A Desi Woman with Soniya Gokhale

A recent escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan has put a spotlight on the violent history of the two countries’ independence that Stanford scholar Priya Satia says continues to haunt the Indian subcontinent to this day. Historian Priya Satia has studied the partition of India as part of her work. Her current research examines the work of poets who wrote about partition and its aftermath. The two nations have co-existed uneasily since the 1947 partition of India, which ended almost two centuries of British rule in the region and led to the largest mass migration in human history. The partition created the independent nations of Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, separating the provinces of Bengal and Punjab along religious lines, despite the fact that Muslims and Hindus lived in mixed communities throughout the area, Satia said. Although the agreement required no relocation, about 15 million people moved or were forced to move, and between half a million to 2 million died in the ensuing violence. Satia, a professor of British history in the School of Humanities and Sciences, has studied the partition as part of her work, focusing on the personal stories of its victims. Her current project examines the work of poets who wrote about partition and its aftermath. A daughter of immigrants shaped by the event, Satia explains how this historical event unfolded and its continuing effects today. Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford University, where she teaches modern British and British empire history. Her first book, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (2008), won three major prizes including the AHA’s Herbert Baxter Adams Prize. Her second book, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (2018), also won three major prizes, including the AHA’s Jerry Bentley Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize, the LA Times Book Prize in History, and the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies. Her latest book, Time's Monster: How History Makes History (2020), was named one of BBC History Magazine and the New Statesman's best books of 2020. Her prize-winning work has also appeared in several edited collections and scholarly journals such as the American Historical Review, Past & Present, Technology & Culture, History Workshop Journal, Annales, and Humanity. Prof. Satia also writes frequently for popular media, such as Time, The Nation, Washington Post, The New Republic, and Slate.com.