This book is a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the resettlement and the rehabilitation of Partition refugees in Pakistani Punjab between 1947 and 1962. It weaves a chronological and thematic plot into a single narrative, and focuses on the Punjabi refugee middle and upper-middle class. Emphasising the everyday experience of the state, the book challenges standard interpretations of the resettlement of Partition refugees in the region. It argues the universality of the so-called 'exercise in human misery', and the heterogeneity of the rehabilitation policies. It reveals the inability of the local bureaucracy to establish its own 'polity', the suitability of patronage political systems as an autonomous politological category and the viable workability of Pakistan as a state.
A carefully researched study of both the state and the everyday lives of refugees as they negotiated resettlement, through both personal and official channels, the book offers an important reinterpretation of the first years of Pakistani history.