Partition’s Gendered Toll: Violence and the Silenced Lives of Subaltern Women in Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence

The 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan exposed the extreme vulnerability of women, who became primary targets of gendered violence amidst the chaos. Women suffered extensively—physically, psychologically, and emotionally—during the communal riots, facing abduction, rape, mutilation, and public humiliation. Many were driven to suicide in an attempt to preserve their families' honour and personal dignity. The traumatic impact of Partition on women was marked by the widespread infliction of patriarchal oppression, subjugation, and gender-based injustice, often at the hands of both strangers and their own male kin and community members. Women's bodies were transformed into battlegrounds, mutilated, violated, and impregnated with religious symbols, reducing them to instruments of political and religious aggression. The Partition did not merely divide a nation but unleashed a tide of bloodshed, destruction, and dehumanization—especially for women, who were relegated to the margins as the "other." While religious ideologies often exalted women as divine figures, the socio-political reality was one of brutal subordination and silencing within a deeply patriarchal order. This paper explores the entrenched patriarchal norms and the gendered violence experienced by women during the Partition. It examines the cruelty inflicted not only by male aggressors but also by institutional forces, including state authorities, who often dehumanized and objectified women even after their recovery.