Volume 16, No 2, 2019
Partition And Violence Against Women: A Study Of Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Short Story Lajwanti
Mithu Dusad , Sonai, Silchar
Abstract
Partition of colonial India in 1947 led to the formation of two nations, India and Pakistan. At the time of its independence from almost two centuries of British rule was a deeply violent and gendered experience. Women were subjected to horrific forms of sexual violence during partition, which question the positions of women in the patriarchal society. Moreover, the victimization of women of the “other community” (Butalia 203) was not only the kind of violence women faced. Besides, no one even hesitated in condemning “the abduction and rape of women, the physical mutilation of their bodies, the tattooing of their sexual organs with symbols of the other religion” (Butalia 204) to name a few of the atrocities women had gone through during partition. However, communities are not willing to speak about the fact that many women were killed by their relatives to “save their honor” (Menon and Bhasin 31); and also many committed suicide for the same. Again to protect children and women from forced conversion, many male members were “martyred” (Menon and Bhasin 64). There were also women who had escaped martyrdom and honourable death by their own family but these issues are even less discussed. The state, too, as the history of partition shows, duplicates the violence of fixing the value of a woman in terms of her sexuality and to treat merely as a currency in an honour economy.
Pages: 289-291
Keywords: Partition, Violence and Women, Honour, Purity and Chastity of Women.