Amardeep,
Perhaps how we deal with tragedies,as a culture, explains the absence of memorials and other tangibles. Perhaps, we recognize the futility of attempst at closure. Perhaps South Asians believe that we will always have to live with the past. Keeping it personal probably helps. And isn't the continuing stand-off between the two countries enough of a reminder ?

India had a history of being overrun by Mughals and others , who themselves erected huge memorials to their presence. Maybe , as a reaction, Indians tend to be more introspective about history.

These ‘honor killings’, where women were killed by male members of their families to prevent their being raped by communal mobs, were not at all unusual. I do not know if they happened in other communities, but in the Sikh community in particular it is thought that thousands of women died this way. (I do not think anybody knows exactly how many it was.)

What I have read - It was done in all the communities in India - Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs. The book, Freedom at Midnight goes into it, somewhat.

There is also an excellent movie - Khamoshi Pani, made by a Pakistani movie maker that touches the same subject in a very delicate way.

Bhishim Sahani, Amrita Pritam, and Khushwant Singh have written about it extensively.

Ford Foundation has been funding projects in India for a long time - they are using the wheat payment money India made to USA (US Government) in 50s, and 60s in rupees - at that Indian Government did not have foreign reserves to make payments in US dollars. It is also known as rupee fund.

There is, as I understand it, no public memorial to the Partition in India itself
The biggest memorial to partition are all satellite cities around Delhi - Gurgoan, etc that were developed in response to partition. that have been the nerve center of India's economic growth

Neale is right. My own grandmother will say, 'what's the use?'

I dont think we should have memorials for atrocities. People will nurse a sense of injustice. Something beautiful can be built for the survivors that reflects the contribution they made to India.

I wasn't aware of the number and extent of violence of these honor killings. Absolutely chilling stuff. My ignorance, and that of most in India, is perhaps the biggest motivator for such interviews.

I am somewhat troubled by the ritualism in these killings. If you wanted to save your family, your own sisters, mother or wife from the mob, why use a sword? Were there no less violent means? And if the women were willing participants, why not commit suicide? Why put the men through the painful act?

I am somewhat troubled by the ritualism in these killings. If you wanted to save your family, your own sisters, mother or wife from the mob, why use a sword? Were there no less violent means? And if the women were willing participants, why not commit suicide? Why put the men through the painful act?

This is one of the great mysteries of this aspect of the history. One problem is, of course, that the only people who survived these honor killings are men, so we mainly have their side of the story -- laced with guilt, in many cases. But the women who died in this way might have had a different story to tell. Was it really by "choice"? How can we really ever know how much choice they had?

And then there's the strange conundrum of women being 'punished' (if that's how one reads it) for the crimes committed by men against them...

why use a sword?

The account you read above is from a Sikh, and sword has a huge significance in Sikh culture, and religion.

Like in the movie Khamoshi Pani, and Freedom at Midnight, a lot of suicides were just jumping in the village well.

Ritual is important in such tragic events. That is why the ritual of johar - Rajput women throwing themselves to fire, when defeated.

Ritual is important in such tragic events. That is why the ritual of johar - Rajput women throwing themselves to fire, when defeated.

Or for that matter - harakiri or the ritual of kamikaze pilots

Or military officers when committing suicide do it in full uniform

5 · Amardeep said

This is one of the great mysteries of this aspect of the history. One problem is, of course, that the only people who survived these honor killings are men, so we mainly have their side of the story -- laced with guilt, in many cases. But the women who died in this way might have had a different story to tell. Was it really by "choice"? How can we really ever know how much choice they had?

And then there's the strange conundrum of women being 'punished' (if that's how one reads it) for the crimes committed by men against them...

Yes, the victims of "honor" killings seem to always be women.

If there was any scenario where I had to kill my wife and daughters, I would have to kill myself too.

Great-grandparents? My father lived through partition, and I am not that old (under thirty, and the eldest sibling in my family). It seems to me that any project that only interviews those in India are missing a huge facet of the history. What about those in Pakistan and Bangladesh who were forced out of India? Not all of the mohajir went to Pakistan willingly. The honor killings and honor suicides also were not limited to the Sikh community.

Does anyone think the women offering their necks echoes the action of the five Sikh men who offered their heads for the 10th Guru?

From what I have heard and read (Urvashi Butalia's "The Other Side of Silence"), honor killings may have been most prevalent in the Sikh community. The movie Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters) that Kush Tandon mentions, too deals with the plight of a Sikh woman - an excellent film, by the way.

Among the numerous displaced families I knew in Delhi, I never did hear of honor killings although I heard a lot of other horror stories. People tended to speak of the atrocities perpetrated by the other side but not their own.

One incident that I do remember had to do with an aunt of a very good friend of mine. A beautiful grown woman, married and a mother, she was slightly "odd" - almost childish in her manner and mannerisms. She was a bit of a misfit among other family members who were upper class and sophisticated. Whenever I visited my friend, if the aunt came over for a visit, I could see everyone else visibly stiffen up in her presence. It was sad. After a while she would gravitate toward where we, the children were, to socialize with us; the grown ups impatiently brushed her off. Much later, when were were in our late teens, my friend finally told me her aunt's story. A teenager at the time of the partition, she had been separated from the family while crossing the border into India. More than two years after her disappearance, she was rescued by a volunteer organization and later reunited with her parents and siblings. She had been abducted and abused. The family, although relieved to see her alive, was less than enthusiastic about her presence. They got her married as soon as they could, to a relatively poor and uneducated man, denying her the education that the rest of the children were priveleged to receive. She would become the family's "black sheep" for no fault of her own.

