How does oral history help us to understand the suffering of the ordinary people during the Partition of India? Explain

(a) The history of partition has been reconstructed by the help of oral narratives, memoirs, diaries and family histories. These help to understand the problems faced by ordinary people during this harrowing time.

(b)    Oral sources help us to grasp experiences and memories in details. It enables historians to write vivid accounts of what people experiences during partition. It impossible to extract this kind of information from government documents. Government documents deal with policy matters and may throw ample light on negotitations between the British and other major political parties. But it does not tell us about the day today experiences of those affected by the partition.

(c)    Oral history also allow historians to depict the experiences of the poor and hapless, e.g., that of the women of Thoa Khalsa or the middle dass Bengali widow bent double over road laying work in Bihar.

(d) Thus oral history of partition has helped to depict the experiences of those whose existence have been hitherto ignored, who are not rich or have been taken for granted.

(e) Oral history helps us to understand the partition not as only a political event but a testimony about the different forms of distress that numerous people face.