A thorough understanding of the impact that partition has had on the South Asian psyche requires us to broaden our definition of violence; that is to say that we must investigate the violent nature of other aspects of partition, from the mass exodus that came hand in hand with communal rioting, to the displacement of millions of people who lost their homes, former friends and way of life.

Fifteen million people crossed the border to the country of their religious majority, making Partition the biggest mass exodus in recorded history.

“Partition.” Even the noun used to symbolize this period implies violence. The rupture of neighborly ties, the division of a country, the cleavage of communities – these are all descriptions used to suggest that there is now two of what used to be one, a process that is fairly unimaginable without an element of violence. For those “fortunate” enough to have survived the often long and arduous journey across the new border, there remained the challenging process of making a new life to replace that which they had left behind. It was not only the country that was divided, but the lives of millions of people who would come to define their lives as “before partition” and “after partition.” And as Urvashi Butalia so aptly notes, “Partitioning two lives is difficult enough. Partitioning millions is madness.”

Mrs. Radhika Kishin Chehnani

Interviewed by one of the volunteers of the 1947 Partition Archive Project, Mrs. Radhika Kishin Chehnani is a Hindu woman who left her home of Sindh upon hearing that it too would be partitioned, and she lived in a region that was to be Pakistan. Like a number of other Hindu women, Mrs. Chehnani was involved in the Independence movement preceding Partition, a time of which she speaks fondly (she used to call Gandhiji “Bapu” and follow this great leader around).

What is most striking about this interview is the drastically different responses Mrs. Chehnani has to two different moments of violence in her life. When she and other children were arrested by the police for agitating for independence, she comments only that she “had to do it,” accepting this experience for what it was. But when she remembers having to leave her home, she seems to express much sadness and regret: “Thinking that we are not going for good, I didn’t bring anything, would you believe? Never thought that we would not go back.” Though she chuckles to herself while relaying the story of her arrest, her face expresses no such humor when talking about Partition, only continued disbelief at the sudden disruption of her life.

Mrs. Ahmed

Even for those “fortunate” people that did not have to move from their ancestral homes, having had the luck to live in the “right” area for their given religion, partition was a cataclysmic event in their lives. Mrs. Ahmed is one such person. She was a student at Kinnaird College in Lahore at the time of Partition, but her family lived in Sindh, just like that of Mrs. Chehnani. However, as a Muslim, Mrs. Ahmed remained in West Punjab. She shares her feelings and memories of Partition, expressing a similar sorrow as that of the Hindu woman that politicians deemed ill-fit to live in the same state.

(This interview is also provided by the 1947 Partition Archive Project, and is only an audio interview)

Mrs. Ahmed is now an older woman, but Partition remains the “saddest period in [her] life” due to all the friends she lost. She expresses fond memories of the time before partition, and a great sadness at the loss not only of non-Muslim friends and relatives, but also of the non-Muslim professors whom she had admired. She was witness to the “bitter end” of partition when the last few non-Muslims left, and the home she had known had become a different place entirely. “Religion was never a question that distributed us culturally.. not at all,” she attests. Her friendships and even her family had been disrupted due to partition.

Some women never recovered from this sudden disruption in their lives, spending the rest of their days reminiscing on life before partition. Somavanti certainly felt this way. When she died in 1993, all her worldly possessions were kept in the small, one-room chamber in the Karnal Mahila Ashram. Although Somavanti had four surviving children-three daughters and one son, Somavanti found her life to be bereft due to the long ago losses of Partition.

Somavanti

Somavanti, Interviewed by Menon (pdf)

Widowed, dislocated, suddenly and forcefully self-reliant, Somavanti passed away with the losses of Partition still dominating her daily thoughts. During her interview (conducted by Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin), she cried several times, when recalling the happiness she felt before Partition. She feels that she “has no country,” that the only home she knew was that from which she had been forcefully removed. The instability, constant fear of death, and dislocation of her life after Partition was an emotional and psychological trauma from which Somavanti seems to have never fully recovered. Perhaps nothing captures this better than when she expresses what seems to be jealousy of her late husband; she had to remain alive for her children, but it is more out of a sense of obligation than any desire to live.