As for recording partition memories, I myself feel that it is an important enterprise pertaining to a searing part of India's history. This sentiment is strong among Punjabis and to some extent, also Bengalis. My father in law is an Urdu writer of some renown - a refugee from Sialkot. The majority of his literary output deals with the partition but he never mentions honor killings. While Punjabi and Bengali writers have addressed the partition experience in Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and English, it is interesting to note how faint the mark of this event is on rest of India's psyche. Emotional personal accounts of the partition is often met with an unmistakable "Get over it" attitude. I posted this story on my blog also. One reader left a curt comment dismissing the whole experience as irrelevant to the modern "India Shining" narrative and unnecessary sentimentality of a small group.

Kush Tandon, India was partitioned on its eastern wing also. So, Gurgaon, Karol Bagh and Lajpat Nagar are not the only testimony to that bit of history. My own parents lost their ancestral homes in East Bengal.

What about those in Pakistan and Bangladesh who were forced out of India? Not all of the mohajir went to Pakistan willingly.

According to Washington Post article, the project covers India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

It is just Delhi-based, and Ashis Nandy as the PI.

Sorry, part of Amardeep's comment didn't get blockquoted in my response.

Kush Tandon, India was partitioned on its eastern wing also. So, Gurgaon, Karol Bagh and Lajpat Nagar are not the only testimony to that bit of history. My own parents lost their ancestral homes in East Bengal.

Yes.

And, Ritwik Ghatak has made some masterpiece movies about that, and other Bengali literature covers that too.

I just making a point about living memorials, and mentioned satellite cities of Delhi, and neighborhoods that are product of partition.

On eastern end, the comeback story of refugees was very difficult, Guha in his India after Gandhi has a whole chapter that Amardeep blogged six months ago.

Unlike the Jewish Holocaust, where there have been many documentary projects, including a number of survivor interview projects, the Partition of India has only been studied in dribs and drabs.

My grandparents and their extended family moved from Karachi to Gujarat at the partition. But, apart from a few mentions now and then, nobody ever wants to talk about it. None of my friends who live in India seem interested in discussing recent history. As Ruchira said, they are more interested in the 'India shining' story. The partition remains a rich source for movies (like the awful Gaddar) and books and short stories (Toba Tek Singh, the 'partition' chapter in Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games). I am glad that this project is being done. Its a part of history that, painful as it is, is something that we don't want to forget about.

Excellent point Seahawks fan about men in these cases surviving. Does anyone know of any accounts that men sacrificed their own lives after they killed the women?
My maternal grandparents moved from Lahore and my paternal grandparents are from Amritsar, both sides saw a lot of bloodbath but were always reluctant to go into details, unfortunately, I lost both sets of grandparents a while back.

Excellent point Seahawks fan about men in these cases surviving

In large number of cases, they did not survive either, they were killed immediately afterwards, or if survived, it was after killing the "others", or escaping or timely intervention by newly created Indian/ Pakistani armies. There used to airplane sorties above the moving columns of refugees, and armed escorts while they moved but it was mostly futile.

I think some commenters here are missing the point that this was done as an act of desperation by the communities caught in the mob violence and being at siege (it all depended on who is minority or majority in that area), not some stylized ritual.

There were train loads of dead bodies that used to arrive at Delhi or Lahore station in August-September, 1947. Neighborhoods were burned down.

Does anyone remember Tamas, the TV series on a book written by Bhisham Sahani, it had Om Puri, Deepa Sahi, Amrish Puri, Uttara Baokar, A. K. Hangal
and many others. It brought out the human tragedy behind the partition.

Not all of the mohajir went to Pakistan willingly.

I think thats true for Bengal and Punjab. However, Muhajirs from UP/Delhi/Bihar and other parts of India did go to Pakistan willingly for the most part.

My father too lost his factory in Balawali and came to India as a refugee on top of a railway carriage with a suitcase containing his B.H.U paper degree and little else.

He seldom spoke about his experiences except to sometimes straighten us out when we whined about our own paltry setbacks.

Maybe the reason we have an "India Shining" today is because of the quiet fortitude of such men.

PAFD (in comment #20) wrote:

Muhajirs from UP/Delhi/Bihar and other parts of India did go to Pakistan willingly for the most part.

Depends what you consider "willingly". Do you have to be chased by men with machetes? Or just recognize the threat in the air? At the time, people played the odds -- safer to leave or safer to stay? In UP and Bihar, they had a choice, which others didn't, but it wasn't a free choice.

"These ‘honor killings’, where women were killed by male members of their families to prevent their being raped by communal mobs..."
--this is so very chilling and incredibly tragical - I can't imagine one family member having to kill another. As
Seahawks fan says: "If there was any scenario where I had to kill my wife and daughters, I would have to kill myself too." --I'd kill myself too, if I had to kill my spouse and child.
And it saddens me immensely that even today, such honor killings happen...that a human life is snuffed out so easily....
Isn't there a less violent means?
The answer lies in the mindset that death is better than dishonor. Is it? For whom?

That is an excellent post Amardeep! I remember watching TAMAS, a serial on doordarshan when I was a teenager. That show still haunts me! Also there was a recent movie called Pinjar with urmila matondkar on that topic.
ExpatinLA-I can almost your picture your dad from that brief description you gave of him! Hats off to such men!

Except that this process has been going on for twenty years or more. There have been TV series like Buniyaad and Tamas, stories and films like Train to Pakistan, Khamosh Paani, Toba Tek Singh, Earth/Ice Candy Man and Pinjar, Partition is an established topic for scholarly publishing, with oral histories and testimonies gathered and published in books by Urvashi Butalia and Gyan Pandey (read Pandey's Remembering Partition). Of course we could always use more stories and more records. I'm just a bit surprised that Post/Ford Foundation are pitching this as somehow radical and new (I can see why they'd want to do that for funding/pitching a story purposes, but it's not intellectually honest to say that Indians are only just beginning to talk about this painful part of history).

