Published Paper Details:

Partition Studies has long relied on political documents, elite memoirs, and official narratives to understand the violent division of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. Urvashi Butalia's The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (1998) radically redefined this field by foregrounding oral testimonies, personal narratives, and marginalised voices--particularly those of women, Dalits, and children. By documenting silenced stories of abduction, rape, forced conversions, and familial violence, Butalia complicates traditional histories that often focus narrowly on statecraft and diplomacy. This article explores how The Other Side of Silence reshaped Partition historiography, challenging dominant paradigms by situating trauma, memory, and gendered violence at its core. The book's methodology of oral history allows for a democratization of historical knowledge, offering space for subaltern voices that had been excluded. In doing so, it exposes the intersection of gender, community, and power during the Partition and demonstrates how silence itself becomes a historical text. This research examines the transformative impact of Butalia's work on Partition Studies, tracing its role in shaping feminist historiography, trauma studies, and memory discourse in South Asia. It argues that Butalia's intervention shifts Partition Studies from a state-centered narrative to a people-centered narrative, redefining both the sources and the ethics of history.