The Real History of the Partition of India & Pakistan in Ms. Marvel

Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani American teenager named Kamala Khan, is the latest superhero to join the Marvel Universe. Her superpower? Family bangles that carry the strength and power of intergenerational knowledge passed down by her grandmother from Pakistan.

But a lot of the magic behind the bangles has been lost to time, war, and trauma. And Kamala has yet to learn how to control these forces. Based on real historical events, Kamala's family was forcibly displaced and lost loved ones during the Partition of India in 1947. After India gained independence, the British Crown drew new borders and divided the region into secular India and a new Muslim territory: Pakistan. As a result, South Asia experienced one of the largest refugee crises in modern history, one that continues to impact families today, including the family of Ms. Marvel.

So what can Ms. Marvel teach us about the impact of Partition on families and intergenerational trauma? And how does the superhero genre allow us to reckon with darker aspects of world history? We speak to one of the writers of Ms. Marvel, Fatimah Asghar, and the founder of the 1947 Partition Archive, Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla, about why retelling our history, in both fiction and nonfiction, is so important today.

Resources:
How ‘Ms. Marvel’ Put Partition on Screen. The Juggernaut.

Ms. Marvel: The India-Pakistan trauma at the heart of the show. BBC.

The Great Divide: The violent legacy of the Indian Partition. The New Yorker.

The 1947 Partition Archive.

Watch the full oral stories of the 1947 Partition Archive participants:

Credits:
Director: Dolly Li
Producer: Tien Nguyen
Consulting Producer: Danielle Bainbridge
Associate Producer: Mia Faske
On-camera appearances by: Fatimah Asghar, Guneeta Singh Bhalla
Written by: Mia Faske, Dolly Li, and Tien Nguyen
Voiceover by: Kiana Taylor
Director of Photography: Brian Inocencio
Gaffer: Bryce Holden
Online Editor: Travis Hatfield
Editor: Eurie Chung
Assistant Editor: Josaen Ronquillo
Motion Graphics: Travis Hatfield, Jonathan Gil
Research Assistant: Kiana Taylor
Makeup Artist: Tanosha Tee Johnson
Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy

Post-production services & facilities provided by: Flash Cuts
Executive Producer for Flash Cuts: Eurie Chung
Executive Producers for CAAM: Stephen Gong, Donald Young
Supervising Producer for CAAM: Sapana Sakya
Coordinating Producer for CAAM: Czarina Garcia
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing

Additional Footage:
Alamy
British Pathé
Getty
NARA
The 1947 Partition Archive

Guests:
Fatimah Asghar
Guneeta Singh Bhalla

[marshavilkas]

I'm so happy to see this! My dad's side of the family was originaly from Punjab, Pakistan. However, we are Sikhs and moved to India. It tore my family apart, and it seriously impacted our history so much!

[PokhrajRoy.]

As much as I appreciate the discourse around Partition of India through Punjab, but we rarely discuss it through the lens of Bengal. Even less so during the creation of Bangladesh.

[sayakchoudhury]

Btw, partition didn't only happen along western border of India. There was an Eastern border too. The erstwhile Bengal province was partitioned similarly into West Bengal and East Pakistan. East Pakistan later gained independence through a bloody revolution and war in 1971 as Bangladesh. Partition stories are as prevalent and trauma inducing on the both sides of Bengal as they are on the both sides of Punjab. My family was also a victim of partition, my grand parents had to flea the Rajshahi district in Bangladesh to India during independence, I still remember the horror stories recounted by my grandma.
Strangely enough the 1947 partition was not the first attempt at partitioning Bengal in religious lines by the Britishers. The first partition of Bengal was done in 1905 by the then viceroy Lord Curzon, which was later undone due to protests. Anyway, from my experience despite the religious devide I feel Bengali people from both sides of the border get on better than your average Indian an Pakistani would, I think the cultural connection of a shared language is stronger here.
The partition archive is a fantastic initiative.

[gridlore]

My English father explained Partition as "We made a bloody mess of the entire place, ignored everything about India that we should have known, walked away, and were shocked at what happened."

[aaronpoole]

It enrages me that considering Britain caused so much trauma and grief around the world I never learned a drop of this at school. Thank you for teaching me today.

