The Pinjars of the Body: On Partition through the Women's Body in Amrita Pritam's Pinjar

<p>Partition, the long period of turmoil, is understood through a sense of violence uttered<br>out of religious and geographic tensions. While the period witnessed a large exodus<br>fuelled with multiple accounts of massive killings, massacres of children, migration<br>from generational rootedness; a large brunt of Partition was bore by women and their<br>bodies. Women’s bodies became a playing ground for these tensions to play out,<br>where they became honour ‘symbols’ or ‘objects’ between the political subjects of<br>Partition. Several works such as Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence (1998) capture<br>the horrific tales of abductions, assaults, loss of livelihood and identity where the<br>women are treated as devoid of any personhood and will. In this backdrop, Amrita<br>Pritam’s work, Pinjar, becomes important to address this violence perpetuated on<br>women – where the protagonist Pooro, a Hindu girl, gets abducted and placed into<br>this life and identity of a Muslim Hamida. Interestingly, Pritam stores this violence<br>of Partition in the woman’s body itself (or essentially pinjar of the body) which<br>becomes an important tool throughout the novel in showcasing the tussled identity of<br>Pooro/Hamida as she acts as the microcosm for the period itself. The paper then aims<br>to analyse this tool of the body which Pritam uses not only to understand the turmoil<br>faced by women as ‘objects’ of Partition; but also as a tool of language through which<br>she articulates the many pinjars of memory, anguish, resignation and acceptance for<br>Pooro/Hamida. Through her work, the paper will understand the site of the woman’s<br>body in Partition and showcase that while many accounts do not surface a language<br>of words in mainstream History due to the nature of trauma, shame and impunity<br>associated to it; the body becomes an important language through which memory and<br>experiences of women during that time of turmoil can be studied. </p>