Nationalism haunted by violence: Representations of 1947 partition

Namrata Mitra, Purdue University

Abstract

In this dissertation, I focus on literary representations of the partition of British India in 1947 during which approximately one million people were massacred, eight to ten million people were displaced, and women of minority communities were systematically raped, mutilated and humiliated. I draw on novels such as Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961) and Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India (1991), set during partition, to show how the framework of nationalism relied on specific and normative constructions of gender, sexuality, class, and religious identity. I argue that such a construction of the nation became and continues to be one of the main conditions for the possibility of widespread sexual attacks carried out against women of minority communities aimed to shame them and their communities on either side of the India and Pakistan border. By examining the testimonials of survivors though feminist approaches to shame, I illustrate some of the gaps in literary representations of partition violence that were primarily written by middle-class authors in order to show how we can read resistance by the survivors. In the second half my dissertation, the focus shifts from the survivors to the perpetrators and the continuation of such violence (usually dubbed "riots") in contemporary India. I draw on moral and social/political philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt, and postcolonial theorists to uncover the ways in which the perpetrators have sought to legitimize the violence which I analyze as repeated expressions of their entitlement to national membership, majority religious identity, and normative construction of gender and sexuality.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Friedman, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Modern literature|History|Philosophy|Womens studies|Modern history|Political science|Ethnic studies|South Asian Studies

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