A young woman might have been separated from her family when a convoy was ambushed, abducted by people of another religion, forced to convert, and forced into marriage or cohabitation. Nearly 100,000 women were "abducted" during the migration. Thousands of women committed suicide or were done to death by their own kinsmen. In the largest ever peace-time mass migration of people, violence against women became the norm. They explore what country, nation, and religious identity meant for women, and they address the question of the nation-state and the gendering of citizenship. The authors make women not only visible but central. Borders and Boundaries changes that, providing first-hand accounts and memoirs, juxtaposed alongside official government accounts. While there are plenty of official accounts of Partition, there are few social histories and no feminist histories. The rending of the social and emotional fabric that took place in 1947 is still far from mended. What was less obvious but equally real was that millions of people had to realign their identities, uncertain about who they thought they were. ![]() The forced migration, violence between Hindus and Muslims, and mass widowhood were unprecedented and well-documented. More than eight million people migrated and one million died in the process. While Partition sounds smooth on paper, the reality was horrific. From Amazon: As an event of shattering consequence, the Partition of India remains significant today.
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