Women as Symbols of National Honour and Masculinity in Crisis in Chaman Nahal's Azadi

Abstract

The simultaneous Independence and Partition of India is considered to be the single most traumatic experience, a cataclysm that forever changed the contours of the country and the lives of the people. In the Punjab it resulted in a mass migration that dislocated millions. In the large-scale insensate, communal violence that followed Partition became a defining moment in shaping and strengthening a communitarian consciousness wherein religion became the prime explanatory category of nationhood. While Independence in India and Pakistan is celebrated, there has been a collective amnesia about the event despite the harrowing experiences the refugees testified to. Accompanying the official Indian erasure of the violence has been the historiographical lacuna on the moment until recently. Historical debates centre round the causes and the high politics of Partition but are unable to deal with violence. Moreover, this does not deal with the narrative of popular history. To deal with history from below and to recover marginal voices, history has become revisionist. Subaltern studies and Feminist research have focused on recording the oral testimonies of Partition survivors and witnesses. Revisionist feminist historiographers have investigated women's experiences of the violence and have shown how it became a gendered narrative of displacement which led to the realignment of family, community and national identities. They have also investigated the violence women were subjected to by men of their own as well as the other community and within their own families as they became symbols of national honour. Similarly, men too experienced violence during the Partition but questions like what happens to men's roles, male bodies and conceptions of masculinity remain unanswered and hidden. Ashuman voices are silent on the violence, historians have observed that literature has stepped in to supplement the lacuna. Based on his personal experiences of the Partition, Chaman Nahal's Azadi deals with the gendered, sexual violence women faced while on the move in kafilas or foot convoys. The other, embedded in the narrative, is about a little dealt aspect of Partition violence: violence committed on male bodies. This paper will show how both women and men faced violence from the perspective of a male writer and whether Nahal has succeeded in his enterprise or not.