It's remembered by Indians, just not in a way that academic historians are comfortable with (i.e. all communities playing villain & victim in equal measure with the Brits as the only ones clearly in the wrong).

I remember watching Tamas, I am not sure if the DVD is available somewhere.
Kush I understand what you are saying and I understand the desperation aspect just that I haven’t heard of any male members of such families who voluntarily killed themselves after sacrificing the women.

male members of such families who voluntarily killed themselves after sacrificing the women.

it's pretty clear that most of the men in these circumstances were facing certain death so maybe they went out fighting

Louicypher,

From the article Amardeep talks about, it looks like the surviving members are giving their account. I am not trying to create trouble, I am just asking for some sources that shed more light.

I saw this video on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4GJF9moVm0

I forgot to add that the first part of the interview was with Bir Bahadur Singh, and you can see how heart renching the memory was for him

There was an excellent movie called Pinjar made by Dr. Chandra Prakash Dwivedi made a few years ago (and this one should be easily available in some Indian video stores) about a woman abducted from (Indian) Punjab by a (Pakistani) Punjabi during partition. Probably Urmila Matondkar's finest role, and well worth a watch.

but it's not intellectually honest to say that Indians are only just beginning to talk about this painful part of history

Yes, true about depictions in the arts and culture and discussions among the intelligentsia. However, I do not know of any systematic effort to document the accounts of partition survivors on a large scale.

Amardeep, thanks for the push to do a more formal interview on tape with my parents, who both left East Bengal (now Bangladesh) for Kolkata around the time of partition. Dad tells stories of how both Muslim and HIndu boys were asked to "prove" their identities by unzipping pants or untying lungis. My grandfather basically died of bitterness and sorrow over his lost jute farm. Is there a place where we might find some standard interview questions related to this project?

FYI, Kashmira Sheth's brilliant novel for teens, Keeping Corner, is set during partition:

"This powerful and enchanting novel juxtaposes Leela's journey to self-determination with the parallel struggle of her family and community to follow Gandhi on the road to independence from British rule. Among the vivid and appealing characters is India itself." -- Starred Review, Kirkus

If the women did choose to be beheaded, I wonder if was because of the fear of the rape itself or what their lives would be like after the incident. Seems like they would be rejected from society because they were raped had they not died. They would probably lose their families and have no place to go afterwards.

The answer lies in the mindset that death is better than dishonor. Is it? For whom?

I wish it was that simple.

For most cases, it was a choice between a) suicide or honor killing before, or b) be raped, and then be killed by the "others" in the most humiliating way.

Also, you have to keep in mind that 10s of millions (or even more) were caught up in violence during the partition, about 14.5 million people crossed borders in later 1947, a million died, and perhaps a few thousands (as Amardeep points out, nobody knows the the true numbers) were involved in honor killing.

Neale and Rasudha, (post #1 and #3)

I respectfully disagree on your views. This is about the human element of truth, despite stirring up feelings of hate and injustice; We have learned from a number of tragedies and life-altering experiences in a similar format (holocaust, hiroshima, WWII to name a few); perhaps south asians who experienced the Partition have something new to say? I don't know the answer but I think it would provide a deeper understanding of a generation before my time.

28 · louiecypher said

it's pretty clear that most of the men in these circumstances were facing certain death so maybe they went out fighting

The men were not facing certain death, lc, although the threat of violence loomed large. Many of them might have died, but someone correctly pointed out upthread, even if these women survived after being raped, they/their families could face ostracism.
As far as I know, no women in my family died. There was, however, a Punjabi family who we knew well, in which all the women were gone. In that joint family, all the brothers and young their sons came to Delhi after partition and opened a samosa shop to make a living.
I find also that most survivors of the partition (and this is all the older folks in my family, including my father's elder sisters), don't really want to talk about it. They say it was a huge loss, and according to them nostalgia is futile and self-indulgent. This is my family's take on it, I'd love to hear about others. Incidentally, some of my grandmother's family decided to stay back, and none of them converted, but all those who can are moving out to the US and Canada.

The men were not facing certain death, lc, although the threat of violence loomed large. Many of them might have died, but someone correctly pointed out upthread, even if these women survived after being raped, they/their families could face ostracism.

That is Monday evening quarter backing.

Let me paint a simple picture.

Say, you are a Hindu family (or a Sikh family) in west Punjab village. Or you a Muslim family in Delhi** or Lucknow. Most of your surrounding neighborhoods are of different religion. You have lived in your house for a century, and have an extended family. From January 1947, you have been hearing about certain deaths, rape, and lot in Noahkali, and other parts of Bengal. You have heard of Gandhi's fasting.

It is August 16th, 1947, the details of Radcliffe Plan is made public, and you are on the wrong side of the border. In last two nights, you see smoke and fire in the sky from miles away, the electricity of your neighbor has been cut off (this happened in the even swankiest neighborhoods of Lahore, villages had no electricity). You have heard rumor of trains arriving with dead bodies in it.

You hear screams, and arson, 200 meters from your neighborhood, in pitch dark place.

What do you do? They did not knew what would happen to them minute to minute. There is no time for "what ifs, and broader societal ostracism issues".

** Muslim women from old Delhi took shelter in Nehru's house. The PM residence, and viceroy's residence had tents all their place.

