We look at the forgotten women on the 75th Anniversary of the Partition of India.
To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Partition of India, BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour dedicated the entire programme to hearing about the forgotten women of Partition.
“For me, when I heard what happened in my own family and to women, it fundamentally changed who I am and decisions I've made consequently,” says Anita. “The stories of what happened to women in history are rarely spoken about and no-one talks about Partition. “Violence takes on a very intimate form,” says Shruti Kapila, Professor of Indian History at Cambridge University. “It’s precisely because women are perceived and seen to have all the elements of nationalism, the repository of the nation, the family, the religion, that they become such a potent symbol, not just for deification, but then for destruction.”Listener Amayna got in touch to share her mother Saghira’s story. She was around 14 years old when Partition happened.
“When we started researching, we weren't really looking at the violence because that's not something that had ever been part of the conversation,” says Ritu Menon. “It had never even struck us that this is what we would find. “We have an impact. I grew up not even seeing our history told in textbooks. So, you can see what we're able to do what we break silence, what we're able to do when we start to tell these stories, what we're able to do when we really commit to saying: ‘This is important to me. This is something I really want to see in the world.’
"Our generation is doing so much to break the cycles that don't nurture us. But there are so many cycles within us that can be nurtured. And that's my superpower. There's so much strength that I get from connecting with this.”“A lot of people, particularly young people who had never asked their families about Partition, were like: ‘This has made me go to my grandparents and ask them what our family story is.
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