Digital Dastans & The performance of 1947 Partition memories online.

It is commonly accepted that people have always told stories to communicate knowledge and experience in social contexts (Zippes, 2012). In my exploration of narrative memory (in relation to the 1947 Partition of British-India), I started out this project by referring to the Urdu term Dastans, as a traditional and theoretical medium of storytelling (Dastangoi). Dastans, (Stories) which originate in South-Asia (a thirteenth century oral practice of storytelling) are reliant first and foremost on Bayan (testimony) are recited and commonly performed aloud (Farooqui, 2011).

This research will explore how digital narratives of partition stories relate to indigenous ways of remembering and recording history. I use the concept of the Dastan in this study to signal the ongoing importance of distinctive traditional modes of South Asian historiography in the transmission of Partition memory, which remain crucial even when processes of transmission move online. In effect, this research introduces the scope of digital dastans, to expand on ways in which partition storytelling online revisits, reimagines and potentially reshapes the lapses in partition memory. Primarily through observations online and methods of discourse analysis, I draw a comparison between the production and proliferation of these digital stories on social & new media sites mainly Facebook, Instagram & YouTube. Following the content and engagement analysis of popular platforms such as the US based, The 1947 Partition (2007) & The UK based Project Dastaan (2019), I will position this research and definition of digital dastans in dialogue with existing scholarship on storytelling in South-Asia- mainly its oral, traditional and colonial history.