Torn from the Roots

This is an extraordinary first-hand account of operation recovery carried out by the newly constituted Governments of India and Pakistan in 1947 to recover women and children who had been abducted during the riots and chaos of Partition and restore them to their families. Kamla Patel right hand woman of Mridula Sarabhai who oversaw operation recovery conveys the pathos and urgency of those turbulent times in her candid no holds barred memoir of the three years that she spent in Pakistan and the camps she ran for rescued women in Lahore Amritsar and Jalandhar of how women were exchanged likes oranges and apples of the heartbreaking stories she heard and the lives she saved. Compassionate in its humanitarianism this book is also of rare archival value restoring women to a central place in the history of Indias partition.