101.pdfl Review Article : Women and Ethnic Cleansing: A History of Partition in India and Pakistan

7/28/2019 101.pdfl Review Article : Women and Ethnic Cleansing: A History of Partition in India and Pakistan

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DevelopmentGender, Technology and

DOI: 10.1177/097185240000400105

2000; 4; 101Gender Technology and DevelopmentBeatriz Gonzalez Manchon

Partition in India and PakistanReview Article : Women and Ethnic Cleansing: A History of

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ReviewArticle

Women and Ethnic Cleansing:A History of Partition in

India and Pakistan

Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin; Borders and Boundaries: Women in

Indias Partition; New Delhi: Kali for Women; 1998; 274 pages;Rs 300.

Urvashi Butalia; The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition ofIndia; New Delhi: Viking (Penguin India); 1998; 278 pages;Rs 295.

Introduction

Nationalism has become an increasingly powerful ideology in the

post-Cold War era. Ethnic and religious conflicts are an ongoing real-

ity affecting women and men in nearly every region. But, as we con-tinue to witness systematic rape and other forms of inhuman treatment

of women as deliberate instruments of war and ethnic cleansing,there is definitely a need for continued feminist research into womens

distinct experience of conflict, violence and war-like situations.

Fifty years after the great convulsion caused by the territorial sep-aration of religious communities in Indias Partition, Ritu Menon

and Kamla Bhasin, and Urvashi Butalia, in Borders and Boundaries:

Women in Indias Partition and The Other Side of Silence: Voicesfromthe Partition of India respectively, provide a feminist analysis of thoseevents. The books focus on womens personal experiences and the

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repercussions that Partition had on their lives, their relationshipswith men, with their

religiouscommunities and with the state.

When the Hindustan-Pakistan Plan was announced on 3 June 1947,

Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs were scattered all over Indias territory.In view of the threat ofbecoming a minority in an area dominated bythe other religion, a mass exodus of non-Muslims traveling to Indiaand Muslims traveling to Pakistan began. Population movementstook place at a scale unprecedented in human history, and the com-munal violence generated in this process cost one million people

their lives. Over 12 million people were displaced and uprooted, andapproximately 75,000women were abducted and raped on both sidesof the border.

Borders and Boundaries draws a close parallel between the viol-

ence directed against women during the recent war between Serbs,Croats and Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Partition violence.While there are certainly important differences, the authors stressthe link between religion-based vivisection of countries, the sexual-

ity ofwomen and their role as upholders of honour and reproducersof the community (p. 63) in both context. Today, the ethnic-

cleansing effort directed by the Serb armed forces and paramili-tary groups, especially against the Muslim population in Bosnia-

Herzegovina, is being repeated against ethnicAlbanians of the

Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Human rights violations ofwomen inthe form ofmurder, rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancies have

unfortunatelybeen consistent

throughoutthese and other ethnic-

cleansing campaigns. In theAsian region, human rights groups have

reported mass rapes of women among others in the contexts of theoffensive of the Burmese military against the insurgency of ethnicminorities and in the Indonesian military repression of the East-Timorese independence struggle.Rape and sexual mutilation of women, including the tattooing of

their sexual organs with symbols of the other religion, were very

much part of the communal violence that accompanied Partition inIndia and Pakistan. Similar forms of violence continue to be used

today as tactics of terrorism with total impunity in different partsof the world. These two books make a crucial point denouncingthis kind of brutality against women not just as characteristic of

particularly-troubled historic moments, but rather as an indicator ofthe place that womens sexuality occupies in patriarchal societies.



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AFeminist Reading ofPartition

The absence of womens distinctive experiences from historical ac-

counts, as a result of their gender roles, has been extensively criticized

by feminist research in the past decades. The valuable contributionof these two books therefore lies in their construction of women as

historical actors and the denial of the notion that major historic epi-sodes affect women and men equally. Through their feminist readingof the consequences of Partition, the authors explore the specific

repercussionsof

large-scaleviolence,

displacementand

disposses-sion on the lives of ordinary women. Crucial questions of identity,country and religion, as well as the intersection of community, stateand gender are approached from a critical perspective, adding signif-icant dimensions to the analysis of the cultural, psychological andsocial impact of Partition stories on the present India.

In both books, the first chapter introduces the reader to the histor-ical context of Partition and the magnitude of the convulsion created

bythe demarcation of territorial boundaries between

religiouscom-

munities that were previously co-existing.Afew pages are also ded-icated to explaining the research methodology and the authors

positions with regard to the debate over the value of oral testimoniesversus historical facts. Over the past decade the authors of the books

interviewed individuals, mainly, but not exclusively, women, to learnmore about their experiences of Partition. It is precisely throughthe accounts obtained, for example, from women in rehabilitationcenters and social workers that women can become a focus of

inquiryand the subject of the narrative. On the other hand, the authors seethe need to locate these testimonies in the context of historical facts,

establishing the relationship between memories and official versionscontained in historic records, official statements and other govern-ment documents.

