Said Sneha Vashisht, who is searching for a job in Delhi after her MBA degree: 'I don't understand why we are making so much noise about all this. The partition story is history and I want to move beyond it. There are more relevant issues to rake up.'

'My job is my first worry. Yaar, who wants to go back 60 years? Partition happened, it caused mayhem, thousands died surrounding the creation of separate Hindu- and Muslim-majority states. But how is it relevant now who caused it all?' added Vashisht, who lives in Gurgaon on the outskirts of the national capital.

Shaziya Salaam, 24, an English research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) blamed Indian politicians for being 'obsessed with Pakistan'.

'They have little time for issues related to their own people. Unnecessarily raking up partition controversies smacks of political and intellectual bankruptcy,' Salaam said.

'Why should this more than 60-year-old controversy appropriate a national discourse when history, of course important, matters less than economic progress and welfare of the people.

'If the opposition party (the BJP) means business they have more relevant issues to take up with the government. We are facing drought and a disaster is apparently waiting to happen. And look what they are caught in?'

Fakhra Siddiqui, 28, who works with youth and conducts workshops on issues such as self and coexistence, felt a little differently.

'History is never irrelevant. Ripples of partition still haunt us. We need to revisit history, learn it and understand it. But rather than creating controversies and scratching the unhealed wounds incurred by one of the the biggest human disasters of the century, we should see how wounds can be cured to live in peace and coexistence,' Siddiqui said.

(Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at s.kashani@ians.in)