38 · portmanteau said

I find also that most survivors of the partition (and this is all the older folks in my family, including my father's elder sisters), don't really want to talk about it. They say it was a huge loss, and according to them nostalgia is futile and self-indulgent. This is my family's take on it, I'd love to hear about others.

portmanteau, I agree with your family's take. Though I sympathize with the folks who survived the brutal tragedies, when parents/grand-parents try to "over-vocalize" all of their past problems - personal or political,
with their growing children, then it becomes all the more difficult for children to grow up with freedom
and sometimes unknowingly interferes with the peace of their life. Maybe a measured, balanced and a positive way of relating to the past is helpful for people to move on. If they really have had too much of problems they better consults doctors/psychologists/other support organizations, rather than crying on their children's shoulders.

Ardy #33 :

The Jewish Holocaust has resonance with Jews from all over the world - no matter whether they themselves were directly affected or not. That can be attributed not only to a cohesive "Jewish identity" compared to the more fractured Indian one (regional allegiance trumping a national one for the most part ) but also to the meticulous documentation of the Holocaust. Some of modern day India's indifference to the partition can be attributed to some degree, to the lack of such a persuasive body of records available to all of India. Lacking that, it indeed will remain niche history.

While I don't believe that keening and whining about the past, no matter how horrific, is a healthy habit, too much quiet fortitude may also be an overrated virtue. I guess it depends on what stock one puts on accurate historical accounts and how much on "moving on" - one can argue for either option. Much of history is selective memory. It is up to India to decide which chapters she wishes to record.

Those who are younger readers here, unfamiliar with partition fiction, I recommend the anthology An Epic Unwritten edited by Muhammad Umar Memon.

However, Muhajirs from UP/Delhi/Bihar and other parts of India did go to Pakistan willingly for the most part.

But not all. My father didn't, nor did his brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Even now sixty years later, my father still mourns never having seen Delhi again.

My father was a young boy in Calcutta during partition and he apparently was greatly affected from seeing people getting their heads chopped off in the street. We're from a Christian Indian family so he had to wear a cross on his head so rioters would know not to go after him. He ended up having a lot of emotional/mental problems as an adult and I'm convinced part of the reason was partition. I'm late 20's, born and raised in the US and it's sad how this stupid senseless partition stuff has impacted me even though I'm so removed from it.

I'm 30 - both my parents witnessed the partition and grew up in the aftermath. My father grew up in refugee camps during his teenage years. During graduate school, I began a huge research project into the Partition as genocide, compared to other genocides that have generated mass attention. While there is some documentation on the partition, there is not an abundance. The media reports, the aftermath partitions which occurred in Bangladesh in the years after, the impact such a partition had on generations to come - this is all played down, for some reason, nowdays. For example, not many people know that the first UN Security Resolution was passed about Kashmir . . .since the UN (referred to as League of Nations) had just come into existence at that period.

Perhaps it's a cultural phenomenon that the history of the partition and the telling of this history is done in such bits and pieces? I begged my aunts/uncles/relatives to share with me during my research project - and could only muster 10 minutes of relatively 'superficial' information out of them. They were of the "why does it matter" mindset verses the "learn from the past" mindset. I'm fascinated with the long-term impact such a violent partition has on numerous societies - including the Indian/Pakistani diaspora community in the States. Once I started asking questions to my family, odd behaviours, attitudes, and penchances that my family exbited around me growing up were more easily explained. I was able to link a lot of what I witnessed growing up to the Partition.

Thank you for raising this, it is certainly something which deserves in-depth documentation and attention. What can we do to change this trend?

"The answer lies in the mindset that death is better than dishonor. Is it? For whom?"

Kush Tandon said:
I wish it was that simple.
For most cases, it was a choice between a) suicide or honor killing before, or b) be raped, and then be killed by the "others" in the most humiliating way.

Kush, I am trying to understand this concept of dishonor. The fact that rape was/is used as a weapon...that once a woman was raped, she ought to die (of shame). It is time human beings move on from this notion.
A woman gets raped.....which is an attack physically, mentally and emotionally and afterwards, why does society humiliate her, when, in reality, her attack(ers) are the ones who need to be shunned?

It is time serials/movies in India stop depicting this notion (that once a woman gets raped, her life is not worth continuing).

However, Muhajirs from UP/Delhi/Bihar and other parts of India did go to Pakistan willingly for the most part.

But not all. My father didn't, nor did his brothers, sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Even now sixty years later, my father still mourns never having seen Delhi again.

The point I am making is that if you were a Muslim living in the Indian side of Punjab you did not have much choice. Things however were a little different in Delhi/UP/Bihar. A lot of Muslims in these areas actually lived in segregated neighborhoods and there was no mass scale religious cleansing of those neighborhoods or atleast not even close to the religious cleansing which took place in both sides of Punjab. I am not minimizing the sectarian violence which took place in Delhi/UP/Bihar. My grandparents had their house destroyed during the riots. But these areas also had safe Muslim enclaves.

My grandparents actually chartered a plane to Lahore from Delhi after they got their house burnt down by a mob in 47. But they kept coming back to India to tie up the loose ends during the 50s and they eventually decided to come back to India for good in the late 50s.

Re: the use of the sword
I don't think this was symbolic -- I think it's a function of what was expedient and widely available. My grandfather says that the British had passed a series of laws disarming Punjab prior to Independence, and that the kirpan had been outlawed as well until just before Partition. I have no idea if his anecdote is backed up across all of Punjab, but it certainly affected his hometown.

