Feminist Perception of Partition Violence in Devi's The River Churning

Abstract

This dissertation concentrates on Jyotirmoyee Devi'sThe River Churningin order to explore the painful experiences of women partition victims whose stories of pain and suffering have been excluded from the officialhistory of Indian partition violence 1947. Through her novel, Devi questions the validity of such history by rewriting the same history by demonstrating its politics of exclusion and inclusion from the perspective of the female victim.As a feminist writer, Devi challenges the patriarchal ideology of the "purity" of the community where women's body is regarded as a territory to be preserved or conquered. One community takes revenge upon the other by exercising its territoriality over women's body. In such acts women suffer from double victimization. First, she is sexually assaulted by the other community; next, she is alienated by her own community since she remains animpure being, a black patch in her community's honour. Such a dual nature of patriarchy, which made women pay for the crimes of which they are the chief victims, gets exposed in Devi's novelThe River Churning.