An Exchange Of Women

THE weak, they say, have the purest sense of history because they know anything canhappen. When we set out in 1986 to see how a cataclysmic event played itself out in thelives of ordinary people, we decided to focus on those most vulnerable to, and farthestremoved from, the making of history: women, especially those destituted as a consequenceof Partition. History has never been so silent as it has been on the subject of thesewomen. What did Independence mean to women who suffered its most violent consequences?What was nation to them? Homeland? Religion? Freedom itself? Where did they find theirplace in this land of redrawn boundaries? Widows from 1947 are still to be found inashrams and permanent liability homes in Karnal, Delhi, Rohtak, Jalandhar, Amritsar... Itis from them and from scores of others that we heard about much that has remained hiddenfrom history.

After the exchange of populations came the exchange of women. Having agreed to anapportioning of assets and a division of the armed forces, civil services and the CID,India and Pakistan entered into an inter-dominion agreement on December 6, 1947, torecover all women and girls who had been abducted in either country and restore them totheir families: Hindu and Sikh women from Pakistan, Muslim women from India. In fouryears, 30,000 women were recovered. The job was assigned to the local police, assisted byone AIG, two DSPS, 5 inspectors, 10 SIs, 6 ASIS and social workers.

How they were recovered is another story. In the turmoil of Partition and the confusionof migration and relocation, how were missing women to be traced? Some estimates put thenumber of women who had been picked up by all three communities at 10 times the officialfigure of 12,500 in 1948. Ads were placed in papers giving details of missing women. Thesewere then taken up by social workers on both sides of the border in Punjab, andverifications made. Social workers used all sorts of ruses to find out where the abductedwomen were, sometimes disguising themselves as bangle-sellers, or fruit-vendors. No captorwas willing to give up his claims: we heard that women were spirited away, hidden intandoors, disguised as sisters and mothers--but never voluntarily given up. One liaisonofficer, who worked in Lyallpur for nine months before formal treaties were drawn up byIndia and Pakistan, told us: "I would slap the women and tell them I'd shoot them ifthey didn't tell me whether there was a Hindu woman in the neighbourhood. They would tellme because they were helpless-their men were not around at the time." He claimed tohave 'recovered' 800-900 women from Lyallpur alone this way.

Many women resisted being uprooted again. They hid, fasted, escaped in ingeniousways--and abused the social workers roundly. One of them shouted: "Is this thefreedom Jawaharlal won? Shame on him!" They were afraid of being rejected by theirfamilies, unwilling to leave their children behind--this is what the Indian governmentrequired of all children born of Muslim father--and in no frame of mind for anotherupheaval. But India and Pakistan had an agreement, and the women had to be reclaimed,regardless. Kamlaben Patel, a social worker told us: "Identification was doneaccording to the countries they belonged to. This one is Indian, this one Pakistani."Partition was connected with Islam and the demand for a separate homeland. Since thislabel was attached, how could the women be free from it?

In a curious twist, the governments themselves became abductors. The women were givenno choice regarding where they wanted to live or with whom; and no right to decide thefate of their children. Worse, the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Bill, wasenacted, denying them their rights as citizens--it remained in force till 1956.

"The policy of abduction as a part of the retaliatory programme has given asetback to the basic ideals of a secular state," said Mridula Sarabhai. Recoveredwomen were seen as missing members of a community, not as adult citizens of a country. TheState assumed the role of a parent patriarch and relocated the women where they'rightfully belonged'. The only response to forcible abduction, it seemed, was forciblerecovery. Since such marriages had been declared illegal, the only way to reconstitute thelegitimate family was by dismembering the illegal one and removing the women from itsoffending embrace. Women thus became repositories not only of family and community honour,but of national honour as well. Pakistan, by extension, became the abducting nation thatdivided the country and violated India's women. As one MP put it: "As descendants ofRam we have to bring back every Sita that (sic) is alive."

But what of the Sitas themselves? It is unlikely that we will ever know what abductionand recovery meant to them. For society--and history-still insists upon silence. Yet,society and State--virtually to a man--placed upon these women the special burden of theirown attempt to renegotiate their post-Partition identity, 'honourably'.

(Ritu Menon is a publisher for Kali For Women and Kamla Bhasin is a socialactivist.)