Neither Menon and Bhasin nor Butalia intend to do a review of

historical writings on the politics of Partition. They aim instead to

understand the meaning of the historical events from the perspect-ives of the people who suffered and lived through them. By elabor-ating their own views on the problematic of oral histories, theirmotivations and their dilemmas around the question of whether ornot to ask questions which are painful for individuals to remember,the authors make these very human research projects credible and

transparent.



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My purpose is not to literally compare these two books. The relev-ant

thingabout their

publicationin 1998 is

actuallythe fact that the

authors have found it important to do a reading of historical eventsout of their sincere feminist commitment and deep concern for the

increasing communalism in Indian society. Both books engage in anexhaustive analysis of Partition realities from a gender perspective,the issues treated in-depth being the ones emerging directly from

peoples testimonies. Borders and Boundaries classifies these issuesinto six clusters: violence, abduction and recovery, widowhood,womens rehabilitation and what the authors call

rebuildingand

belonging.Concerned with the same subjects, the narrative in The Other Side

of Silence is constructed on a more personal note and is less system-atic. Butalia recalls her familys experience of the Partition and

reproduces in great detail selected interviews with individuals.Alongwith womens stories she also includes the experiences of other

marginalized groups. Chapter 6 is dedicated to the problems of dis-

placedand

orphanchildren and the children of abducted women,

and in Chapter 7 it is the Harijans, Dalits or Untouchables who arethe focus of her analysis. She stresses the point that Partition hasbeen only thought of in terms of the opposition between religiousidentities, neglecting other important aspects of identity such as gen-der, class or caste. The scheduled castes, who were a sizeable propor-tion of the population in Punjab, also had a distinct experience ofPartition as a result of their inferior social status.

The information contained in both books refers mainlyto events

in the area of Punjab. The authors have to a large extent consultedthe same sources and come to very similar conclusions in their inter-

pretations of the gender aspects of the conflict, in particular, with

regard to the stories of violence against women, abducted women

(women taken hostage or kidnapped) and unattached women (dis-placed, destituted or widowed women).Now discussed are some of the main ideas developed in both

books.

Violence against Women

The scale and intensity of the violence in Punjab following theannouncement of Partition reveal that much of it was organizedand supported by law-enforcement agencies and a communalized



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bureaucracy. It was intensified by economic factors such as theconflict between

agriculturallabor and landowners and cultural and

psychological factors related to the deep-rooted antagonism bet-ween the communities.

It was a period of de facto suspension of law and order in whichviolence against women occupied a very particular place.An import-ant point made in both books is that women were particularly tar-

geted for violent actions not only because of their special vulnerabilityin times of conflict. There was a deep patriarchal complicity between

country, communityand

religion,which allowed overall

brutalityand

certain forms of permissible violence against women to take place.Hindu, Sikh and Muslim women experienced violence at the

hands of the men of the other community who abused them sexuallyin an overt assertion of their identity and a simultaneous humiliationof the Other by dishonouring their women (Menon and Bhasin,p. 41). Feminist research in the field of ethnic conflict and sexualviolence has pointed out that womens bodies are considered by themen of rival communities as a

territoryto be

conquered.Alongwith

the contamination of the raped women, the humiliation of the menwho were not able to protect them has to be seen as another import-ant factor indicating the degradation of the enemys identity, stress-

ing his lack of maleness. Some of the women were raped in templesor mosques, constituting a double violation from the point ofview ofa nationalism based on ethnic and religious purity.

Ironically, however, both books stress the fact that much of theviolence directed

againstwomen

duringPartition was

perpetrated bytheir kinsmen. Their own families and communities, in the name of

preserving chastity and honor, forced large numbers of women todeath. Both books recall, for example, the story of 90 women of ThoaKhalsa (Rawalpindi) who jumped into a well on 15 March 1947 infear of an imminent attack on the village and sexual aggression onthewomen. Such incidents had previously been interpreted as willingsacrifices from women; there was no further questioning of the cir-cumstances. The authors

arguethat these acts can

hardlybe seen as

the result ofvoluntary decisions. Particular notions ofshame and dis-honor were very deep-rooted in families and communities, makingwomen internalize the notion that death was preferable to living inhumiliation. Some women resisted this logic, but many others com-mitted suicide or were killed by their own community men to avoidsubmission to the enemy. Menon and Bhasin see a patriarchal



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agreement around the acceptability of these murders, which indic-ates how doses of

violence againstwomen were embedded in

every-day history. They enable us to see them as part of the continuum-

and, despite the shudder of horror, part of the consensus (p. 60).

