Partition and/as Political Theology: Art, Resistance, and Peacebuilding in India and Northern Ireland

2021–2022 marked two major (post)colonial anniversaries: the centenary of the Partition of Ireland in May 1921 and the 75th anniversary of the Partition of India/Pakistan in August 1947. As Britain’s first and largest colonies, respectively, both Ireland and India have been home to longstanding anticolonial movements. On the island of Ireland, Partition turned out to be a step towards the Republic of Ireland’s eventual achievement of independence (Northern Ireland, by contrast, remains a part of the United Kingdom). In the case of India and Pakistan, it was coterminous with independence itself. In both cases, Partition’s specter continues to haunt the political landscape. In the Irish context, divisions persist between those who seek a united Ireland and those who are loyal to the British Crown. Almost twenty-five years since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, which formally brought to an end the Troubles (the thirty year violent conflict between Northern Ireland’s [predominately Catholic] Irish nationalist and [predominantly Protestant] British unionist communities), the implementation of Brexit has brought renewed focus—and renewed tension—to the relationship between the Republic, Northern Ireland, and the UK. In the case of South Asia, the Partition resulted in mass killings, sexual violence, and plunder, accompanied by waves of forced migrations: between 11 and 18 million refugees are estimated to have moved between India and Pakistan in its aftermath. British colonial policies fostered sectarian divides in both Ireland and India. In British-controlled India, for example, the Empire actively fomented polarization between religious communities in order to project itself as a transcendental umpire. The legacies of colonial divide et impera still shape the region today, fueling right-wing sectarian nationalisms. Comparable to early modern European confessional state-building and civil wars, these twentieth-century Partitions can be seen to demonstrate the links between modern centralized state sovereignty and what is often framed as “religious violence.” Human sovereign violence draws legitimacy from divine violence, as the human state moulds itself in the image of the divine lawgiver. We argue that Partition embodies, par excellence, the violence of colonial political theology.