But Partition did more than coalesce communal identities. Its fearsome repercussions branded the lives of the women of the subcontinent. Inherently vulnerable, they were attacked in innumerable and horrific ways — outlined graphically in work done by feminists like Ritu Menon, Kamala Bhasin, Urvashi Butalia, Shahnaz Rouse, Gargi Chakravartty and many others — because they came to define the identities of the warring groups and represent community honour. As Menon and Bhasin put it, the women “became their respective countries”. This legacy carried on, well into the post-Independence years. In Pakistan, Rouze points out, ‘Muslim’ dress came to be defined as the shalwar kameez, with the sari being denounced as ‘Hindu’. Clearly, if communal attitudes today drew sustenance from memories of Partition so too did dispositions towards women.

Which brings us to the question whether the subcontinent can ever, will ever, decisively transcend Partition’s negative legacies. Some years ago I put this very question to artists and writers of the Partition generation. Their responses gave no great cause for optimism. The late Manohar Shyam Joshi, whose Buniyaad flickered brilliantly and briefly on our television screens, believed that one of great problems was that “we are a nation devoted to forgetting than remembering”. He added that this may have something to do with the Hindu timeframe based on yugantars: “We either exist in the present reality or in infinity. In our shhradhs, we remember our ancestors only up to three generations.” He believed that this was probably one reason why we don’t have a great novel of the Partition, “not even a great partisan novel — a Hindu Mahasabha version of those events in fiction.”

... contd.