From what I have heard and read (Urvashi Butalia's "The Other Side of Silence"), honor killings may have been most prevalent in the Sikh community. The movie Khamosh Pani (Silent Waters) that Kush Tandon mentions, too deals with the plight of a Sikh woman - an excellent film, by the way.

when parents/grand-parents try to "over-vocalize" all of their past problems - personal or political, with their growing children, then it becomes all the more difficult for children to grow up with freedom and sometimes unknowingly interferes with the peace of their life. Maybe a measured, balanced and a positive way of relating to the past is helpful for people to move on.

Oh, and I was going to echo Jai and say that I do like Pinjar. Most art/lit that addresses Partition, in my opinion, is either grossly unbalanced, nationalistic/kitschy, or distasteful.

I do support to some extent the wishes of those involved to not want to "memorialize" their suffering. In its own hamhanded way, the Indian government did the right thing with the refugees - give them some money, give them some land and tell them to get on with their lives (Bengali refugees in Delhi were given land in the East Pakistan Displaced Colony, i.e. present day Chittranjan Park which is now prime real estate.

Too much "memorializing" leads to a victim complex with communities suffering a permanent grievance that never lets anyone live in peace. One only has to look at the Babri Masjid issue to realize how easily people's sense of "historic" wrongs can be harnessed to a macabre communal policy of hatred.

when 26 women in his family offered their necks to the sword for the sake of honor.

Are you kidding me? What fool believes there was anything close to volunteerism; countless scholarship points to women being the victims here. They would rather live as third wives of a Muslim I can assure than jump in a well. Shame on Sardar's for pretending this was anything but murder of thier women.

This is great, and thanks for pointing this out. I have been doing interviews - hundreds - with mainly Pakistani survivors and witnesses, including some very famous ones. A handful are published on my website Harappa.com, including with Princess Abida Sultaan of Bhopal and Ghani Khan the Pushto poet as well as Attia Hosain, the writer. I have many more interviews not yet transcribed that will appear - slowly. Who is running the Ford Foundation study?

What fool believes there was anything close to volunteerism;

My grandparents both survived Partition (my grandmother was on one of the trains Kush mentions -- in her train car gunmen boarded and killed everyone; she survived because she was buried under dead bodies), and neither will talk about it, even with prompting.

39 · Kush Tandon said

Let me paint a simple picture.

Your picture, is indeed, simple. I agree that there was no time for 'what ifs' - because were there time, I'm sure a lot of men and women wouldn't have made such an irrevocable decision, and reconsidered their decisions and weighed alternatives, or figured out a different way to get to India (some ways were safer than others, but involved more waiting; ). It's a horrible choice to make, and if one were to think thorough this chain of actions, I doubt one could even have the nerve to carry it out. I find the stoicism (refer upthread) with which many families faced partition to be remarkable.

I have some idea of what I'm talking about - my entire family (including all relatives by marriage) were partition refugees or their descendants. Some of them were clued into the political situation, others were not. And if you think it took a lot of time for people to figure out that in those days rape could lead to ostracism, you're wrong. For instance, one of my older aunts was hastily married off despite a promising academic career, because some guy in the neighborhood looked at her the wrong way and drove around our house sometimes. In some families (like mine, for instance, in days past) any hint of unsavoriness in a woman's past was considered shameful. Even though people recognized that the woman was not 'at fault.'

There is no time for "what ifs, and broader societal ostracism issues".

That rape-honor besmirched-ostracism theory was an intellectual exercise that took people days to ponder is mistaken.

Thanks for the condescension, though.

Speaking of the Partition movies, GARAM HAWA with Balraj Sahni and Farooq Sheikh was another good film.

A couple of commenters have mentioned the pros and cons of memorializing any tragedy, regardless of its historical significance. Growing up in India among many displaced Punjabis who came to Delhi, UP and Bihar after the Partition with nothing but the clothes on their backs, I did not hear much reminiscing of their wonderful Lahore days or grief over the lives lost during what was the largest and most brutal exodus in human history. Perhaps it is an Indian trait not to dwell on past tragedies. Indians who lost their relatives or children to the plague, pox and malaria during the same era as the Partition, and to the ongoing Hindu-Muslim riots, floods and drought that routinely wipe out villages for hundreds of miles, tend NOT to memorialize. Stoicism? Fatalism? Who knows!

Quickly skimmed through this piece, and it documents Gandhi's takes on women who chose to die voluntarily as well as on others whose families refused to recognize them once they were rescued/abandoned post-abduction, among other things.
Don't know anything else about the researcher, though.

Perhaps it is an Indian trait not to dwell on past tragedies.

lets say that there was high probability that the women would have been raped/murdered (incidentally i hope we are all clear on the fact that the act of rape with the objective to "dishonor" a particular group to which the said women belong already presumes that women have no autonomy, and they they are somehow important and valuable "properties" of the group, just like high profile "targets" of "prestige"--such as parliaments-- in modern warfare). let us also assume that the probability was about 90%. why would it be rational to trade 10% chance--indeed, any chance-- of survival for certain death? there must, therefore, have been additional factors that increased the relative costs of the 10% possibility of survival so that some women voluntary chose certain death now. also it is hard to believe that the decisions were completely "voluntary", since as someone asked above, why weren't there suicides in this particular case? but if they were "voluntary" (we are stretching the meaning of the term here considering the situation and the status of women i indicated above), then the earlier argument applies. that is why i think portmanteau is absolutely correct.

incidentally about half of my mom's family died in riots in bengal; my grandmother does not like to talk about it either.

