Which of the following is NOT true about oral testimonies on the Partition of India?

They throw light on the negotiations between the British and the major political parties.

The correct answer is Option (2) → They throw light on the negotiations between the British and the major political parties.

Oral testimonies on the Partition of India are primarily focused on capturing the personal experiences, emotions, and stories of ordinary people who lived through the partition. While they provide valuable insights into the human aspects of this historical event and help understand the trials and tribulations of ordinary people, they do not typically provide detailed information about the negotiations between the British and major political parties. Such negotiations would be better documented in official records, historical accounts, and government documents.

So, the correct option is [2].

Many historians still remain sceptical of oral history. They dismiss it because oral data seem to lack concreteness and the chronology they yield may be imprecise.  Historians argue that the uniqueness of personal experience makes generalisation difficult: a large picture cannot be built from such micro-evidence, and one witness is no witness. They also think oral accounts are concerned with tangential issues, and that the small individual experiences which remain in memory are irrelevant to the unfolding of larger processes of history.

One of the strengths of personal reminiscence – one type of oral source – is that it helps us grasp experiences and memories in detail. It enables historians to write richly textured, vivid accounts of what happened to people during events such as Partition. It is impossible to extract this kind of information from government documents. The latter deal with policy and party matters and various state-sponsored schemes. In the case of Partition, government reports and files as well as the personal writings of its high-level functionaries throw ample light on negotiations between the British and the major political parties about the future of India or on the rehabilitation of refugees. They tell us little, however, about the day-to-day experiences of those affected by the government’s decision to divide the country.