Women's Experiences in the Partition of India
PLEASE NOTE: some of this makes for quite a harrowing read.)
Today marks 73 years since the Partition of India along religious lines, and the creation of Pakistan. It also marks Indian Independence from British Rule. The British granted India her independence on August 15th 1947, dividing the subcontinent along the Punjab creating different nations for the different religious communities. 50 million people were displaced as Muslims left on the Hindu side of the border migrated to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs in Muslim Pakistan migrated to the newly independent India. Before Partition, the population of India was approx 390 million. After partition, there were 330 million people in India, 30 million in West Pakistan, and 30 million people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). During the upheaval which followed Partition, one million people died as a result of famine, disease, and interreligious violence.
While every community suffered in the carnage surrounding Partition, women, as usually, suffered disproportionately. Women were subjected to various kinds of violence by different agents during the partition. Thousands of women (estimates range from 25,000 to 29,000 Hindu and Sikh women and 12,000 to 15,000 Muslim women), were abducted, raped, forced into marriage, forced to convert and killed, on both sides of the border.
Women were also mutilated, their breasts cut off,
stripped naked and paraded down the streets and their bodies carved with
religious symbols of the ‘other‘ community. Historian GD Kholsa
describes one example where a young girl whose relations were made to stand in
a circle and watch as she was raped by several men. Such incidents portray how women
were reduced to their bodies, which bore the burden of the honour of the
community, to be conquered, claimed or marked to attack that honour.
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However, women also suffered at
the hands of their own community’s men – either by being forced into suicide or
killed in the name of honour. There were also women who committed suicide of
their own volition to keep their ‘purity’, who were later glorified as martyrs
– probably inspired by the “sati” tradition in Hinduism where widows are encouraged
to throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyres rather than live life
without their husband. The most famous example of this is the mass suicides in
Thoa Khalsa, Rawalpindi, where 90 women jumped into a well in preference of
being raped or killed by outsiders from their community.
Urvashi Butalia deconstructs the conventional view
of women being always perceived as victims in an ethnic conflict. She argues
that while some women were forced and compelled to die, survivors accounts show
that many voluntarily took this decision. However, I would question whether it
can be considered voluntary - a choice
between rape/murder and suicide is really no choice at all in my opinion. However, it is argued that while these women
were confirming to the patriarchal notions of society of the honour of the
community resting on the purity of the woman, they took the decision
consciously, albeit for the community rather than their individual selves. The
notion of men as protectors was also held by them, who preferred ‘sacrificing’
themselves when their men were unable to protect them from the enemy. Moreover,
the act of voluntarily killing yourself and encouraging others is a type of
violence too. Thus, she claims, women had varying experiences during the
partition, depending on their position and assuming a perpetual non-violent
victim position is a reductionist take on women’s histories.
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Another kind of violence that
women faced after the violence of Partition was inflicted by the State. Many
families had reported their loved ones - especially their women- as missing or abducted. The immense scale of
such reports compelled the governments on both sides to act and the task was
carried out by United Council for Relief and Welfare under
Edwina Mountbatten, which made the list of missing persons and sent them to the
local police station.
In September 1947, the Prime Ministers of the India
and Pakistan met at Lahore and decided to start a program for recovering
abducted women from both sides. On December 6, 1947 an Inter-Dominion Treaty
was signed for this purpose and the program was called Central Recovery
Operation, comprising of women social workers and police.
In 1949 the Abducted Persons (Recovery and
Restoration) Act was also passed for the same. Under this act, a date
was decided and conversions and marriages of women after March 1, 1947 were not
recognised, while these women were considered abducted persons. Through
this Act, the states of India and Pakistan decided itself who was to be
considered an ‘abducted person’ and the rights of the women themselves
were completely disregarded. It highlights how the paternalistic state as well
as the patriarchal notion of a helpless woman, dictated the policies of the day
and the women had no independent agency over their families and citizenship.
This operation went on for 9 years after the
partition, with around 22,000 Muslim women and 8000 Hindu and Sikh women being “recovered”.
Even the word “recovered” is dehuminising to the women – it suggests that they
are property to be reclaimed by their rightful owners rather than humans in
need of rescue and aid. Certainly many
women were happy to be recovered, however, many were also forcefully taken by
the officials. Many women had eventually adapted to their new circumstances,
starting families with the men who had taken them. Because of this program
their lives were uprooted once again. The social workers too, though
sympathising with the plight of these women, were bound by law to return them
to their ‘natal’ countries, which was ultimaely decided by their
religion rather than their own desires or affiliation.
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Butalia argues that while the popular belief
is that only “enemy” men abducted women, evidence suggests that women of all
ages were abducted by men from their own village. She claims that the social
workers contended this by arguing that the women were abducted for various
reasons, for instance, older women for their property. Thus, unlike in the
dominant narrative of women’s experiences of partition, they were violated for
many reasons and by their own men as well.
