The Partition

Abstract

The concept of ‘border' in the context of diasporic subjects revolves around both spatial and psycho-cultural dimensions. The Partition of India has led to the emergence of the ‘Hindu' or ‘Bengali Diaspora'. This dispersion has jeopardized the lives of South Asian women, making them undergo a process of ‘selfing' in the new (host)lands. This chapter deals with the impact of the process of rehabilitation on the conflicting forms of the ‘new' identity or the identity ‘shift' among South Asian women in diaspora. The goal is to reinscribe the geo-political borderline as a symbolic threshold to the self-construction of the Bengali women, a corollary question to the dichotomous changes in their societal stature, as it appears to be a constant cue in their mental space. To this end, Foucault's principles of heterotopic spaces to observe the dissociation of the parallel spaces in the process of the ‘selfing' of the displaced women are presented.