ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the experience of the latter group of women – women who were abducted and/or violated and later restored to their families. It examines the condition of women whose post-repatriation experience was seemingly different, women whose family members "accepted" them. Appeals to families by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to rehabilitate victimized members, state-sponsored homes for "unattached women", and studies by feminist historians and ethnographers drawing upon oral histories and official records all testify to the prevalence of the practice of rejecting abducted and/or violated women in the years following Partition. Through a reading of Jyotirmoyee Devi's novel Epar Ganga Opar Ganga and Rajinder Singh Bedi's "Lajwanti", the chapter examines the difficult circumstances of survivor-women. The chapter traces how in the moment of intense communal rivalries and anxiety around national honor, the presence of the violated woman is seen as devaluing the national image, necessitating her exclusion from the national community.
