Independence, Partition and Revolution: A Struggle of Woman Body and its Metamorphosis
The people of ‘Bharat’ had just garnered azaadi (Freedom). Finally freed from the burden of slavery and foreign rule, shaking the grime and blood that has covered the bodies during the struggles to overthrow the British India “awaken[ed]” to the powerful speech of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, India became a democratic nation. Following on its steps, the “two-nation theory” was espoused, Radcliffe line was drawn and an irrevocable process started. Nehru's speech hailed and celebrated even today had still the allusions to partition embedded in it.
Auden expressed his doubts about the division through his poem “Partition”:
“But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.”
Faiz Ahmed Faiz penned his disappointment towards the freedom that was marred by partition, a dawn that he had famously declared as injured by the night by communal riots. He further states that the brothers of this journey had thought that the destination will be freedom and at that horizon they will meet again: “chale the yaar ki mil jā.egī kahīñ na kahīñ”. Faiz’s despondency is contagious even to the posteriority for partition was not just an event of the past, but is still unfolding.
Partition of 1947 is an event of Indian history which still engages the modern political and geographical responses and interpretations. The truncated nation, India, and the new emerging, Pakistan, were not only an act of divisions of land brought about by a political decree but, was also a humongous convulsion of civilians. The nation concept of Bharat or India was a novel idea; margins of this land were first marked by the rules of kingdom and later by the common struggles under the British tyranny. During this mass exodus, people had to give up the idea of ‘Home’ and accept the foreign idea of a ‘Nation’. Benedict Anderson puts forth the idea of a nation as an imagined community, which shares a “horizontal comradeship”, irrespective of the differences in religion, caste and social status. The most affected of all was the common folk, the general people.
The communal violence and gender-based violence still ghost the steps of this dawn of independence. Among all those who suffered, women were the most distraught— abducted, raped, murdered, forcibly married and later forcibly returned as part of the rehabilitation programme.
Women who were mostly on the periphery during the Independence struggle (though they had actively participated during Swadeshi movement), had always belonged inside the threshold of the homes. Education was a luxury which was imparted to the women who were part of the top hierarchy.
The new woman was to be an educated and brave wife as an appropriate partner of an English-educated nationalist man, able to run an ‘efficient’ and ‘orderly home’ like her Western counterpart, be high-minded and spiritual like the women of the ‘golden’ age, become ‘grihhalakshmis’ like the Divine Lakshmi and Fulfil her primary role as a courageous mother producing heroic children for the Service of the nation (Ray 41).
If this was the expectation of a patriarchal society from an educated woman, one can try and imagine the situation of the uneducated women. Women were seen as domesticated and docile beings, vulnerable and fragile, in need of a sheltering man. Indian women had lived the idea of Independence along the males of their household, passively accepting the notion of independence from the British without even realising their own nature of slavery. Bharat belonged to the men and “ghar” (home) was the world of a woman, a form of gendered living that Rabindranath Tagore had tried to portray in his work Ghar Aur Bahar.
When the grand illusion of a freed nation shattered, ironically these same domesticated women were sexually targeted. Where men were killed, women were abducted and raped. Butalia in her work The Other Side of Silence offers an estimation of about 75,000 reported rapes and abductions. Woman body is seen as an effective medium to punish not only a woman but the community or the nation which she belongs to. The battered and raped body of a woman manifests itself into trophies, in the dark fantasies of the men of other communities.
There have been a few attempts to understand gender-based violence in conflicts such as Partition. ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ is one such reason. Ethnic cleansing is a policy through which one ethnic group uses forceful means to remove, from a particular area of land, the other ethnic group, by making the land ethnically homogenous. Mass deportation is a conventional method to achieve this kind of cleansing, if a particular group is effectively removed from a terrain, the land would be seen as cleansed. A more violent method is through genocidal rape. In a society like India’s, women are seen as a property of man, the only identity she comprehends from the society is that of ‘belonging’ to someone. The rapes in such scenarios are a result of this very belief, by sexually intimidating a woman, man believes to lay claim on the same body, thereby defeating the owner. During the migrations women “bodies were tattooed with marks of ‘other religion; in a bid to defile the so-called purity of the race, women were forced to have sex with men of other religion, many were impregnated.” (Butalia 132)
Had the notions attached to a woman body were not there, would rapes have happened? The way the world perceives this body adds to the latter’s vulnerabilities. It is important to observe how a woman’s body is appropriated, time and again, to suit the whims of a nation which has had a patriarchal setup for a long time. She becomes the epitome of the nationalist idea, known as Bharatmata, later to become targets of a disillusioned race during partition, turned into a whore, by the receiving families or goddess, by the political propagandas, during the rehabilitation programme.
When India became a slave to the British, it was not yet India, divided into different regions and provinces. It was the common feeling of the struggle, suppression, frustration and anger, which aroused in men the nationalist tendencies, giving rise to freedom struggle, and providing these men with what Anderson calls “imagined community”. Bakim Chandra Chatterji solidified these feelings by offering an image of a mother goddess, who belonged to everyone. Anandamath, a book by Chatterji was first published in 1882, carried reference to a Bharatmata, who was devoid of its earlier glory due to the burden of foreign rule. Men who were turned into the protectors of a family, as a result of prevalent socio-cultural models, saw their nation as a new family and Bharatmata as a mother to all. The instincts to protect this mother and by extension all women, launched them into a freedom struggle. The protagonist, Mahendra, represents all male who were called forth to join the freedom struggle and serve Mother Nation. And his wife, Kalyani can be seen as a depiction of a ‘perfect’ wife, whose decisions are a reflection of her husband’s cause.
