ABSTRACT
How does memory play a role in displacement? We already know of narratives from women in poetry, memoir, fiction, film, and reportage. Urvashi Butalia in her The Other Side of Silence has explored women’s account in the most violent times of Partition. These are stories not just of relinquishing one’s own land or home, but also facing the most brutal gender oppression from within and without. While women were raped, mutilated, and disappeared by the opposing religious group, Hindus vs Muslims or vice versa, they also faced extreme opposition from their own kin—often resulting in honour killings, self-immolation, and life-long shame and anonymity, if they chanced to survive. How do these narratives see the generation of other narratives, as in journals or stories or poems? Songs of lament and loss manifest in the manner the women re-imagine their new 'location'. My effort would be to show this meta-narrative process based on oral account of women 'displaced' by Partition of India, here, the division that took place resulting in India and Bangladesh in the final solution.
