Lahore, Amritsar and the Indo-Pakistan Frontier

'Frontier Urbanism refers to two fault lines that have shaped the cities in South Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean: the ever-expanding frontier between urban and rural, and the frontiers created created by ethnic cleansing and religious communalism in the process of nation formation. In a series of events we seek to illuminate how these two frontiers have intersected and overlapped in surprising ways, often long after traumatic events of Partition and displacement have passed into memory. In his keynote lecture Prof. Ian Talbot will discuss how the Partition of India in 1947 affected the futures of the 'twin cities' at the heart of one of the most contested regions during India's bloody 1947 Partition - Lahore and Amritsar. 

Lahore and Amritsar lie only little more than 30 miles apart but since 1947 have been situated on two sides of an international border separating two hostile regional powers: India and Pakistan. Once closely interconnected in conomic terms and home to Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs alike, the two cities have suffered some of the most traumatic experiences of ethnic cleansing anywhere in the Subcontinent. As Prof. Talbot's lecture will demonstrate this has shaped their urban futures, with the effects of a Long Partition still being felt in the way the cities have expanded and developed since 1947.

Prof. Ian Talbot is one of the foremost historians of South Asia working in the United Kingdom today. He has pioneered the historical study of India's Partition and of the political developments that have made it inevitable, authoring numerous monographs on the subjects that have become classics in their own right. His special interest has been the region of Punjab - once a cosmopolitan melting pot and home to Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs before suffering several waves of ethnic and religious cleansing during and after the Partition of India in 1947. Ian's work on comparative urban histories of Partition has been published in a landmark monograph entitled Divided Cities: Partition and its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar, 1947-1957 (Oxford University Press). His latest book is The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan (Routledge).