Quickly skimmed through this piece, and it documents Gandhi's takes on women who chose to die voluntarily as well as on others whose families refused to recognize them once they were rescued/abandoned post-abduction, among other things. Don't know anything else about the researcher, though.

ok i read though most of the piece (not surprisingly did not take long, the actual content is about 20% of the article). i generally agree with it, but was aesthetically repelled by the vocabulary and complicated sounding, but relatively simple points that a high schooler should be able to understand. all the rhetoric aside it makes the point i (and umpteen others) made within parentheses above (not a great achievement, by the way, on my part). the one somewhat interesting part was the implication that gandhi changed his position due to economic reasons (i.e. the expenses to the state of having to provide for these "rejected" women). but i would require far more evidence (which could have replaced all the "complicated" postmodernist musings).

Regarding the deaths of the women, while there is definitely some tie-in to the honor killings that plague various communities, in that women were killed to protect their “virtue” from being forcibly taken from them, I find it hard to fault the people involved in the killing, given the circumstances. I’m reminded of a Firefly quote regarding what happens to people when they are captured by Reavers “They'll rape you dead, eat your flesh, and sew your skin into their clothing. And if you're very, VERY, lucky... they'll do it in that order”. I think people who truly believe that they are facing that type of immediately imminent scenario are operating under a different decision-tree framework.

I can see blaming misogyny for treating women as dependants (to the extent that they had no say in the decisions) and in the feeling that women who had been violated were "damaged goods". However, I think to dismiss the impact of rape and the suggestion that all women facing such a scenario would much rather be "the third wife" of their rapist is just as callous as the automatic assumption that a woman must be killed so she can't be raped. Rape is a form of torture and these women were probably looking at multiple and repeated violations (if the histories of Rwanda, Serbia etc. are anything to go by) with no guarantee that they wouldn't be murdered afterwards. Even if they did survive, I'm pretty sure that for many women, the psychological trauma (I'll assume they weren't left with any physical "souvenirs" of the event) would be very significant. Some women (by no means all) could very well prefer an immediate death to that scenario. The "honor" being protected could be that of "virtue", but it could also be that of "freedom from violation".

Speaking only for myself, if I truly believed that there was a good chance that my dependents were going to be tortured and irrevocably damaged and very likely killed at the hands of someone else and I would be powerless to stop it, I think that the idea of killing them myself (as quickly and painlessly as possible under the circumstances) would, at the very least, cross my mind.

57 · sigh! said

generally agree with it, but was aesthetically repelled by the vocabulary and complicated sounding

seconded. i am also annoyed by this kind of writing, gives serious history a bad name. and also agree that her primary sources did most of the work for her. although i am very sympathetic to economic readings of many phenomena, and it is a good explanatory factor on many occasions, but I'm not convinced either that Gandhi's dance on the subject was motivated by economic factors. Morally, for a leader to say anything against the acceptance and re-integration of abducted women into their homes would be reprehensible.
i'm, however, struck how the abducted women were referred to as 'sluts' by some bigots, and also by the fiction the author used as a primary source. the story about the woman whose husband takes her back after she has been kidnapped, and asks her, "did you anything sinful?.....," and at the same time says, "let's forget about the past" was exceptionally instructive. i can't imagine how much damage was to done to people's emotional health as a result of the partition.
also - the article speaks only to hindu women who were returned from abductors' homes, but does not present an analysis of muslim women who were returned to pakistan. the big point the article makes, which is non-controversial enough and unoriginal as well, is the treatment of women as non-autonomous entities who first are used to dishonor the community they originate from, and then when they begin to integrate after displacement, are uprooted without consent. and when they go back, they are not accepted unconditionally or even abandoned. thanks for pointing that out in your comment, sigh!.
ps: the thought that motivated my comment was exactly this:

why would it be rational to trade 10% chance--indeed, any chance-- of survival for certain death?

Indians have the most puerile attitude towards sex and women.

Human dignity requires us to not only recognize the
communal violence of the Partition but the barbaric "honor" killings.
Prosecute those animals who took women's lives to "save" honor. Throw
their "sorry" posteriors in jail and throw the key away.

The attitudes towards sex and women's liberation are festering carbuncles
leftover from the British Victorian rule that continue to infect Indian
psyches. We should have 0 tolerance for anyone admitting honor killings.

Melbourne Desi, you are the one who clearly has no concept of "honor". "Honor" as defined by those men who chose to murder their own families is primarily about control and societal status. It is the same medieval thinking that plagues Saudi Arabia and much of the middle east today and probably still much of India that views female sexuality as an overt threat to male dominated hierarchy. The control over and access to women by men is a commodity that defines their social standing and respectability in the community at large.

That these women were murdered was not meant to protect the women's honor, but rather the status of the murderers themselves who would have lost standing because of their failure in maintaining exclusivity of sexual access to their women. The fact that the survivors of rapes were in turn shunned by their own families and ostracized shows this to be true.

/feminism

Camille @47,

I totally disagree. I don't think that silence allows for balance.

I didn't say that victims should be silent ; what I said was that they shouldn't cry over the shoulders of growing children. During that time it is best for the children that the parents be an epitome of strength rather than weakness. If the parents want help for any reason whatsoever then they better take some alternate help outside the immediate family ( though i do understand that this sometimes becomes difficult in the south-asian context ). Otherwise this a recipe for normal relationships within the family to become poisoned. Now after some age if the children want to connect with their ancestral history then maybe parents can cry over their children's shoulders.

53 · Floridian said

Speaking of the Partition movies, GARAM HAWA with Balraj Sahni and Farooq Sheikh was another good film.

I agree totally. I saw Garam Hawa a few weeks back. It is a powerful & moving film. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I feel it is one of the 10 best movies ever to come out of India. I found it in my local Bay Area library & picked it up, having heard a lot about it. Back in desh, in the 80s, DD had shown it but I was too young to figure it all out. Sahni's brother Bhisham wrote Tamas, which was made into DD miniseries by Govind Nihalani. I haven't seen it since DD, & yet I recall it vividly so indelible the images are in my mind. These would be the 2 best movies about partition in the West.

