Published Paper Details:

This article examines the gendered experiences of women during the upheaval of the Partition of India, focusing particularly on the violence, displacement, and social dislocation that shaped their lives. While conventional historiography has largely emphasized political negotiations and territorial divisions, women's experiences have often remained marginal within these narratives. Building on the feminist insights of Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, the study emphasizes the importance of recovering women's narratives in order to understand how gender shaped the experience of violence, migration, and rehabilitation. The article highlights the multiple forms of violence directed at women, including sexual assault, abduction, forced conversion, and honour-based killings. These acts not only inflicted physical harm but also symbolized communal domination and humiliation. The analysis further explores how women remembered and narrated these events differently from men. As scholars such as Veena Das and Ashis Nandy have noted, women often retained the memory of violence through embodied experiences, producing narratives that reveal the emotional and psychological dimensions of trauma. By bringing these testimonies to the forefront, the article demonstrates the importance of oral history in reconstructing a gendered social history of Partition.