[astrobookwormsinger]

THANK YOU

There's very little international attention given to the events surrounding the Indian Independence Struggle, in my opinion as an Indian. The consequences of colonialism are still being grappled with and fought today. I really appreciate this show for bringing light to this horrible event when British India was splintered into 3 countries on the basis of religious division.
Much love to Pakistan and Bangladesh. We share the same history. We aren't all that different deep down.

[nishobit.]

I am from Southern India. So my family was not directly affected. Still this makes me cry so much. I wonder why..

[chillsahoy]

Thank you for making this video. I had never heard of the Partition until an episode of Doctor Who, and more recently in Ms Marvel. It shocks me that there was such a huge event affecting so many people, yes even in the West, and yet it took watching some silly fictional TV shows to hear about it. Sometimes history is not just looking things up, sometimes it's also being aware of what to look up in the first place. Unknown unknowns are difficult to navigate.

[ujwalmokashi]

800 years in many parts of India there was islamic rule. Rulers imposed islam. They converted and killed those who didn't convert. Those got converted wanted to convert others.
There was tussle, islamic invaders with converted indians vs Indians. Native Indians fought for centuries. When the conversion was impossible they demanded saperate state for islamic followers.
The tussle between islamists and Indians existed prior to British and after the British. Blaming it entirely on British is unfair.

[PokhrajRoy.]

I’m so happy to see this video. I wish there were more episodes but they handled the Pakistani Identity tied in with Partition so beautifully.

[niteshkumarjha]

It's not South Asia... It's India... British ruled India not South Asia. India was partitioned. There was no such entity as South Asia. That's the Indian Subcontinent.

[ankitapattanaik]

No mention of direct action day. Moplah genocide. Pakistan sending bodies of burned people back to India. Khilafat movement. It was not Britain who divided India. 2 nation theory was proposed long back by Muslims.
We will always remember Direct Action Day.

[PokhrajRoy.]

The 1947 Partition Archive is such a great initiative. 👏🏽

[NomMon]

A big information is missing, the people who made the partition happened, 1946 Elections Muslims voted from existing Indian parts and didn't went to Pakistan. East Pakistanis (now Bangladesh) get their wish, but the west Pakistan; they didn't voted for Pakistan

[castesmasherIN]

Note: Whenever you hear a partition story, NEVER listen to the side of the Pakistanis. They will twist the whole story up, and make themselves the scapegoats in the situation. The whole world knows it was the Muslim community that asked for partition, but the Pakistanis will never tell you all that.

[rohitdeb]

Since the topic deals with erasure and rediscovery of histories, I feel compelled to point out that the Partition in 1947 equally affected Bengal if not more so, since it had already been partitioned once before in 1905. I can appreciate modern day Pakistanis not being comfortable recognising this given their own history with the erstwhile East Pakistan and modern day Bangladesh but as of the time of Partition, more 'Pakistanis' lived in Bengal/East Pakistan than did in West Pakistan. I'm not trying to minimise anyone's trauma but, like I mentioned, I felt compelled to point it out given the context of the present video.

[jso]

This was a great take. I first learned about partition from Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" in which partition is a major event, impacting those first children born at Midnight in newly independent India. May Rushdie heal from the savage attack.

[henzohewson]

You forgot to mention East Pakistan and the Bengali Genocide of 1971, which was really devastating for Bangladesh today 🇧🇩. I recommend the movie “Viceroy’s House” with Hugh Bonneville as Louis Mountbatten, which is really good at demonstrating the utter devastation the partition caused.

[pritpalsngh]

Being a Punjabi from Punjab, India. I've always found it difficult to forget this partion. I've never been to my ancestral home that my grand parents left back in Pakistan. Growing up and hearing the stories about the land that was ripped apart is a feeling that always pains me, I've never been there and probably will not be able to. I have always imagined the pain but they experienced it.
I've got a connection to that land and maybe that is the reason why most Punjabis are incapable of hating Pakistan like the rest of India.

[mridulkanti]

The partition was the direct result of Gandhi's failed non violence movement. Muslims actually didn’t buy it. Hindus (from Bangla) and Shikh communities were the real victims of this partition.