I blogged about my Dad's experience during partition a long time ago. I think it's a good idea to collect such personal history and learn from it.

Some insight to the reasons behind the honor killings in various communities during Partition may be gained by looking at the degree of historical prevalence of such killings in these communities during normal times. This is a tricky issue: people might have behaved in ways that seem hard to justify in hindsight, but those were crazy and paranoid times, and I am reluctant to judge people who lived through it, and their decisions, too harshly. But if there are cases where all the women died, and the men lived to tell the tale, it does look a tad suspicious.

As it happens, a while back I did some oral histories with my relations in Delhi, who happen to be from the same village as Bir Bahadur. I spoke especially with women who survived, including several who jumped into the local well in an attempt to kill themselves, but didn't drown. It seems clear to me that it's hard to fit modern concepts of agency and free will into this situation. The women seemed very clear that death was the right decision to have made at that time. At the time, the village was surrounded by a Muslim mob; all were convinced they were going to die. I don't think therefore it was a case of preserving masculine honor as it was the honor of the community, the religion. They were falling back on an old Sikh v. Muslim script - one that dated back to historic battles with the Mughals: the women die at home and then the men die fighting. This idea is supported by the fact that there were also a few men who jumped down that well in an attempt to kill themselves. What happened instead in this particular village was that very shortly after these terrible actions (the beheadings, the suicides in the well) was that army trucks pulled up and the survivors (naturally, mostly men who hadn't yet had their chance to die) were rescued and taken to India.

Ruchira mentioned the documentation of the (jewish aspects of the)
holocaust as a comparison with what happened at Partition, but even with the holocaust, it is only the Jewish aspects that are very well documented and advertised.In contrast, the destruction (some estimate ~80% of the total Roma population) of the Roma (Gypsies) is never really talked about or publicized. To some extent, this is because the Roma themselves are reluctant to speak about it (for similar reasons to many Indian survivors of Partition) but it is also because they are still heavily discriminated against in Europe (their tragedy is often ignored, eg.:
http://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/pariah-ch9.htm

and

http://query.nytimes.com/beta/search/query?query=roma%20mauthausen
(the story is at the second link).).

The general attitude of the Roma and of many Partition survivors is to avoid remembering their experience; as I read somewhere (I could not find a link) when a Roma was asked about why they don't speak about their experiences in the holocaust, their response was to ask why they should remember and keep fresh such terrible memories. I think this is more natural, as opposed to the one prevalent in Judaism, where memory and remembrance of terrible injustice and tragedy have probably
become a means to ensure survival.

The attitudes towards sex and women's liberation are festering carbuncles leftover from the British Victorian rule that continue to infect Indian psyches. We should have 0 tolerance for anyone admitting honor killings.

Agree with the 0 tolerance part. However, how would British Victorian values be repesented in honor killings? Perhaps that was more of an Islamic influence in India? At the same time, when you read old Indian folklore and religious history, there are some pretty wacked out ideas about sex and women there too. So, to be fair, India's attitudes are more than likely a mix of many influences.

Are you kidding me? What fool believes there was anything close to volunteerism; countless scholarship points to women being the victims here. They would rather live as third wives of a Muslim I can assure than jump in a well. Shame on Sardar's for pretending this was anything but murder of thier women.

OK so how many women interviewed were kidnapped in fairy tale fashion, made the third wives of muslim men, given a home, property, respect and treated humanely?

The fact remains that most of these women would have been raped continuously in various ways. After much physical and mental TORTURE, the few to survive just that alone, may have been murdered anyway.

Given a choice of the lesser of two evils, I would prefer my own husband to kill me in a quick, painless way, while I close my eyes and remember God.

Thanks, amardeep, for posting about such an important project. Two things: My family left Sindh around and during partition and I've long felt that the partition stories of my grandparents, extended family, and other Sindhis is a big missing piece in the recorded history of partition. About 10 years ago, after writing a thesis length paper on partition politics in Sindh in a course with Ayesha Jalal, I had the idea to start collecting stories from survivors I knew - my grandmothers and others of their generation. I didn't get far because of resources and time, but also because I got discouraged when I came away with basically the same narrative from my three informal interviews -- they would talk about life in Sindh, reminisce about the healthy communal relations between hindus and muslims. But once they got to the period just before partition, they would say something along the lines of "then things got bad. people from outside sindh came, started trouble, and fighting began ... then we left ... and came to india." The actual details of partition and their departures from Sindh, they didn't -- or rather, were unable to share. There was a block. I guessed it was too painful to even remember, but I also wonder whether I wasn't framing my questions in the right way ... I am a huge fan of the StoryCorps project, and wish there was a citizen-driven oral history project like that in India and elsewhere to record these stories in a systematic manner ...

I also wanted to mention a wonderful book on partition that I read a few years back: BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES: REEXAMINING PARTITION THROUGH A FEMINIST LENS, by Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin. In this feminist reading of India's partition, the authors set out to record the testimonies and memories of women caught in the violence, dislocation, and displacement of 1947. BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES incorporates text from their interviews with women survivors, social workers, government functionaries with government documents, confidential reports, parliamentary debates, letters and diaries. They use a combination of commentary and analysis, narrative and testimony, to enable us to counterpoint documented history with personal testimony, hereby allowing women to speak for themselves and be heard.

