Rethinking Trauma in the South Asian Context: The Conceptual Role of Urdu Literature

جنوبی ایشیائی تناظر میں صدمے کی ازسرِ نو تفہیم: اردو ادب کا فکری کردار

Abstract

This article re-conceptualizes trauma within a South Asian context by examining Urdu literature as a critical and theoretical resource. It critiques dominant trauma studies, which are largely shaped by Eurocentric frameworks that define trauma in terms of rupture, fragmentation, and psychological breakdown. While such models illuminate important aspects of traumatic experience, they remain limited in addressing the historical and cultural complexities of postcolonial societies.

Focusing particularly on Partition-related narratives, the study argues that Urdu literature offers alternative epistemologies of trauma that extend beyond clinical and event-centered interpretations. Through close reading of selected texts, it demonstrates that trauma in these narratives is not restricted to individual psychological disturbance but is deeply embedded in broader structures of history, memory, identity, gender, and state formation.

Rather than producing only rupture or collapse, trauma in Urdu literary expression often generates processes of reinterpretation, ethical reflection, and aesthetic reconfiguration. In this way, Urdu literature transforms trauma into a dynamic site of meaning-making, cultural negotiation, and historical consciousness, thereby expanding the theoretical horizons of trauma studies in the South Asian context.

Conflict of Interest: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest related to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article, and that the data presented have not been fabricated or falsified.

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant or financial support from public, commercial, or not-for profit funding agencies.

Participant Consent: The author confirms that Informed consent was obtained from all participants, and confidentiality was duly maintained.