Explain some of the harrowing experiences of women in those violent days of Partition.

(a) Women underwent harrowing experiences during partition. These were raped, abducted and sold often many times over often they were forced to settle down to life with strangers in unknown circumstances. Deeply traumatized, many develop new family bonds in their changed circumstances.

(b) But no sooner did they do so, that both governments launched a programme to recover the women who had been abducted and forcibly married. Women were once again uprooted, torn away from their new families and sent back to their earlier locations. Further trauma awaited them when their erstwhile families refused to accept them and they were forced to takeout a penurious living in ashrams.

(c)    Both governments did not consult the concerned women, undermining their right to take decisions regarding their own lives. In all 30,000 women were recovered, 22,000 Muslim women and 800 Hindu and Sikh women.

(d)    The need and desire to preserve community honour (izzat) compounded women's suffering. Man's/community's honour depended on his/their ability to protect his/their possessions zan (women) and zamin (land) from outsiders.

(e)    Thus it was when men feared 'their' women-wives, daughters etc. would be violated by the enemy they killed the women themselves as happened in Thoa Khalsa. These ideas were also behind the Recovery programme. Women were thus treated as possessions dishonoured, raped and rescued at will and given no say in the matter.