Urvashi Butalia – författare

The partition of India into two countries, India and Pakistan, caused one of the most massive human convulsions in history. Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, communities, families, and relationships were destroyed. Yet, more than half a century later, little is known of the human dimensions of this event. In The Other Side of Silence , Urvashi Butalia fills this gap by placing people-their individual experiences, their private pain-at the center of this epochal event.Through interviews conducted over a ten-year period and an examination of diaries, letters, memoirs, and parliamentary documents, Butalia asks how people on the margins of history-children, women, ordinary people, the lower castes, the untouchables-have been affected by this upheaval. To understand how and why certain events become shrouded in silence, she traces facets of her own poignant and partition-scarred family history before investigating the stories of other people and their experiences of the effects of this violent disruption. Those whom she interviews reveal that, at least in private, the voices of partition have not been stilled and the bitterness remains. Throughout, Butalia reflects on difficult questions: what did community, caste, and gender have to do with the violence that accompanied partition? What was partition meant to achieve and what did it actually achieve? How, through unspeakable horrors, did the survivors go on? Believing that only by remembering and telling their stories can those affected begin the process of healing and forgetting, Butalia presents a sensitive and moving account of her quest to hear the painful truth behind the silence.

Urvashi Butalia's work on the subject of Partition, the 1947 division of the Indian subcontinent, is internationally known. Her book The Other Side of Silence has been translated into more than ten languages and won several awards. In this new collection, Butalia brings together writers from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan to explore the still largely unaddressed aspects of the human histories of the period. Women and Partition offers fresh perspectives, first person accounts, essays, personal histories, and interviews with women who lived through Partition and who have inherited its legacies. Taking a broad sweep, the essays here not only span three countries but also cover a range of subject areas, from oral history to more traditional historical accounts, from visual history to a study of sports. Also included is a selection of documents, which provide valuable archival material and add further depth to the volume. Contributors include well-known novelists Bapsi Sidhwa, Shauna Singh Baldwin, Uzma Aslam Khan, and Kamila Shamsie; the artist Nilima Sheikh; and academics such as Kavita Panjabi, Jasodhara Bagchi, and Rita Kothari.

The Partition of British India into the nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the further redrawing of the borders in 1971 to create Bangladesh were major, wrenching events whose effects are still felt today in the everyday lives of people in all three nations in fundamental ways-yet these events have never been explored in all their aspects. This volume gathers essays from scholars in a variety of fields that explore substantial new ground in Partition research, looking into such understudied areas as art, literature, migration, and, crucially, notions of "foreignness" and "belonging," among many others. It will be required reading for any scholars of the recent history, politics, and culture of the subcontinent.