![]() Both governments established laws to recover abducted women and return them to their families and communities. The process of recovering female refugees in both India and Pakistan was dictated by political debates about citizenship and responsibilities. By showing them, they seek to engage the reader in the realties that marked female bodies in India and the national struggle that dominated that experience. The researchers do not shy away from presenting readers with gruesome realities women faced. Acts of sexual violence on the female body by opposing communities were considered a sort pollution of the family. ![]() Stories like Taran’s were devastatingly common some involved women forced to take poison, others hung themselves and some jumped off buildings. Taran, a Sikh woman, shares her story with Menon and Bhasin, stating that when faced with an imminent attack by a mob, her family along with others in her community discussed gathering the young girls in a room and setting it on fire to prevent them from falling into the hands of Muslim men. Sexual violence among these three communities included “stripping, parading naked, amputating breast, rape, and the killing fetuses.” Menon and Bhasin argue that the overwhelming displays of sexual violence against women brought about feelings of shame and dishonor for both the family and the community as a whole. Religious tensions in regions of India among Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs began long before 1947, but the official declaration of Partition escalated the public violence against women. To do this they rely of oral accounts of women that fell victim to the violence that overtook regions of India and Pakistan and expose the “tangled relationships between women, religious communities and the state.” The female body become a site on which male honor was disputed and the state negotiated citizenship and borders. Through their research, they seek to present an alternative view of Partition aside from the countless political histories that exist. Rita Menon and Kamla Bhasin study the violence that defined the female experience during Partition and the post-Partition years in their book Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. Those reluctant to leave their communities were forced out by the violence that broke out at the beginning of partition. As soon as lines were drawn, or even sooner, mass exoduses began on both sides as Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were pushed to their new homes. The Muslim-majority provinces, which had been part of India became West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and regions of Punjab with a Hindu majority remained in India. Theirs are the stories of battles over gender, the body, sexuality, and nationalism-stories of women fighting for identity.On June 3, 1947, the Partition of India announced by the Hindustan-Pakistan Plan effectively created Pakistan by dividing provinces in India along religious-based borders. These stories do not paint their subjects as victims. After bearing a child, she would be offered the opportunity to return only if she left her child behind and if she could face shame in her natal community. A young woman might have been separated from her family when a convoy was ambushed, abducted by people of another religion, forced to convert, and forced into marriage or cohabitation. Nearly 100,000 women were "abducted" during the migration. Thousands of women committed suicide or were done to death by their own kinsmen. ![]() ![]() In the largest ever peace-time mass migration of people, violence against women became the norm. They explore what country, nation, and religious identity meant for women, and they address the question of the nation-state and the gendering of citizenship. The authors make women not only visible but central. Borders and Boundaries changes that, providing first-hand accounts and memoirs, juxtaposed alongside official government accounts. While there are plenty of official accounts of Partition, there are few social histories and no feminist histories. The rending of the social and emotional fabric that took place in 1947 is still far from mended. ![]() What was less obvious but equally real was that millions of people had to realign their identities, uncertain about who they thought they were. The forced migration, violence between Hindus and Muslims, and mass widowhood were unprecedented and well-documented. More than eight million people migrated and one million died in the process. While Partition sounds smooth on paper, the reality was horrific. From Amazon: As an event of shattering consequence, the Partition of India remains significant today. ![]()
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