Night fell, they kept raping the women, then dumped them.Divided up the gold. They wouldnt leave the 17-year-old and shedecided she would commit suicide. But how to kill herself? She

asked for a rope-but where to get it from? Her brother and hus-

band then got hold of a scarf and decided they would strangle herwith it.... She survived, despite their efforts to strangle her all

night. During this she fainted, and in the morning they decided tothrow her in the river. We didnt try to stop her-we, too thoughtwe would do the same, but we had the children to think of.

Testimony of Bimla Bua, one of two or three Hindu women who had nottaken their lives in this incident in Muzaffarabad in October 1947 (p. 52).

Abducted Women and Recovery

By the end of 1947, both the Indian and Pakistani governments wereoverwhelmed by the complaints from relatives of missing women.AnInter-Dominion Treaty was signed to organize the recovery of abduc-ted women on both sides and restore them to their families. The leg-islation on theAct to facilitate the recovery operation provokedintense

controversyin the Indian Parliament.

Amongthe most

polemic issues was the definition of abducted person, the virtuallyunlimited powers attributed to the police by theAct, the denial of

rights and legal recourse to the recovered women and the forciblereturn of unwilling women.Once recovered, abducted women were brought to refugee camps

to await their restoration to their families, just like stolen property.Some were pregnant or had already given birth to the children of

their abductors. They had been polluted by mixing with the blood ofthe other religion (especially with regard to Hindu women abducted

by Muslims), and had therefore to be purified, through rehabilita-tion within their communities.According to the accounts in these

books, many women knew there was reluctance to accept them back

and often resisted recovery. Children of these illegitimate unionsraised a whole range of questions for these women and for the states



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of which they were supposed to be citizens. This too is a subject dis-cussed in both books.

Without questioning the validity of the recovery operation as awhole, what the books argue is that the circumstances of the abduc-

tion varied significantly from case to case. In some cases the womenhad been left behind by their own families for the safe passage of therest of the members. Moreover, not all abductors were evil and theyoften married the abducted women. Many of them were living withconsiderable dignity and respect with their new partners and had

improved their social status. Resistance to the recovery often did notcome only from abductors but from the women themselves. Beingseparated from their families they had eventually had the opportun-ity to choose their partners freely, which is something they couldnever have done inside their own community. The authors are there-fore very critical about the policy of forcible recovery. They point outthat recovery was a question of honor directly linked to the issue of

religious conversion, or to the concern for the loss of Hindus toIslam: The honour that was staked on the body of Mother India,and therefore, by extension on the bodies of all Hindu and Sikhwomen, mothers and would-be-mothers. The loss of these women to

men of the other religion, was also a loss to their original families.These, and not the new families which the women may be now in,were the legitimate families (Butalia, p. 145). The identities ofabducted women were primarily defined in terms of their member-

ship of religious communities instead of full-fledged citizens fromtwo free countries, and their rights to free choice therefore subordi-

nated in order to preserve community and national honor.

There were some women who had been bom into poor homes and

had not seen anything other than poverty.Ahalf-full stomach and

rags on your body.And now they had fallen into the hands ofmenwho bought them silken salwars and net dupattas, who taughtthem the pleasures of cold ice-cream and hot coffee, who tookthem to the cinema. Why should they leave such men and go back

to covering their bodies with rags and slaving in the hotsun

in thefields? .... There was also another fear. The people who wanted totake them away ... how did they know that they would not sellthem to others?After all, she has been sold many times, how manymore times would it happen?

Testimony of Damyanti Sahgal, social worker in the recovery operationof abducted women that continued for nine years after Partition (p. 113).



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Unattached Women and Rehabilitation

Displaced and widowed women constitute the second group of

women; the Indian government assumed direct responsibility forthem after Partition. In the case ofwidows, government policies and

programs were initiated with the purpose of integrating the womenas economic beings and mainstreaming them into the countryseconomic life. The state provided shelter, training and work of dif-ferent kinds so that they would become economically independent

and acquire a sense of dignity and self-worth.As Butalia describesit, this is the second story about Partition. The story of how in the

midst of trauma and turbulence, opportunities opened up for peo-ple, especially women, to rebuild their lives.

