No sooner than the crooked line of Partition had been drawn, a prophetic band of writers, poets and musicians emerged from the embers of a newly formed Subcontinent. Recounting untold courage, they wrote of stain-covered daybreaks, of night-bitten dawns. They spoke of crimson-coloured horizons, and a million mothers mourning. This was a time of postcolonial melancholia, where the goose-step of nationalism trampled over any withering resolve for a communal future. “British Asians have been able to construct a simultaneous awareness of ourselves within the dominant history, whilst dedicating our…