The Question of Healing and Forgetting: Disturbing Realities in Short Stories of Ritu Menon and Uravashi Bhutalia
It is taken for granted that during partition (Indo-Pak, 1947), Hindus were massacred by Muslims and same is considered true vice versa. This is a deep rooted attitude behind years of prejudice between both the communities. The collective sensibility of one community has affected the other. The avai...
| Published in: | Cultural and religious studies |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
David Publishing Company
2015
|
| In: |
Cultural and religious studies
|
| Further subjects: | B
Partition
B Riots B Traditions B Violence B Oral History B Religion B Boundaries B Revenge B Displacement |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | It is taken for granted that during partition (Indo-Pak, 1947), Hindus were massacred by Muslims and same is considered true vice versa. This is a deep rooted attitude behind years of prejudice between both the communities. The collective sensibility of one community has affected the other. The available history of partition discusses mainly the political issues or is marked with patriotic bias. For the historians, it has been a constitutional or political arrangement which does not affect the contours of Indian society. If seen from the perspective of survivors, the history of partition appears very different. It is all violence for them. This difference leads to a wide chasm between history and the account in form of oral history in particular about partition; its pain and silence. On one hand where nations can insulate them behind national interests and agendas, the communities that faced partition have to live with painful memories and moments of violence they faced. Urvashi Bhutalia in her The Other Side of Silence and Ritu Menon in her Borders and Boundaries narrates the inhuman experiences of women migrants and trauma faced by survivors. Women in their short stories speak for themselves, without any restrictions or depending on any critic or historian to interpret their pain, about the violence they faced by strangers as well as their near and dear ones. They were subjected to rape and abduction, given no choice of repatriation, were forced to abort or abandon children fathered by their abductors. They struggled to put their life together in state of loss of identity and belongingness. The paper tries to investigate the link between community, caste, gender with violence at the time of partition. It deals with the "memory" that steps in when history fails to address the issue of dislocation. It discusses women’s unspeakable horrifying experiences, their painful truth and their silence that is still in the process of healing and forgetting. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2328-2177 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Cultural and religious studies
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.17265/2328-2177/2015.05.001 |