Where the most popular form was to see a country as motherland, revolutionaries and poets have seen it also as a bride. A famous song from the movie Poorab aur Pashchim, represents nation as a bride, a rough translation of the song is: “The bride walks... wearing the three-coloured blouse.... her face gleams like Himalaya, neighbours might eye her, oh family members keep her safe (my trans.; Poorab Aur Pachim)”. Lands were seen as a manifestation of woman body; Ali Sardar Jafri called Delhi, his loved one, in a song on the occasion of Independence:
My Delhi, my beloved Delhi/ No longer the whore of tyrannical/ emperors, no longer the slave-girl of/ feudal lords... But the center of our hopes, the realization of our dreams/ the image of our desires. (Chugtai)
The womanising of the nation, lands, and states was an easy step to create fantasies and propel desire in the minds of men. It was these desires— desire for this “dawn” that Faiz Ahmed Faiz had been waiting for, desire for this “hope” that Jafri wanted to believe in, desire to restore Bharatmata to her former glory as envisioned by Chatterji— that helped freedom fighters cope with the lashes, insults, years and years of slavery. But this race of sons and lovers had received only a corrupted and perverse freedom, tainted with partition. These Oedipal sons of the land turned their hatred towards the gender which came close to the image of motherland.
Another important aspect of gender-based violence during partition was abductions, rapes eventually followed. It is important to note that Rape originates from the Latin word “Rapere” which means “abduction”. Social models influence the language and how it develops. This particular development can be discerned as a result of society’s fascination for abduction and coerced intimacy. Greek, Roman and Indian mythologies are replete with such examples. One famous instance is when Sita was abducted by Ravana. A popular belief claims that because of her pious way of living, she was able to fend off Ravana’s advances. But the common women during partition had no such powers to save themselves from the collective violence of all the Ravanas.
Rajender Singh Bedi’s, “Lajwanti” and Jamila Hashmi’s “exile” are two such stories which discuss, abduction and the recovery programme— an agreement between both the countries to restore the abducted women back to their families, through accounts of two fictional women characters. “Lajwanti” is a story about the eponymous woman, who is trying to come in terms with her traumatic experiences during partition and her return to a normal life. Lajo’s husband Sunderlal, is in charge of the rehabilitation programme of his colony, and is dedicated to this cause. As the story progresses, the dilemmas faced by Lajo becomes more realistic. Charging the streets with slogans, to accept the women back and to see them as “devi”, Sunderlal remains willingly deaf to the inner turmoil his Lajo is going through. The story aims to make the audience understand the idea of acceptance as opposed to a mere show of it. Lajo realises that though she has been accepted in the home as a goddess, she will not be entertained as a wife.
Jamila Hashmi’s “Exile”, juxtaposes the life of a Muslim woman, abducted during partition to the mythological character Sita. Where Sita had to go through her exile away from her husband, Bibi, the protagonist in “Exile” feels banished in company of her abductor turned husband, Gurpal. Bibi, is a Hindi word for wife, in the whole story, the reader never gets to know the real name of this woman. Writer willingly withholds this information from readers to drill home the idea, which this woman is no longer called by her name, but only is seen through relationships she shares with others, especially her husband.
In both the stories women's bodies are appropriated to suit the needs of the men. Lajo who wants to live as wife is forced to live as reluctant goddess and Bibi who wants to free herself from the exile of marriage is forced to accept her role as a wife— somewhat similar to what Gilbert and Gubar calls “the angel of the house”, the social and psychic association of women to an extreme “mysterious and intransigent Otherness” (598). Since marriage is a motif in both the stories, it is imperative to understand this institution according to the times the stories are set in. Urvashi Butalia mentions abduction and buying women as a common means to procure a bride (127). She further clarifies a woman’s stance on marriage, while trying to understand many women’s reluctance to return home:
“For the majority of Indian women, marriage is like an abduction anyway, a violation, an assault, usually by an unknown man. Why then should this assault be any different? ‘why should I return,’ said an abducted woman… ‘What is left in me now of my religion or chastity?’ (Butalia 148)”.
Where all the instances, excerpts, analysis mentioned above indicate how a woman's body is seen under the male gaze. Sadat Hassan Manto’s story “Mozail'', can be seen as a break from the notions of male patriarchy. The story portrays a woman’s rebellion against the conventions, through the same body. Mozail marches naked in the face of religion and traditions which shackle a woman. Mozail, is Jew woman who helps a Sikh rescue his fiancé from a group of Muslim men. Tarlochan, a Sikh man who is in love with Mozail, realises that she is too reckless to be married too and secures himself a simple and beautiful woman, Karpal Kaur. As a friend to Tarlochan, Mozail helps him get to Karpal, who lives in a predominantly Muslim colony during the riots. In order to let her escape, she offers her own clothes to her and runs naked in the building to distract the Muslim men on a lookout. She removes the turban cloth covering her calling it a relic of religion and dies due to the injuries suffered from the fall on stairs. Even in her death she defies the social decorum set for women, uncovering her body she lets the men see how her body is not one body but encompasses all. Her death is unwarranted, Jews were particularly safe during partition but her nature as a woman who despises religious fanaticism and patriarchal society catapults her into a saviour and mediator between the two rioting parties. Her dying body becomes a stunned ground of momentary peace between the Sikh and the Muslim group.
Mozail is described as wearing thick bloody red lipstick and a loose white dress which show her ample bouncing breasts, her hair is short and mostly dishevelled. She laughs openly, unabashedly and lives the same way. She liberates women from the fixtures of modestly dressing, acting coy, and not expressing oneself. Even her wooden sandals offer the message of breaking silence.
The easily accepted fantasies around the body of a woman turned into a bleak reality, where anything unconventional is now frowned upon. Through the narratives produced during freedom struggle and partition, one can observe how literature throws light on the social constructs, how it accepts the notions in its folds or how it liberates the discourse from its set parameters.
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