Introduction

This chapter discusses the aspects of displacements in South Asia with particular reference to women. It aims to offer a more inclusive model; it explores how these very different narratives map the connections and divergences within and between South Asian women's stories of displacement. Violence and subsequent displacement is also the subject of Paromita Sengupta's memoir where her own relocation to Ireland is pitted against that of another woman from Bangladesh who survived the Bangladesh Liberation War and almost miraculously fled to Ireland to build her life there. The malaise of a displaced individual/community has been addressed in various forms and manners. The category of the displaced is not a homogeneous category; it constantly challenges any attempt at homogenization through its inclusion of multiple parameters and conditions of displacement. Displacement has increasingly appeared as a significant theme in national discourses in many South Asian countries for a number of reasons.