Daughters of Trauma

Abstract

This paper attempts to delineate and focus on the common narrative thread running through subsequent cinematic treatises on the situation of women during the Partition, particularly those kidnapped and sexually violated during the vivisection. It proposes to construct a cultural and memorialized history of the Partition through a reading of mediated representations of literary engagements with the event, particularly the narrativization of the cin ematic trope of the 'radicalized' Muslim and his involvement in the abduction of "chaste" Hindu women during the cataclysmic event. In doing so it considers films such as 1947-Earth (1999), Pinjar (2003), and Khamosh Pani (2003 as seminal films addressing female abductions during the Partition and the memorialization of trauma through cinema. The paper takes a feminist approach to addressing the question of the possession of the female body as the symbolic occupation of the nation.

Migration, Dislocation and Movement on Screen

“…Pinjar exemplifies the herd mentality of a collective civilization that categorizes and separates the identity of individuals, which precipitates loss and estrangement. The portrayal of a villainous identity attributed to the Muslim protagonists in films like Pinjar and Earth suggests the abduction and occupation of a Hindu woman by a Muslim man which subliminally mirrors the 'occupation of the Hindu nation by the Muslim invader' (Sengupta 2019), thus further problematizing the representations of Muslim identities in these films. The success of the Indo-Pakistani film Khamosh Pani (2003) in India, which depicts the gendered nature of violence but in the context of Pakistan, can be viewed in contrast with Bollywood's balanced style of filmmaking that mostly ignores these problems (Khan 2009).…”