Violence on Women: Sikh Perception of 1947 Partition inWhat the Body Remembers

Abstract

Shauna Singh Baldwin's debut novel,What the Body Remembersis a recently published novel (1999). The novel is set in Punjab between 1937 to 1947, the final decade of the colonial era in India. The text presents the patriarchal institution of Pre- Independence India society, which required women to be object in marriage and sexuality with little opportunity for individuality. They are supposed to be good daughters, wives and mothers moving only from the protection of their father's roof to the protection of their husband. Women were confined within the narrow boundaries of domesticity. They were expected to be chaste and obedient to their husband and motherly and protective to their children. However, as the official partition of India in 1947 was negotiated by 'nationalist' leaders on all sides, large segments of the population underwent violent dislocations across what was to become the Indo-Pakistan border. There journey of Hindu to India and Muslim to Pakistan left in their wakea series of horrific mutilation suffered by people in cities, small towns and village, in their homes and on their bodies. Women's bodies often because the markers on which the painful scripts of contending nationalism (Hindu, Muslim or Sikh) were inscribed. In response to the mass rapes and abduction as both sides of the border and in order to legislate a 'fair' exchange of abducted women across borders, the government of India and Pakistan signed the Inter-Dominion in 1947. My research is divided intofour chapters. The first chapter deals with the methodology" Reflection on the Genocide and uprooted Sikh women during partition violence" with special reference to Urvashi Butalia'sThe Other Side of Silence, Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin'sBorder and Boundaries. The second chapter is about the Feminist Perception of Partition violence. Third and final chapter is the conclusion of the thesis.7