Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition

In 1947 India was simultaneously freed and divided. The departure of the British was accompanied by a bloody partition in which one million people perished and over ten million were displaced in the largest peace-time mass migration this century has recorded. Borders & Boundaries attempts a feminist reading of Partition providing for the first time testimonies and memories of women caught in the turmoil of the time. The authors make women not only visible but central by looking at the general experience of violence dislocation and displacement from a gendered perspective. Interviews with women survivors social workers government functionaries form the core of the book supplemented by a narrative based on documents confidential reports parliamentary debates letters and diaries. The women’s accounts are vivid with memories of loss and violence the experience of abduction and widowhood of rehabilitation and sometimes even liberation. The counterpointing of their voices with others official and non-official highlights the relationship between women communities and the state; between women and their families; and between women and their men.