ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book tracks the predicament of women victim-survivors of Partition's violence. It analyzes the consequences of the "touch" that rendered women "untouchable", and traces the cost for women's bodies of the discursive transformation of their chastity into a pre-requisite for the new national belonging. The book explores how the corpus of Partition writings is itself partitioned along gender lines and in accordance with national borders. It addresses the tale of a Hindu migrant who, uprooted from East Pakistan finds a foothold for himself in the city in which he has come to live. The book also explores literary considerations of home/homeland and memory, especially, the role of memory in crafting a feeling of cultural and social embeddedness within the home, community, and homeland, drawing upon the writings chiefly of Taslima Nasreen and Hasan Azizul Huq, among other.