Partitioned lives
Rumina Sethi

Torn from the Roots: A Partition
Memoir
by Kamla Patel. Translated by Uma Randeria.
Women Unlimited, New Delhi.
Pages 236. Rs 350.

Stories about the atrocities perpetrated upon women and the manifold tortures they lived through are gradually finding an escape route in memoirs and criticism about the Partition. This book is a step forward in this direction. Other than the heart-rending stories of rescue and rehabilitation, Patel’s accounts raise a deeper philosophical issue of the use of women’s bodies as signs of male triumphalism enacted through the violation and pollution of women. When battle-lines are drawn and territory mapped, the only way of humiliating the other was is through victimising their women. This kind of sexual outrage is committed both because women are treated as property and because their dishonour becomes a "proof of manhood" for the adversary.

The recovery and rehabilitation of abducted women was a huge and complex task. Many among them had been converted to the other religion. Some had married their abductors and had children. Would their "real" families accept them once they were returned? Would these women even want to return? In view of these questions, the resolution of the abducted women’s issue was dealt with very simplistically. Gandhi, for instance, said: "There are rumours to the effect that these abducted women do not wish to return to their own families. They have embraced Islam and married Muslims. However, I am not convinced by these stories. Such conversion to a different religion must not be regarded as genuine, and such marriages cannot be regarded as legal." Clearly, the matter was to be treated only within the parameters of religion.

Kamla Patel’s account is refreshingly candid and sincere to the point of confessing how desensitised she had become to the sorrowful stories of lost daughters and abducted wives. This makes her descriptions objective and not overly sentimentalised, avoiding the drama of emotion frequently inherent in accounts of gender victimisation. But despite the admirable distance that she is able to maintain, one often feels that Patel runs through the trauma of the Partition with ease and a certain stolidity, which worries the reader until the very end. In giving first-hand narratives of women who had jumped into wells to save themselves from dishonour, those who had changed hands several times or had simply been abandoned on the streets after being used, Patel’s detachment can be easily mistaken for indifference. But this complaint is more relevant to her textual and writing skills than to her experiences during those trying times.

The Partition forced upon people of either side the enormity of being Hindu or Muslim. So committed were the organisations to return abducted women to their "true" families and "pure" religion that the process resulted in sometimes breaking happy families: "But in all these formalities no importance was given to the wishes of those women while taking decisions about them, and we, the so-called social workers were sending women and children from one country to another as if they were some inanimate objects." Despite the setting up of camps and tribunals where victims were scarcely allowed to make decisions and take charge of their lives, Kamla Patel stands out as an exemplum of uprightness and justice, working more from her heart than from any kind of moral righteousness.

Another painful issue was the state decision regarding "war babies", the children born outside regular wedlock during this period. It was callously decided that although the mothers would be rehabilitated to their respective countries, their children would be left behind in the country they were born. Would a Hindu man, for instance, be willing to father his wife’s Muslim child? Many children were willingly or forcefully abandoned, and, of course, many unborn children were aborted under the pretext of a "medical check-up". This was one of several issues where Kamlaben appears to differ from a frequently irate Mridula Sarabhai, her companion and guide in this mission. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin have also contributed to the study of forcible recovery of abducted women in Mushirul Hasan’s book on the Partition, Inventing Boundaries. They point out that the recovery of women, for the Indian side at least, was a means to recover Hinduism and uphold the honour of the Hindu state.

Uma Randeria’s fine translation of Kamla Patel’s Mool Sotan Ukhdelan from Gujarati is indeed a tribute to Mridual Sarabhai and Kamla Patel whose courage in the recovery of abducted women in the aftermath of the Partition is exemplary.

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