Dear Friends,

Please find below the opening and closing paragraphs of an invited
contribution to JRP, scheduled to appear in the inaugural issue.

DP

==
WHY DID WE HAVE THE PARTITION?
THE MAKING OF A RESEARCH INTEREST

SATISH SABERWAL

'Research practice' in an abstract sense is a new term for me. I have
some familiarity with research methods in the social sciences and a
passable acquaintance with some of those in the natural sciences; but this
journal sets itself the ambitious task of looking for more general
principles which might conceivably be portable between the various
traditions. Dr Dash has persuaded me to try to do this in relation to my
own current work, broadly a theme in South Asia's historical sociology. I
must warn the reader that this essay is highly idiosyncratic, far from
being the kind of treatments common in the social sciences. My work
relies on published literature in history, sociology, and anthropology, and
draws on theoretical understanding from social psychology and other fields,
absorbed over nearly five decades past. To say anything about my
'practice', then, I have to explain the circumstances in which these
several strands came together for me. I have to begin, then, with
apologizing for the largely autobiographical cast of this discussion. My
excuse lies in a tradition in the social sciences, going back at least to
the sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959: 8ff), that significant research
issues can arise in the following conjunction: that a researcher's
'private troubles' are often of a piece with wider, public, social issues;
and there may be advantage in identifying a research theme, necessarily on
a public issue, which would speak to one's private troubles too. There
can be a dual advantage then: one harnesses the psychic energy trapped in
one's private troubles for one's research effort; and the latter may help
resolve the former.

...

The Partition of 1947 was a seismic event, changing the lives of tens of
millions; and catastrophe theory has taught us that we may approach an
event like this as if it were a climax to diverse, slow moving, processes
over very long periods. To take full measure of that long inception, one
needs to summon the resources not only of history but also of a wide array
of other social sciences.

This essay has an inordinately complex tapestry, interweaving the myriad
threads of a difficult aspect of subcontinental history with one man's
expriences -- and the slow emergence of questions seeking to comprehend
that aspect of history. The 'research practice' here is idiosyncratic;
it cannot be codified for replication by others. At best it may be taken
as a 'case study' of the kind used by students of very complex fields --
medicine, management, anthropological field research. A case study
sensitises one to the nature of complexities and hazards marking a
particular field and the kinds of evolving strategies that other
practitioners may try in their own practice.
===


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