The Treatment of Women: Part One (with Manjula Waldron)

You've heard me talk about riots, families being separated, the atrocities committed by the British and other men in power, but you haven't really heard me discuss the state of women during this time. These next two episodes will exclusively focus on women and how they were used as weapons, as martyrs, and how their mass murders and suicides were

downplayed for the pitiful excuse of honor. From I Heart Radio, I'm Mahases and This is Partition a podcast that will take a closer look into this often forgotten part of history. Around seventy five thousand to one hundred thousand women are thought to have been raped and abducted during Partition by men of other religions and by men of the same religion, some of whom were in fact related to the women

in question. We had her time and again in many villages on both sides of the border, Hundreds of women had jumped or were forced to jump into wells the same bizarre Could the poll of religion be so strong that people, more specifically women would actually kill themselves. This is an excerpt from feminist author and activist Urvashi Brutalia's book The Other Side of Silence. She collects many memories

and accounts about women and partition. I met Bassade Corps, a tall, strapping woman in her mid sixties, who had been present in her village Toakulsa in March when the decision was taken that women would jump into a well. She watched more than ninety women throw themselves into a well for fear of Muslims. She too jumped in, but survived because there was not enough water in the well

to drown them all. She said, It's like when you put roties into a ton door and if it is too full, the ones near the top, they don't cook. They have to be taken out of Coors son Beer Bahador Singh watched his father kill his sister. He described the incident with pride in his voice, pride at his sister's courage. The first time I had been alerted to family deaths. The term for men of at least killing off their women and children. Was when I had met

an old man named Mengal Sake. He told me how he and his two brothers had taken the decision to kill He used the word martyr seventeen members of their family. We had to do this, he told me, because they would have been converted. Mungo Sing thought he was doing his duty. He thought he was doing a kindness. Utalia recalls her encounter. He crossed over to Armor, Sir, where he began a new life. When I met him, he

was the only one left of the three brothers. He had a new family, a wife, children, grandchildren, all of whom had heard and dismissed his stories. To learn more about women's experiences during the Partition, I interviewed a partition survivor who was a small child. In regardless of age, there are things that one never forgets. She wrote an historical fiction novel that came out this year titled Love Partitioned,

a mix of research and moments she witnessed. She used this book as a way to cope with the monstrosities of the event. In addition to her novel, we discussed her family and reflected on seventy five years. Hi, I'm Manjela Waldron. I retired as a professor at Ohio State University and Biomedical Engineering, and now I am in a senior facility in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. And I'm also an adjunct professor at Stanford University and School of Medicine and working

on prevention research for older adults. What I'm doing and I'm writing, and my next book is on compassion, then I will do a equal to Love Partition, you know, essentially following up the plot where I kind of left off. Women are at the forefront of Mandula's book histories and stories that are often ignored in most narratives of Partition. She talks about how her mother and other women she admired played characters in her novel, especially the main character, Mangola.

Love Partition follows Mangola, her mother, her best friend Basanthi, and her husband Ann as they navigate their own conflicts of religion, sexuality, and social privilege leading up to Partition. Mangola is very idealistic and works hard to become an advocate for women in the worlds of education and the Greater Indian community. Through Mangola, the reader gets the distinct

perspective of being a woman during this time period. We observe her sacrifices, her family struggles, her relationships, and the violence and abuse she received an witness firsthand. The character the protagonist Mangola, is based on all the women I have admired over time. So my father, till my mother is dying day would say, well, you know, your mother saved our lives, and I'd say how, And my mother was hitting up. She didn't want to live through that

trauma again. And so I didn't know anything from her point of perspective or who was who and why and where? But I knew she was very keen worker, and she did a lot of work with crafts and things, very accomplished and also very strong person. And she supported me through my education to come overseas and married and everybody was close. Again still would have arranged my marriage. She just said, no, you just do what you need to do. Manjula's mother was a major source of inspiration for her

characters and love partitioned. Even though her mom remained tight lept about her own stories because of the exuberant amount of research Mandula conducted for the book, she can only fathom what her mother most likely experienced. I did a lot of research reading about it, and it was all just the books were all about gore and horrid things, not representing that there was any transformation, any any way

in which it could be redeemed. And yet, I mean, we were all alive, and my mother was alive, and she did a lot for advancement and supporting girls after partition, and so how did she find that courage? But she wouldn't talk about it because personally it was I could understand after I did a lot of PTSD training why it was hard for me and why it was hard for her, and why it was hard for my father to escape just through the skin of their teeth kind of.

I know you were obviously very young, but do you remember anything about partition in the weeks and months leading up to it, Like, did you witness any unrest? Did you notice kind of a change in the communities in which you were living? Yes, And as I talk, I'm

kind of having those body reactions. Yes. Um. The Direct Action Day is based on essentially body recollections, but of course fictionalized, but all the coinage that I saw is seared in the brain of the Direct Action Day because I had gone to Delhi for my birthday to my grandparents, and so, you know, parts of it are real from my memory. It's so it's a body memory. And so that was very unsettling, and I tried to write it in my continuing Studies at Stanford writing classes, but I

just couldn't do it. I had to fictionalize it. So so those kind of carnage are very vivid, the headless bodies, for example, the train right, you know, everybody was having one reaction to things that I was having totally different reaction. And the rock War was very hard for me. I couldn't watch. I had to do a TV fast and which was president for almost for a year. I discussed Direct Action Day in great detail in last week's episode. The savagery of the riots, looting, and murder that took

place is not for the faint of heart. It has proven that smell is a sense most associated with memory and form and jula. That statement could not be more true the spell of Charred Flesh. Because I was vegetarian. I didn't come across sit until I was at Stanford and I was pregnant with my son, and I guess all the hormones too, which just brought up everything. And comes six o'clock, you know, the whole California lights up with barbecues and summer and hamburgers and things, and I

just I just couldn't bear it. I needed to fly somewhere, and of course I couldn't those stuck at Stanford as a graduates too. That smell I still have a lot of problems with, because I guess there's no difference between cows flesh and human flesh when it's put on fire. At the top of the episode, you heard a clip from my great aunt. The disturbing sentiment she described is echoed Amandula's book Mangola looks out the window by the road.

