==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 18:11 November 2018 India’s Higher Education Authority UGC Approved List of Journals Serial Number 49042 ==================================================================== Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History A Thesis Submitted for the Award of the Ph.D. Degree of PACIFIC ACADEMY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH UNIVERSITY By VIDUSHI B. CHOKSI विदषु ी बी. चोक ﵀ [email protected] Under the Supervision of Dr. Daksha M. Patel Associate Professor in History Shri Tejendraprasadji Swaminarayan Arts College Gujarat FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY PACIFIC ACADEMY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH UNIVERSITY Udaipur 2016 ==================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 18:11 November 2018 Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation “Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History” “होलोकॉट और विभाजन: सिनेमा मᴂ इतिहाि का तन셂पण” A Thesis Submitted for the Award of the Ph.D. Degree of PACIFIC ACADEMY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH UNIVERSITY By VIDUSHI B. CHOKSI विदषु ी बी. चोकिी Under the Supervision of Dr. Daksha M. Patel Associate Professor in History Shri Tejendraprasadji Swaminarayan Arts College Gujarat FACULTY OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY PACIFIC ACADEMY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH UNIVERSITY Udaipur 2016 Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation CERTIFICATE It gives me immense pleasure in certifying that the thesis entitled “Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History” and submitted by Ms. Vidushi B. Choksi is based on the research work carried out under my guidance. She has completed the following requirements as per Ph.D. regulations of the University: (i) Course work as per the University rules (ii) Residential requirements of the University (iii) Regularly submitted Half Yearly Progress Report (iv) Published minimum of two research papers in a referred research journal. I recommend the submission of thesis. Date: 04/10/2016 Dr. Daksha M. Patel Ph.D. Supervisor Associate Professor in History Shri Tejendraprasadji Swaminarayan Arts College Kothamba, Gujarat Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation DECLARATION I, Ms. Vidushi Choksi, D/o Shri Bhavesh Choksi, the resident of 51, Pratishtha Awas, Sarelawadi, Ghod Dod Road, Surat (Gujarat) 395001 hereby declare that the research work incorporated in the present thesis entitled “Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History” is my own work and is original. This work (in part or in full) has not been submitted to any University for the award of a Degree or a Diploma. I have properly acknowledged the material collected from secondary sources wherever required. I solely own the responsibility for the originality of the entire content. Date: 04/10/2016 Signature of the Candidate Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation ACKNOWLEDGEMENT At the outset, I would like to thank God for giving me the required strength and health to complete my Ph.D. Thesis. I express my deepest regards and gratitude to my Ph.D. Guide and Supervisor Dr. Daksha M. Patel for her unconditional support and valuable guidance. I am also thankful to my teacher Prof. Imran Surti for his valuable inputs in my research work. Thanks are due to my entire family for their love, care, affection and concern. The blessings of my parents (Mrs. Nutan B. Choksi & Mr. Bhavesh R. Choksi), the love and best wishes of my sister and brother-in-law (Jayati & Jay), brother (Darshan) and other family members (Payal and Chanda) gave me enough strength to accomplish my research work against all odds. At this juncture, I would also like to thank Prof. Prafulla C. Kar and the entire team of Forum on Contemporary Theory, Baroda for awarding Junior Research Fellowship to me during my Ph.D. tenure. Last but not the least, I thank Navinbhai Nagpal and his team of dedicated staff at Vidya Copy centre for their printing services. Date: 04/10/2016 Place: Surat (Vidushi B. Choksi) Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation CONTENT CHAPTER TITLE PAGE NOS. Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 1-36 1.1 History and Cinema: Interdisciplinarity 1.2 History through the Lens of Cinema 1.3 Rationale of the Proposed Research 1.4 Scope of the Proposed Research 1.5 Review of Work Already Done on the Subject 1.6 Research Gaps Identified in the Field of Investigation 1.7 Objectives of the Proposed Study 1.8 Research methodology – Hypothesis and Assumption 2 History and Cinema 37-54 2.1 An Overview of History 2.2 An Overview of Cinema 2.2.1 Cinema – The Not So Humble Beginnings 3 Holocaust and Partition: The Final Solutions 55-119 3.1 Historical Overview of Holocaust 3.2 Historical Overview of Partition 4 Representation of History in Five Holocaust Films 120-180 4.1 Holocaust Cinema: An Overview 4.2 Life is Beautiful (1997) 4.3 The Pianist (2002) 4.4 The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008) 4.5 Fateless (2005) 4.6 Schindler’s List (1993) 5 Representation of History in Five Partition Films 181-234 5.1 Partition Cinema: An Overview 5.2 Tamas (1987) 5.3 1947 Earth (1998) 5.4 Khamosh Pani (2003) 5.5 Garam Hawa (1973) 5.6 Naseem (1995) 6 Conclusion 235-243 Bibliography Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation 1 CHAPTER – 1 Introduction 1.1 History and Cinema – Interdisciplinarity History and Cinema as major disciplines of knowledge and study share a complementary yet an intricate relationship. “History” is a Greek word, which means enquiry, research, exploration or information. The Greeks were the earliest to define History. It was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who gave us the idea that History is philosophy teaching by examples. Aristotle further suggests that history is an account of the unchanging past in the sense that human nature does not change, and that all activities that originate with the same intentions and motives differ only in the degree of details and not in their basic nature. Polybius and Thucydides think that history is a story of things worthy of being remembered, reminding us that all and sundry events do not constitute history, and that only unique, significant and remarkable happenings would figure in it. Professor Findlay’s view that, ‘History is any sequence of events traced in their relations’ introduces the new element that past events must be judged in their correct perspective. Professor Maitland has further improved our knowledge by saying, ‘What men have done and said, above all what they have thought-that is History’. Renier has a new dimension to add when he says that history is the story of men living in societies. Lord Acton gave a different twist to history when he said, ‘History is the unfolding story of Human freedom’. Turgot and Condorcet developed the idea of progress, a concept that heralded the dawn of true history, bringing unity and synthesis to history. But the most significant definition among all the Western scholars is that of Ernest Bernheim, who says, ‘History is a science that investigates and presents in their context of psycho-physical causality the facts determined by space and time of the evolution of men in their individual, typical and collective activity as social beings’. This definition has touched on all fundamental activities of historical pursuit. It is a science because it embodies Vidushi B. Choksi, Ph.D. Holocaust and Partition: A Celluloid Test for History Doctoral Dissertation 2 systematized knowledge based on realities of life and about occurrences and happenings that have actually taken place, and not based on myth or imagination. (Collingwood, 1978) Cinema as a document reveals something about the time in which it was made and released – it is also important to recognize that films often attempt to take on the role of the historian. As per Hayden White’s suggestion that the work of the historian is not far removed from that of the story teller, then films – particularly those that adhere to principles of realism and verisimilitude – would appear to have the potential to be exemplary histories, promising and unrivalled ability to bring the past to life in a way that written histories cannot. However, there are problems with this simplistic view of the movies. Certainly, there is a strong case to be made for acknowledging the important role movies have played in creating and informing common understandings of history. Paul B. Weinstein summarizes the issue succinctly: ‘think about which has made a greater impression on the mass consciousness, myriad scholarly studies of the Normandy invasion or Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan?’ (2001) But does the fact that movies represent a more popularly accessible route to narratives about the past mean that we should grant the same status – as a form of valid knowledge about the past – to feature cinema as to scholarly written histories? One response to this question is to point out that, despite the widespread assumption that these supposedly rigorous, written histories possess greater objectivity than feature films, these histories are also the product of human agency and so are equally susceptible to distortion. However, the political perspective of the historian may be only one of several factors that can lead to a less- than-rigorous treatment of ‘factual’ data in all histories. The often tenuous relation between ‘hard facts’ and the historical narratives that are developed around them may be an effect of what Fredric Jameson has observed about history; that although history itself is not a text or a narrative it is something that is never encountered in unmediated form, and certainly not in a form that is immune to the influence of political ideologies.