The Hindustan–Pakistan plan of 3 June 1947 and the subsequent partition, which resulted in the movement of over 15 million people across the borders of Bengal and Punjab, generated a national memory of rape, abduction and unprecedented brutalization of women. Yet, partition is often interpreted as being beyond gender politics. A corrective entails a new interpretative study of this fracture with a focus on women, which will move beyond women's experiences to metaphoric uses of gender in state politics in a time of crisis.

Our questions then are: Was there a politics of gender in the politics of partition? Has that thrown up an alternative meaning of women's identity? Did this emergent feminine identity result in objectification and exclusion of women? These questions assume greater importance if we consider that women's experiences of migration and destitution during partition and the state's response to it is a pointer to the relationship between the women's position as marginal participants in a highly insecure environment and the politics of gender subordination as perpetrated by the state. […]

ABDUCTION AND SOME ISSUES

A large number of abducted women have been missing during the trans-border movement. On the basis of individual complaints received it seems that the number was well over 50,000. Some incidents relating to these abducted women/persons exemplify the politics of gender during partition.