Every coin has two sides, and so do partitions. While the birth of new nation-states is celebrated, the human cost is often forgotten. Such was also the case with the partition of India. Along with independence from colonial rule came a tumultuous event that was accompanied by widespread violence in an attempt to win the “us” vs “them” war. As communal violence became the norm, publicly sanctioned violence was carried out, primarily on women.
Several official narratives present the celebratory narrative found in history books, reminiscing about the new-found notion of nationalism and nation. However, the private has been erased by the political. While stories of masculine bravado and political turbulence have been well recorded in history, the narratives of women have been relegated to the margins, and as several critics have argued, a collective “wilful amnesia” has been adopted. Until recently, before oral testimonies were collected and historians like Ritu Menon, Kamla Bhasin, and Urvashi Butalia started a discourse around the dislocated stories of women, their narratives could only be imagined in fiction with the little public knowledge available on the other side of the partition. As summed up by Urvashi Butalia, “This is the generality of Partition: it exists publicly in history books. The particular is harder to discover; it exists privately in the stories told and retold inside so many households in India and Pakistan.”
Among these fictitious accounts that have tried to encapsulate the parallel and unofficial history of partition are Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India, Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Lajwanti, and films like Khamosh Pani.
In patriarchal societies, women’s bodies become the site of family honour and, in extension, the community’s honour. When nations are in turmoil, the female body, in extension, also becomes the repository of national honour, and the nation becomes the parens patriae and the very site of communication through acts of violence. Besmirching women’s honours by defiling their bodies becomes the means to besmirch the honour of the “other” community and state, placing women on the margins within the nexus of the home, the community, and the nation.
One such narrative that establishes the changing dynamics of women’s identities with the changing dynamics of the nation in all its nuances is Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar. In her text, Pritam’s protagonist, Pooro, was abducted by a man of another community before the partition, and even though her sexuality was not violated, she became an unspeakable casualty for her family, and her mother remarks that it would have been better if she had died at birth. The mere hint of violation of the family’s honour and the community’s honour was enough for Pooro to lose her identity and her home overnight. However, what Pritam managed to capture was the changed dynamics with the event of the partition, when another character, Lajjo, is abducted after the rupture. While there was silence attested to Pooro’s case, Lajjo and several other women who were being abducted became the daughters of the newly formed nation-state and were hence brought back ‘home.’ What was once private and extraordinary became a public and ordinary event, making acceptance easier. As summed up in the story, “What wrong had you done that your family hasn’t acknowledged you to this day? asked Lajjo. That’s true. But then I was the only one,” replied Pooro.
Another such narrative is the 2003 film Khamosh Pani, which highlighted how families expected women to sacrifice their lives to protect the code of honour attested to their name and community by jumping into wells. Mental violence, along with physical violence, was implicitly inflicted as women were devoid of any agency as they became sites of war during turmoil. The film, starring Kirron Kher, presents the story of a woman who escaped jumping in the well, was captured and violated, married her abductor, and lives in silence while negotiating her new identity.
Another important aspect of partitions that only finds space in fiction and oral testimonies is what followed the moment of rupture. As nation-states organised recovery programmes to bring back “their” female citizens, women were subjected to double displacement. While it was a boon for several women, a lot of them found it as again being uprooted from their families, as several women had been married to their abductors and had come to terms with their lives. Moreover, while the welfarist move guaranteed a return to the new space of home, there was no documentation of whether these women were accepted back into their families. Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Lajwanti captured the renegotiation of women’s identities in all its nuances. After Sunderlal, the husband of the abducted woman, accepts her, she becomes an ‘untouchable’ for him; she is not his beloved Lajjo anymore; she is just Lajwanti.
While the violence can be to some extent penned, the unspeakable trauma that was left behind cannot be understood in words. The stigma and taboo attached to the violence perpetrated on women’s bodies prohibit the trauma from being spoken out loud; the acts and their impacts are articulated in silence. Even if they managed to survive the violence, the inability to voice their trauma wounded the mind and the soul, which remain uncharted by official accounts. These parallel narratives of personal loss and trauma find space in fiction, filling gaps in official accounts to some extent.
Years after the rupture, as generations come, it becomes imperative to remember the hefty cost paid when nations undergo war. While celebrating nationalistic sentiment and the overcoming of political struggles, nations must not forget what remains undocumented in history. It is a responsibility to make sure that the other side of history is not forgotten or lost in translation when the world recounts how nations were born in the wake of partitions.