Abstract

The most predictable form of violence experienced by women is when the women of one community are sexually assaulted by the men of the other community, in an overt assertion of their identity and a simultaneous humiliation of the other community by dishonouring their women. Being extremely vulnerable women become easy targets of every form of oppression. This evil is further compounded if they are placed in unstable political societies or events. As in other moments of ethnic conflicts in the world, the rape and molestation of Hindu, Sikh and Muslim women before and after the Partition followed the same familiar pattern of sexual violence, retaliation and reprisal. It is an established fact that in all wars and holocausts it is women who have been humiliated, deprived and discriminated. The novel ‘What the Body Remembers’ taken up for study in this paper, projects the Partition from a woman’s perspective which is the first ever attempt to view the Partition through the experiences of women. This novel on the Partition stands evidence to the statement that, ‘since only women have undergone those specifically female life-experiences, only they can speak of a woman’s life.

Key words: Partition, women, victims, trauma.