The hastily and ill prepared partition of the subcontinent is one of the greatest tragedies in human history. The event resulted in the displacement of between 10 and 12 million people, creating a staggering refugee crisis for both India and Pakistan. As the British left and two new nation states were born, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs who had lived in relative harmony went into a frenzy of murderous rage, with Muslims on one side and Hindus and Sikhs on the other. They raided each other’s villages and slaughtered entire train loads of refugees. The newly formed governments of Pakistan and India were quite helpless to do anything about the violence. As a result, millions suffered.

But as Jawaharlal Nehru said, the chief sufferers of the partition of India were the sub-continent’s women. Muslim women were subjected to sexual violence by Sikhs and Hindus, and Muslims did the same to Sikh and Hindu women. According to estimates, between 75,000 and 100,000 women and girls were abducted and raped during partition. Other atrocities against women included forced conversions, forced marriages, molestation, mutilation and murder. Many of the murders were carried out by the women’s own family members. Some, to protect the woman from being violated, others to restore honour once the woman had already been ‘defiled’.

Organised abductions were widespread, especially in situations where refugees were travelling with inadequate protection. An estimated 4000 women in the Gujarat district were openly abducted from refugee trains. In the Rawalpindi district, gangs of armed Muslims abducted large numbers of non-Muslim women and sold them as slaves in West Punjab. Most of these women ended up as bonded labourers in factories. By 1948, these gangs had also started abducting and selling Muslim women. In East Punjab, the Indian police and military participated in the atrocities. According to Anis Kidwai, a writer, activist and politician from Uttar Pradesh, the ‘better stuff’ would be distributed among the police and military and the rest was handed over to others. Many influential men also used their power to abuse women. A Muslim League member of the legislative assembly was known to be keeping a harem of 500 non-Muslim women. The Maharaja of Patiala was also known to be holding a Muslim woman from a reputable family. Some survivors were forced to wear signs of their violations on their bodies. The rapists often marked their victims’ skins with signs and slogans which declared the rapists religious or political affiliations, such as ‘Jai Hind’ or ‘Pakistan Zindabad’. These are just some of the grisly details.

Efforts at recovering and rehabilitating these women by the Pakistani and Indian governments were hampered by a number of factors. One that stands out is that many of the abducted women’s families didn’t want them back. To them, their women had been desecrated, hence to bring them back into the family would bring dishonour. The abducted women also knew this and many refused to be returned to their families, choosing instead to convert and marry their rapist. To me, this is the greatest tragedy of all. It also highlights a particular attitude the people of the sub-continent have towards women. And that is that women are vessels of honour first and human beings second. And that this vessel is befouled once it engages in certain acts. One of these acts is sexual activity outside wedlock. Whether that sexual activity is consensual or not doesn’t seem to matter. All that matters is that one of the vessels of family honour has been besmirched. Thus the act of raping a woman belonging to an adversarial group is seen as a powerful weapon.

This very attitude is behind the practice of sanctioned ‘revenge rapes’. Such as a case that emerged in Pakistan this July in which a village council ordered a man to rape a 16 year old girl to avenge the rape of his own sister. After all, revenge was a primary motivator in the atrocities of partition as well.

The situation of the sub-continent’s women won’t improve unless attitudes about women are discussed. I believe that it is imperative to discuss what the people of the subcontinent did to each other’s women folk in this discussion. It is necessary to reflect on the atrocities that took place in 1947 and find out why Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs chose to wound each other through each other’s women and to make sure that such crimes never happen again.

The writer is a staff member at Daily Times. He can be reached at wasayibrahim@gmail.com