She sees dried up bodies of three women. Their abdomens have been slashed open, and their fetuses lie beside them in a neat arrange. It You've heard me say this before, that many people who were trying to escape on trains didn't make it to their destination alive and love partitioned when Doula wrote a collection of scenes that took place on trains, a lot of which was drawn from her

own experience escaping with her family. We were to be on the train where everybody was massacred and my mother and that part is I remember them fighting, would be you know, a fictionalized version, but still it was real that my father wanted to just take one more day and beyond the train were supposed to be. But my mother was listening to everybody and she said no, she was going to leave the day before, and he said,

are you crazy. You know, it's just one day. We won't have a place, we won't have this, we won't have that. She said, well, then I will leave with the children because I'm here. We won't make it because all the trains were coming back with dead bodies and only a few people survived, and so my father finally said, all right, we'll go, and we just escaped because you know, all those headless bodies and own the people who were massacred were there around us, and so we just had

to hide in the train and make sure. So some of those things, again it's you know, not real, but historically correct. So it's something that you had to be on that train to experience, and if you were on the later train, then you didn't experience because I wouldn't be here talking to you. Her mother truly did save their lives. Something else I wanted to ask you, You know this year does mark anniversary as you know, um,

how are you feeling about that? Well, that's one of the reasons I wanted to finish this book, because they are not too many people living your age and others who really know what happened exactly. And there's a hopeful side to things, but there's also hopeless side, and it's our choice where we focus. What Monjula says here is

so accurate. People my age don't know about this, regardless of partition is a part of our history or not when speaking to my other friends who are South Asian more off and then not when they do find out about it, it's by accident. The seventy five anniversary, to me, is very timely for the book to come out because it's not only the seventy five anniversary of independence, it's

also the seventy five anniversary of Pakistan being born. Mandul ever called Sean Gandhi after he passed, of course, assassination of Gandhi where I was and it still is memory in my brain about him being assassinated, so that one again is real, fictionalize is real. But I can see his body lying there, you know, And and all the grown ups were crying. I've never seen grown ups crying. And then you know, when they found it was a Hindu who killed they were all relieved because at least

the carnage will stop. Even after all this time, Mandula recounts how when she sees any type of film or show, if there is blood, she can't watch it. I just couldn't see blood. I couldn't see gore. I you know, my children will say, okay, Mom, you can open your eyes. It's gone. I just couldn't see it. I couldn't experience it as an adult, as you know, my children were older teenagers. But I just couldn't. Mandula visited an exhibit where a lot of recreations of Gandhi through tech triggered

more memories for her. I would compare her experience to confronting a ghost from your past. How would any of us react if one place? How so many recollections we may want to forget? So then I sat there and I kind of lost it. I just cried and cried and cried and cried. So written that up going to Gandhi music em as a story, but it was very difficult and that I think made some connection in the body and mind for me to even look at it. And so this was two thousand and six, two thousand

and seven when I went to Delhi. So that was also the essentially genesis of this novel, was this experience of oh, okay, so my memories aren't as bad as I think they are because this actually happened, and I, just as a child, couldn't make sense of it. Because after independence we were supposed to live happily ever after, and that's how everybody projected, you know, rah rah rah, But it wasn't rah rah rah. It wasn't hard to enmirement Julia. While listening to her speak, she possesses tenacity

and poise at the same time. When I mentioned this to her, she told me that for a long time she disassociated herself with partition and it was until she was older that she was able to talk about it in this way. In a way, it's like we both had a reckoning with ourselves later in life when it comes to partition. For me, it was finally knowing about it and trying to understand all the pieces from Anjula. It was coming to terms and trying to make sense

of her memories and experiences. If I didn't have it in my body, see it in my brain, I probably wouldn't have been able to put this book together. Next time, I tried to find out what we can do to acknowledge these countless women, the ones who fiercely protected their families, the ones who met a terrible fate because of their male relatives, the ones who went missing. Listen in to hear my conversation with artists Berthicocholry and her work with

anti memorials. I wanted to understand how this construct of Mother India had maybe enabled the perverse logic of using rape as a weapon in communal rights, where you know, the body of the women of a community can become the symbolic battleground, where if you violate the women's bodies, you can inflict a very deep wound and humiliation to the men of that community. This is how she pays tribute to those who never got a chance to share

their perspective Until next week. I'm Nejaze's and this is Partition. Partition was developed as a part of The Next Up Initiative, created by Anna Hosnier, Joel Monique and Senia Median. Partition is produced by Anna hosni A, Tricia Mukerjee and Beca Ramos. It is edited by Rory Gagan, with the original score composed by Mark Hadley H