Many women were able to join the workforce after Partition associal workers and volunteers in camps and government homes forwomen and children. The breakdown of traditional constraints on

womens mobility was probably one of the positive effects of Parti-

tion on gender relations.At the same time the state became the cus-todian of unattached women in the absence of their kinsmen, not

only supporting them financially, but also interfering in their privatelives. Both books provide details of how marriages of young widowswere arranged in the camps through the network of social workers.At that time the newly-independent Indian state was defining its

political priorities and trying to build up its egalitarian character,as well as its commitment to secularism and proximity to peoples

problems.On this point Menon and Bhasin write: Through its policies

and programmes for both categories of women (abducted and un-attached women) the government not only undertook its first majorwelfare and legislative responsibility as an independent state, itrevealed the complexity of its relationship to gender and community,and secularism and democracy (p. 159).

It was not easy in theAshram. The women were unhappy at beinguprooted like this. In their own homes they were settled, here theywere dependent on us for every morsel. Standing in lines in the

morning for their rations, waiting for three hours and they wereoften cheated-it was hard, but at least they got something to eat.Sometimes they would protest, take out a procession againstthe management for being careless or indifferent.... But the



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Government made sure everything was available-free food, elec-

tricity, water, shelter, medicines, schools. If they worked, theywere paid.

Testimony of Durga Rani, a widow herselfwho lived and workedin one of the unattached womens camps (p. 145).

Conclusion

Following the departure of the British, India was divided into a non-

Muslim-majority state (the present India) and a new Muslim-majorityentity (Pakistan). The idea of territorial separation of religious com-munities emerged as the political solution to communal tensions andMuslim claims for a separate state, within a context of politics of

power and class struggle. The fact is that it proved to be an unwork-able idea, which led to a decision with far-reaching consequences forthe future of both countries and the relationship between them.

It is precisely the objective of these two books to establish the links

between historical Partition events of 50 years ago, their dramatic

consequences for ordinary people, in particular women, and thereflections of yesterdays divisions in the context of more contem-

porary realities. Butalias book refers on several occasions to the

Sikh massacre following Indira Gandhis assassination in 1984 as

practically a replication of the brutality of Partition violence, as wellas to the manifestations of present communalism and religious fun-damentalism in India. Menon and Bhasin recall that since the Parti-

tion of India, which they describe in fact as an undeclared civil war,there have been disputed borders in every country of SouthAsia.The tension created by these border disputes probably had its

most intense expression during the nuclear tests carried out by Indiaand Pakistan in May 1998.As I am writing this review, internationalmedia report renewed fighting between the Indian and Pakistaniarmies in northern Kashmir, near Pakistans border. For the past 10

years, India has been denouncing the involvement of Pakistans army

in support ofMuslim separatist guerrillas in the Himalayan territory,an accusation that Pakistan denies.

One can conclude from the thoughtful interpretation of Partitionevents provided by these books that decisions taken in the context of

grand politics, like the division of India and the simultaneous cre-ation of Pakistan in 1947, have far from provided appropriate solu-tions to outstanding problems. They have not only been responsible



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for creating great human distress, but also for inducing the emer-

genceof even more

complexissues around the

nationalist question.The root causes of conflict, in particular of nationalist claims by a

community or another derive, more often than not, from powerstruggles resulting from uneven development, unequal access to landand government and competition for scarce resources. If the struc-tural reasons for those communal divisions are not addressed, the

symptoms of long-standing inequalities and oppression translateinto violence and intensify over time with a serious risk of reaching

ethnic-cleansingor even

genocide proportions both in their natureand magnitude. Ironically, those excluded from political decision-

making processes in a systematic way, like women, are the ones whohave suffered the most, and are likely to continue to suffer the worst

consequences from these situations.

In these two books, it is ordinary people, instead of grand politics,who are placed at the center of historical accounts. Through thetestimonies of courageous women with names and surnames we hear

the voices and stories behind shocking statistics like 75,000 abduc-tions and rapes. We see the real human lives behind cold numbers,otherwise ignored and silenced by the official discourse of politicaldivision. What emerges from this different version of the past are

stories ofviolence and loss, of systematic human rights violations fullof symbolic meanings in the dominating patriarchal structures be-tween and within religious or ethnic communities, that as a woman, Ican only deplore.

The reading of both books can be recommended to all those inter-ested particularly in gender and ethnic conflict or issues of gender,nationalism and the state in general.As testimonies of suffering, thebooks can also provide a humanizing insight for researchers, policy-makers and activists working in the fields of conflict managementand resolution. Hopefully they will contribute to spread the notionthat violations of the human rights ofwomen in situations of armed

conflict, communal violence and such like, are violations of the fun-

damental principles of international human rights and humanitarianlaw.

Gender and DevelopmentProgramAsian Institute of TechnologyBangkok

Beatriz Gonzalez Manchn


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101.pdfl Review Article : Women and Ethnic Cleansing: A History of Partition in India and Pakistan