10/28/2022 0 Comments Borders and boundaries ritu menon pdf![]() The magnitude of the gory reality of human behaviour cannot merely be understood by statistics. Urvashi Butalia in her book, "The Other Side of Silence-Voices from the Partition of India", explains, how in times of crisis men think in terms of land and property while women think of family. Much of this reality remains covert in what is majorly perceived as the "main story" of Partition. Careful scanning of the fictional Partition narratives with a conscious focus on women protagonists effectively helps in understanding the specific suffering and anguish of women as victims of Partition. When two nations were celebrating their freedom from British India, there were millions of people who were displaced from their homes, property and all the things they had lived with things they had grown up with. INTRODUCTION The year 1947 saw one of the greatest migrations in human history as the subcontinent was divided into two independent states, India and Pakistan. The silence was so pervasive that scholars of the Partition ignored it in their work. As they began sharing their stories with scholars, women did not reveal any sexual violence they personally experience. Even when women survivors told Partition stories to their families, there were pauses in the narrative. Women faced violence on three levels: (1) communal as members of the “other” communities abducted, raped, and mutilated them (2) familial as they were “encouraged” to commit suicide or were murdered by family members in order to protect the family’s honor and (3) national as the new countries, particularly India, forcibly “recovered” them, stripped them women of their citizen rights, and mandated they abandon their “wrong” children. Approximately 100,000 women were abducted, but only ten percent were ever found. For decades, the extent of the horror remained unknown. However, the price borne by women defies belief. ![]() The true number of fatalities will never be known. Historians Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh argue that the number is between 200,000 and two million. Khosla, a member of India’s Fact Finding Organization, argues that there were approximately 500,000 fatalities. In 1994, the subaltern historian Gyanendra Pandey observed, “Perhaps the most striking point about the historiography of Partition is that the history of this violence has scarcely begun to be addressed.” The extent of the violence is truly unfathomable. The communal violence between Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs led to the largest peacetime exchanges of population ever. The above Bibliographic information is specific to this book which is being listed for sale.The creation of independent India and Pakistan in 1947 came at a heavy price. ![]() Read Best & Top Books related to this item
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