and about the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.

Author Biography

Marina is an Anglo-Indian, London-based barrister specialising in constitutional and human rights law. She was made Queen's Counsel in 2016 and also teaches mediation and conflict resolution. She writes regularly for the UK Human Rights Blog as well as national newspapers, usually on legal subjects.