Hey AAAFF Community,
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Neha Aziz and I am the Community Programs Director and a Film Programmer for the Austin Asian American Film Festival! One of the main missions of our organization is to uplift Asian and AA/PI voices.
On that note, I wanted to share a very big project I’ve been working on for the last year. I created a podcast called Partition, which tells the story of the separation of India and the formation of Pakistan. This year marks the 75th anniversary, and it is a story many people in the West don’t know about - or if they do, they don’t know all that ensued. Partition is the biggest mass migration in the world and around 1-2 million people are estimated to have died. It is an event that continues to shape the relationship between these two countries today.
I found out the harsh truths about Partition when I was 27 years old, on my first trip back to my home country. Ever since then, I’ve been researching the topic more. Most of the stories around Partition tote the “the great men history” narrative, but not stories from the people it actually affected, the people who had to live through the consequences. When the British decided to leave India and grant independence, simply because they ran out of money, they did it in such a way that so many questions remained when the official announcement came from Prime Minister Atlee. I could go on and on about the injustices and lack of accountability for Partition, but instead, I would like to take you all on a journey and hear from survivors, artists, historians as they try to make sense of this tragedy.
Partition is an iHeart Original Podcast Series, and you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts starting August 15. In the meantime, here is the trailer. To learn more about the podcast follow @1947pod on Twitter and @PartitionPodcast on Instagram.