Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition
by Ritu Menon & Kamla Bhasin
Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition is a timely book for all of South Asia. For the chilling stories of violence perpetrated during the partition of India and Pakistan in the name of religion, nation, property and territory, and how women, their lives and bodies became objects on which this violence and claiming were played out, have lessons for countries negotiating their own partitions and futures.
The authors document and analyse the testimonies of Hindu and Muslim women who were victims of partition violence as well as of those who worked at refugee homes and repatriation services. Women´s experiences have hitherto been marginal, used in the official histories of the period. While the issues surrounding partition violence against women were widely discussed in the Indian parliament before the Abducted Person´s Act in 1949, the authors make clear that the Indian State was acting in this instance not so much for the welfare of the women themselves but as a benevolent state rescuing its citizens from the enemy ´Other´- Muslim Pakistan. Women were pawns in the construction of each nation and state.