For the better part of the last year, I’ve spent my time reading every Partition novel focused on the female experience that I could get my hands on. Some context: Partition refers to the division of the British Raj into modern-day India and Pakistan. Overnight, people suddenly had to decide if they were Indian or Pakistani—a choice defined by religion. This single decision to reformulate borders (may I add, borders drawn by a British civil servant who had never set foot on the subcontinent) triggered brutal communal violence and the mass migration of around 14 million people (and that’s the lower end of the estimate). Women were especially targeted in the violent aftermath of August 14th-15th, subjected to abduction, rape, torture, forced suicide, and dismemberment. With my senior thesis project, I want to interrogate the presence of women in Partition fiction against the absence of women from the historical archives.
There are numerous binaries inherent to this subject, some of which include:
woman v man
written history v oral history
voice v voiceless
independence v colony
India v Pakistan
Hindu v Muslim
izzat (honor) v shame
rape v consent
macrocosm v microcosm
It’s this last binary that particularly interests me. It features over and over again in my reading towards my thesis.
Amrita Pritam’s novel Pinjar (1950) chronicles the life of Pooro, a young Hindu girl abducted and forced to marry her captor shortly before the Partition of India; she is involuntarily converted to Islam by her husband, forcibly renamed Hamida, and bears his children. Originally published in Punjabi, Pritam’s work is exceptional for its exploration of violence against women in both the time leading up to Partition and the immediate aftermath. Pinjar (The Skeleton) conveys the experience of gendered violence during Partition through binaries—Pritam explores the sharp distinctions between Hindu and Muslim, consumption and nourishment, and shame and honor through the overarching tension between Pooro and her newly named self, Hamida. Ultimately, Pritam’s dichotomies of the split individual emphasize the nature of female survival during Partition as one of self-martyrdom; for the women of Pinjar, choosing a distinct communal side becomes necessary to continue living in a moment of post-colonial state formation.
Within the last few scenes of the novel, Pooro and Rashida—Pooro’s husband—devise and carry out a plan to return an abducted Hindu girl named Lajo back to her family. Upon reuniting Lajo with her family, Pooro is given the option to join the band of Hindu refugees and flee to India. She rejects their offer, declaring instead that: “When Lajo is welcomed back in her home, then you can take it that Pooro has also returned to you. My home is now in Pakistan” (Pritam 127). Pooro accepts Pakistan as her new homeland, surrendering her past self. Lajo becomes a completion of Pooro’s homegoing arc, leaving Hamida behind to embrace Pakistan. The microcosmic tension between these two identities are mirrored in the larger macrocosmic conflict of India versus Pakistan. This is an instance where a binary is broken; Writing Analytically talks about binaries as “not so separate and opposed after all” but “parts of one complex phenomenon” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 60). Here, the “complex phenomenon” is the process of decolonization. One binary (Hamida/Pooro) complicates another binary (Pakistani/Indian) in the service of yet another binary (macrocosm/microcosm). All these identities merge in the restoration of a “whole” self. Pritam writes this restoration as remedying of the split female self as achieved through picking a distinct nation-state; to survive and move beyond the split self, it is necessary for Pooro to accept her new homeland. In this regard, Pritam’s narrative is a literary project that works to rationalize new borders as a resolution to the dichotomies of communal violence. Pooro’s acceptance of Pakistan is her acceptance of her fragmented self. This constitutes a sort of self-martyrdom:
“Whether one is a Hindu girl or a Muslim one, whoever reaches her
destination, she carries along my soul also,” Pooro said to herself and
made a last vow by closing her eyes” (Pritam 127).
Here, Pooro effectively dies—she establishes that “her soul” follows any woman who successfully returns to her family, and these are her last words. Her decision to remain in Pakistan and to live as Hamida signals a death for Pooro, and Pooro becomes an omnipresent figure guiding young women to safety. She sacrifices her Hindu self to survive in her new surroundings. In reuniting Lajo with her family, Pooro finally exercises her autonomy and acts according to her own wishes; she is not bound to the demands of her husband, her son, or the newly independent state. Her personal choice to act blurs the divides between Hindu and Muslim. In the wake of gender-based violence during Partition, female autonomy is a revolutionary act that works to mend the fragmented dichotomies of self.
Pritam, Amrita. Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories. Tara, New Delhi, 2015