ABSTRACT
The dawn of freedom from colonial rule in the subcontinent has always been marked by the agony of Partition. The bloodshed and brutality, the sweat of terror and the tears of helplessness made the Partition of India simultaneously the most signifying and most traumatic moment in South Asia’s history. This chapter provides both the macro- and micro-narratives of nationalism and nationbuilding, by referring both to official stories as well as to the traumas that remained academically unrecorded and unanalysed until the mid-1990s. Prior to that re-examination, the trauma of Partition was discussed in sporadic newspaper articles, in biographies of social workers and in official documents. In this process, the human rights abuses suffered by women and children received the most attention in India, where official documents also highlighted how it became extremely important for the Indian state to generate a sense of trust in its ability to be the sole protector of its citizens. In this context, the women’s silence that South Asian feminist scholars have written about was a symbolic one, the underlying cause of which was the virtually non-existent analysis of women’s and children’s narratives, especially when it came to Partition-era riots, abductions and births. In this way, the silence that is investigated in this chapter is about how the gender narratives were silenced by the state and the political elites responsible for creating an overarching Indian national/secular identity.
