During periods of civil strife and societal disorder, violence is granted a certain level of understanding- if not outright acceptance- by witnesses and the various actors involved. However, the violence being acknowledged is generally that of feud: “a pact of violence between social groups in which the definition of self and the other emerges through an exchange of violence.” There are (at least on the surface) clear rival factions, and recognizable perpetrators and victims.

But what of the violent acts committed within a religious community, or even within the family unit? What of self-inflicted violence? One of the unique peculiarities of Partition violence is its pandemic quality; so many played dual roles, oscillating between victim and victimizer, enduring barbarous violations, but submitting others and even their own communities to these same atrocities. And-just as in communal violence- it is women that have been targeted and suffered the most. Even before the official announcement of Partition in August 1947, hundreds of women and children in Rawalpindi were murdered by their own male relatives in order to “save the community’s honor.” And ninety-three Sikh women reportedly jumped into a well in Thoa Khalsa, attempting to drown themselves to escape rape and conversion from the oncoming Muslim hordes. Legions of such tales exist, and only some are captured here.

Such acts are not so easily defined, and certainly less easily discussed. Yet it is a kind of violence to which Indian women and girls were oftentimes subjected and which thus calls for further examination. For violence is not only the killing, rape and destruction of communal aggression. These acts-which I term “Honor Killings”- are also violent, and have ramifications (at least symbolically) that far outstrip even the deplorably cruel, but unfortunately “routine,” sexual violence between communities.

I call this episode of Partition “Honor Killings” because the goal of this type of violence was meant to conserve precisely that: the honor of the religious community that would be lost should the women and girls of that community be sexually violated, converted and kidnapped. Whether it was by poisoning (by afim, or opium), self-immolation, asphyxiation, put to the kirpan (sword), or drowned, it is abundantly clear that even a undeniably violent death at the hands of oneself or one’s family was preferable to “dishonor.” Real death was better than the symbolic death of a woman raped, abducted and lost to her community and religion. The dark irony is apparent: in order to avoid the violation of “their” women by “Others,” certain men killed their wives, daughters, and other female relatives or encouraged them to commit suicide. The language used to justify such violence (or rather deny the act as violent at all) is especially interesting in that it removes the culpability of those who commit the violence, all the while endowing the victims of this violence with a subjectivity and agency that is otherwise absent from other instances of violence.

Honor killings demand a reassessment of how we define violence, as well as how we define those involved in said violence. Though instances of familial violence in South Asia are hardly specific to moments of societal and political instability, it is certainly rare to find that the victims of this violence are complicit in their own suffering. And indeed not all who were targeted in this kind of attack were willing to be so targeted (as the story of Taran will demonstrate). But such cases stand in stark contrast to the substantial testaments claiming that hundreds of women and girls chose death at their own or their relatives’ hands (Basant Kaur). Assuming that these claims must have at least a kernel of truth and are not mere fabrications (which the amount and variety of testimonies on the matter would suggest is not the case), these women were arguably practicing a certain agency that is absent in communal sexual violence such as rape. This is not to say that there did not exist active and forceful pressure on women to submit to the will of men. But it is clear that there is some element of female choice here that complicates the definition of violence and suggests that women play a role in maintaining the very patriarchy that generally denies their agential capacity.

If we acknowledge that these events were indeed violent (while keeping in mind that they have not been integrated into the Partition narrative as such), than we must also question another prevalent assumption concerning women: that in communal strife, they are essentially non-violent and are at the receiving end of violence as its victims. And this is of course largely true, as an activist pamphlet conveys:

I am a woman

I want to raise my voice

Because communalism affects me

In every communal riot

My sisters are raped

My children are killed

My men are targeted

My world is destroyed

And then

I am left to pick up the pieces

To make a new life

It matters little if I am a Muslim, Hindu or Sikh

And yet I cannot help my sisters

For fear that I may be killed or

That they may be harmed.

But “Honor Killings” complicate this narrative. Women’s agency not only adds another dimension to their usual characterization of victimhood, especially when this agency is not easily considered positive. The kind of agency arguably being witnessed here suggests a complicity on the part of women in maintaining the traditional patriarchy that dominated South Asian society. And this in turn perhaps explains why there remain (to this day) remembrance services in gurudwaras in Rawalpindi to commemorate the “great sacrifice” made by women (particularly Sikhs). Female agency practiced to maintain the status quo fits within the patriarchal historical narrative of India, and thus does not need to be censured. But other kinds of agency-like that which is evidenced in the Rescue and Rehabilitation initiatives- are highly censored and denied entry into the narrative at all.