When I first began my research, I was instantly shocked at the horrifying accounts of sexual violence committed against the women and girls of the Punjab and Bengal. But after the initial shock, I was struck by the way that this violence was framed within both personal narratives and “objectively” documented political reports. Although it was acknowledged that women had been brutally dealt with, this observation was often made alongside observations of the financial and infrastructural toll of communal riots- as if these losses were equally as appalling as the violation of the country’s women. In Stern Reckoning, Khosla reports that when the Alipur Saidan Railway Station in the Sialkot District was attacked, “a number of girls were kidnapped.” In the very next sentence, he reports, “Property valued at several thousand rupees was looted,” as if these two acts of violence are of a similar nature. That a government officer might be so brisk about this news might be easily ignored, but what of common people who lived in the heat of communal violence? When interviewed, Bir Bahadur Singh- a witness and survivor of the tragically brutal violence in Thoa Kalsa- expresses nostalgia for the shops his father had owned and the home they’d lost, but no such emotion is expressed for the sister that his father had beheaded in order to “save her honor.”

These observations of the manner in which men perceived the loss of their women suggest that- in their embodiment of community and familial honor- women are seen mostly as objects to be possessed, and potentially looted or lost. And when one considers the traditional culture that far pre-dated Partition, this is not entirely surprising. Without indulging in a narration of the culture of marriage, sex, and family life of early modern India, one can merely study the accounts of the very same female Partition interviewees that I have mentioned elsewhere, paying special attention to the details they divulge about their daily lives before 1947. Women interviewed may generally be silent about the varying violence they endured during Partition, but they are quite consistently open about the daily activities of their lives before and after 1947. An analysis of these seemingly mundane stories reveals the origins (or rather, more “peaceful” everyday manifestations) of the objectification[i] of women, and the existence of a continuum of violence upon which the sexual violence of Partition lies.

With a few exceptions (some of the wealthier, more educated women), the women interviewed had arranged marriages while they were still quite young, to men they had often never before met. While some were granted more social mobility and freedom, others rarely left the confines of their homes and practiced some degree of purdah. Most received minimal education, although some did reach higher education (these women were mostly still unmarried at the time of Partition).[ii] Most of their lives were spent in serving their fathers, brothers, or husbands (respectively) until they bore children, at which point their lives were devoted to child-rearing. Women were thus reduced merely to their sexual and reproductive abilities. But the most notable practice, in my opinion, is that of the exchange of dowry, in which a daughter is-for all intents and purposes- bartered off with a number of other “desirable” assets, including cash, textiles and sometimes even cattle. Gyan Deyi (mentioned in General Violence) mentioned the exceptional size of her dowry in her interview: “It was the talk of the town, my dowry.” In the full interview she elaborates on the time her family spent preparing the dowry. Daughters became wives and mothers in a system that took little to no account of its main subject’s agency, and reduced the subject women to merely sexually symbolic chattel.

[i] Objectification: to present as an object, especially of sight, touch, or other physical sense; make objective; externalize.

[ii] For a more in depth look at the marriage, education and sexual patterns of Indian women: Karuna Chanana’s Partition and Family Strategies: Gender-Education and Linkages among Punjabi Women in Delhi. Though this study is particular to a specific time and place, it likely still highly representative.

[iii] Ritu Menon, Borders and Boundaries