ABSTRACT
The injuries resulting from the India-Pakistan Partition of 1947 exist largely outside the bounds of international law. The language of human rights produced in the post–World War II moment fails to account for the harms of decolonization and, in particular, Partition of the subcontinent. As Sophia McClennen and Joseph Slaughter argue, the language of human rights is not strictly legal, but instead arises in various economic, cultural, political, and theoretical discourses. In some cases, localized human rights assertions in fiction can develop new forms of justice that prevail outside the institutional constraints established in the postwar years. Bapsi Sidhwa's novel operates differently than other fiction of 1947 that seeks to address human rights by creating a new historiography of Partition or giving narrative voice to the subcontinent. Sidhwa instead reinscribes juridical modes of retribution with the specific history of violence in India, without which international justice cannot be fully comprehended.