There were also other reasons why women were
reluctant to go back to their families or communities. Women were told
exaggerated accounts of hardships in the ‘other’ country by their
abductors. For instance, a statement by Lajwanti, a rescued woman,
has been recorded in which she claimed that earlier she was reluctant
to return home because her abductor told her things such as: there was no food
in India, all relations of Hindu women had been killed or even if they were
alive they wouldn’t accept them. She was also told that the Indian army would
kill the women the moment they step in India. Moreover, women themselves
were scared of returning for fear of being ostracised because they were not ‘pure’
anymore.
The social workers on both sides also faced
difficulties in finding women, as the local police accompanying them in the ‘other’
country would often warn the people beforehand and the women would be hidden
away. They had to resort to measures like disguises, false names and force to
get their way. Butalia cites one incident from Kirpal Singh’s book The
Partition of the Punjab, in which the policemen themselves raped a woman
they had gone to recover.
Adding to the women’s suffering, the state refused
to recognise children born to abducted women as legitimate because they had
been born of “wrong sexual unions”. Thus, women were forcibly separated from
their children, who were left behind and considered citizens of their father’s
homeland. Again, many women were pressured into “voluntarily” leaving their
children for fear that they would not be accepted by their families.
Harrowingly, women who were pregnant were forced to either give their children up
for adoption or go for abortion or ‘cleansing’. Even though abortion was
illegal in India, the government financed mass abortions specially for this
purpose. Thus, such complex and life altering decisions were taken without
considering the feelings of or taking consent from the people they were taken
for.
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While Muslim women were more
easily accepted in Pakistan, in India, especially among Hindus, the issue of
their ‘purity‘ became important. The children that were able to
accompany their mothers became a constant reminder of the violation of the
woman and the mothers were given the option of giving them up for adoption or
leaving the family.
Measures were also taken to encourage women’s
acceptance in their families. Appeals were made by leaders assuring the people
that these women were still ‘pure’. Pamphlets of the story of Sita’s abduction
by Ravana were issued, showing how she stayed ‘pure’
even when away from her husband, Ram. Ashrams were established for the abducted
women who were rejected by their families or whose families had not been found
yet. Some of them were temporary arrangements for women until their family accepted
them back, which, rarely happened.
Women who had to
suffer such barbarity during the partition, were again subjected to humiliation
and rejection because they were not considered ‘pure’ anymore. As
Butalia also states, the woman as a person was not significant here. It was the
idea of the goodwill of the state as a protector of its women that took
priority in these supposed programs of recovery and rehabilitation.
Women’s lives were impacted in many other somewhat less
extremem but nonetheless signifianct ways. For example, many were left
abandoned and alone in life without the financial or emotional support of their
husbands and family. Partition had ruptured the life of whole families, with
every person needing to work for rebuilding that life. Women became social
workers or had to engage in work, professional or otherwise, to support their
families – which was a drastic change to the majority who had been housewives
before. This left women with little time or resources to pursue their desires
or social life. Sometimes, women were simply abandoned by their families for
lack of a better alternative. On a more positive note, this also created opportunities
for women to enter the public sphere in an unprecedented way.
Over the eight-year period 30,000 women had been repatriated
by both governments. The number of Muslim women recovered was significantly
higher; 20,728 against 9,032 non-Muslim women. Most recoveries were made in the
period between 1947 and 1952. although some recoveries were made as late as
1956.
Partition overall
is too often forgotten and overlooked in history, especially in Britain where
the curriculum completely ignores any semblance of guilt over its colonial
past. In 7 years of primary school, 6 years of high school, and 5 years of uni –
I have only academically learnt about Partition in two courses, both at uni level.
Almost everything I knew of it until my research masters came from speaking to
Paksitani and Indian friends, rather than from formal education. Even if
Britain hadn’t been directly involved in the carnage, it is incomprehensible to
me that the biggest mass movement of people in history and one of the worst
incidences of interreligious violence ever could slip under the radar even of
someone obsessed with social and religious world history. Add Britain’s
culpability for making such irresponsible (at best) and immoral (at worse)
decisions and that just cements an extra layer to the shame that we as a nation
should feel for our shocking ignorance of the events surrounding Partition – an
act which continues to effect the political and social landscape of South Asia
and South Asian diasporas to the present day.
However,
even within the little known story of Partition, the deeply tragic lives of the
female victims and survivors get even more lost. Even after writing and
researching the experiences of women in partition for over a year, I still find
it hard to process and even more difficult to comprehend the unimaginable pain
they suffered, not only at the hands of outsiders but at the hands of their own
communities as well. Their experiences are an extreme and harrowing example of
the danger that placing concepts of “Purity” and “honour” onto women’s bodies brings,
and of the unique ways that women suffered in times of unnatural tragedy and
inhumane suffering. Reading the stories of these women, I’m overwhelmed with
the sense of needlessness – all the bodies that were destroyed, families torn
apart, and lives that were ruined or ended in the name of meaningless, unquantifiable
concepts of honour and purity which exist only in a patriarchal society to the
determent of men and women. While any “fuck you” to the British Empire is a
cause for celebration in my book, today I remember the millions who suffered
during Partition and in particular the women whose stories have slipped through
the cracks of history.
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