The stories that we hear in this volume are voices of women impoverished as a result of Partition, women affected but not devastated by Partition, social workers whose lives changed dramatically, and women who were liberated by the catastrophes. All of these accounts yield to a discussion of the following themes: violence, abduction and recovery, widowhood, women’s rehabilitation, rebuilding, and belonging.

Although BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES focuses on Punjab, the site of maximum relocation and rehabilitation in the Partition experience, I would love to see a similar study that focuses on experiences of other regions and communities affected by Partition, including Sindhis.

Melbourne Desi, you are the one who clearly has no concept of "honor".

Thanks for the information sandhya. Are there other non-fiction accounts that you or others are aware of? I can understand the need to try to block the memories as a survival mechanism, but it is part of history and I hope the stories are recorded before they are completely lost. I'm hoping that sufficient time has passed and the region now has enough of a sense of distance and also the leisure and resources to reflect (sometimes you don't have time when you are nation building) to be motivated and able to ensure that the information is recorded.

Amardeep, thank you for writing about this.

Krishna #67:

There have been some attempts to chronicle the plight of the Roma during WWII in the last couple of decades. The effort has been directed by both Roma activists in Europe as well as non-Roma human rights advocates. Please see my review of Isabel Fonseca's outstanding account of Roma history and suffering in her book Bury Me Standing. Efforts by Fonseca and others was successful in admitting this mostly forgotten history into the archives of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Interestingly enough, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel opposed including the Roma among the Holocaust sufferers. He felt that the Holocaust should be a memoriam dedicated solely to Jewish suffering. Fortunately Wiesel was overruled.

While of course the human suffering was the most tragic dimension of Partition, the severe blow dealt to Punjabi and Sindhi culture/language was another major loss (not sure if Bengali culture and language was affected much). Gurdas Mann in the song Punjabiye Zubaane (written by Shiv Kumar Batalvi) likens the Punjabi language to a woman, and says that in 1947 she suffered a stroke and never got back on her feet again.

I strongly disagree with folks who want to forget the past, or think the indian thing to do is to pretend it never happened...

Folks, this is how things get repeated - this is also why documenting the various communal killings in india/pakistan/bangladesh continues to be so important - whether the appalling massacre of innocent sikhs in 84 or the expulsion of kashmiri hindus in the 90s or the gujrat violence against the innocent muslims of ahmedabad in 92 - we need to create systems of governance that can deal with this phenomenon and we can never understand them if we dont document them and try to get justice for the targets of violence.

The violence of the indian partition is NOT an isolated or unique phenomemon. It is instead a particularly ugly form of south asian politics, its been around for a long time and will continue to flourish until we expose its root dynamics and create education and systems to counteract it...

My grandparents shifted to Pakistan right before partition were assigned a house vacated by Hindus. My grandparents locked up their house in India thinking they'd be back in a few months. A few months after partition the Hindu family came back with a Pakistani police escort. The family had hidden their life savings in wall of one of the rooms. They were allow to take all their cash, gold and jewelery. I guess there must have been an agreement to allow people back, or may they had enough influence or cash to get it done.

they would talk about life in Sindh, reminisce about the healthy communal relations between hindus and muslims. But once they got to the period just before partition, they would say something along the lines of "then things got bad. people from outside sindh came, started trouble, and fighting began ... then we left ... and came to india." The actual details of partition and their departures from Sindh, they didn't -- or rather, were unable to share. There was a block. I guessed it was too painful to even remember, but I also wonder whether I wasn't framing my questions in the right way ...

I think in some ways Sindhis got shafted more than Punjabis from Partition. Lahore is after all still a Punjabi city, even with the loss of its Hindus and Sikhs. Karachi on the other hand is an Urdu-speaking, Mohajir city, where ethnic Sindhis have minimal presence or influence. In fact their culture and language are mocked and despised by the migrants and their descendants.

Also, Punjabis fleeing during Partition at least could go to Punjab (albeit the other side of Punjab). No part of Sindh came to India, the fleeing Hindu Sindhis settled in alien (to them) places like Gujarat and Bombay, where it was hard to preserve their heritage. Granted that no one was thinking of preserving culture in the immediate post-Partition milieu.

My father, and parts of his family lived through (and were displaced by) partition. He has told us a few stories of that time, including the time he nearly carried out honor killings. As a young teenager, he was left with a sword and the women and children of his village while the men went to try to defend the village. He was told that he would have to kill the women if the men were unsuccessful in dedending the village. Apparently it did not come to that, and they were able to flee. He made it clear that he thought dying by his sword was a better than the alternative. Including for himself. He did not expect to live through that night, one way or another. His mother and sister survived Partition with him, as did many other women (and men) of his village.
I only know his story. I never asked my grandmother or aunt about it. Would they, or any of the other women have volunteered? I don't know. Surely they could have overpowered a teenager if they didn't want to be killed in that fashion.
Would I have volunteered? As a Sikh woman in Punjab in 1947, in the midst of all that chaos? I don't know. Maybe.

I do think that amongst most Asian cultures, there is this "get over it" feeling. Ask a Chinese person who was alive during the Sino-Japanese War. Stories of atrocities during that time are met with similar "get over it" reactions. It's considered gauche and futile, or wrong, to recount bad times.

Amardeep, if you get the chance, look at the CAP in Pakistan (the Citizens' Archive Project, I believe). It's something like a record, both oral and transcribed, of our family members who were alive and remember Partition (among other things).

Dear One,

You are doing a remarkable 'sewa'. Where are you located...? We are doing a huge projct on this subject. The first phase has already rolled out with an exhibition on sikhism that was inaugurated at Gurudwara Bangala Sahib.

Please visit http://defenders-of-dharma.blogspot.com/

Warm regards

Gautam Vig