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VOL. 6, ISSUE 2 (2024)
Resilience amidst ruins: Women's trajectories in the wake of partition of India
Authors
Vinita Singh Chhetri
Abstract
Historical events are difficult to date in any
precise way for their beginnings and endings are not finite. The Partition of
India into two countries, India and Pakistan, is an event that is said to have
taken place in August 1947, yet its beginnings go much further back into
history. History witnessed the migration of over twelve million people and
communal violence to a degree that left over a million dead, more than 75,000
women were abducted and many people were rendered homeless; either on a
temporary (ranging from few months to decades) or a permanent basis. Within
patriarchal structures, women are often considered as embodiments of the honor
of the whole community. Accordingly, in times of ethnic, religious or other
violent conflict, they become major targets. To the best of our knowledge there
has been no feminist historiography of the partition of India, not even of the
compensatory variety. Women historians have written on this cataclysmic event
but from within the parameters of the discipline, and still well within the
political frame. They are present in some reports and policy documents, and no
account of Partition violence for instance, is complete without the numbing
details of violence against women. Yet they are invisible. Furthermore, their
experience of this historic event has neither been properly examined nor
assigned historical value. This paper is about the nature of violence inflicted
on women during the Partition of India in 1947. The paper tries to explore
women in totality in the context of partition and the legal issues which arose when
both the countries tries to take the females of their respective countries
back.
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Pages:18-23
How to cite this article:
Vinita Singh Chhetri "Resilience amidst ruins: Women's trajectories in the wake of partition of India". International Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Vol 6, Issue 2, 2024, Pages 18-23
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