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