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ISSN 2278-9529
Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal
www.galaxyimrj.com
The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 13, Issue-III, June 2022 ISSN: 0976-8165

The Partition Holocaust and Women: A Study of “The Final Solution” and
“Bitter Harvest”
Dr Vinod Kumar Chopra
Principal,
Department of Higher Education,
H.P.
(Honorary faculty),
CPU Kota, Rajasthan.
&
Dharmendra Devi
Research Scholar,
Department of English,
CPU Kota, Rajasthan.

Article History: Submitted-28/05/2022, Revised-29/06/2022, Accepted-30/06/2022, Published-10/07/2022.

Abstract:
The Partition has been one of the most traumatic events in the history of the Indian sub-
continent, leaving deep psychological scars that continue to haunt us even today. This paper
focuses on how women suffered most during the Partition. Once the partition violence broke
out women were subjected to the worst kind of violence, as they became easy targets of
communal animosity and hatred. They were raped, abducted and killed by male members of
the ‘other’ community. Their private parts were mutilated and sometimes they were paraded
naked. Thus, the communities were punished through dishonouring their women. Women were
forced to commit suicide or rather were killed so that they should not fall in their enemies'
hands. It was done to save the community honour.
This paper explores how male dominated society pretends to help women just to exploit
her. Men are not ready to extend their helping hand if she has nothing to surrender before him.
Women were the major targets of intra-community as well as inter-community violence. This
paper explores that this vicious cycle of revenge and violence is never ending and it will
continue as long as women get respect and due place in society. This never-ending violence
against women is also an outcome religious chauvinism.
Keywords: Partition, holocaust, violence, rapes, abduction, patriarchy, religion, revenge,
honour.

The independence of India on 15th August, 1947 witnessed the division of India into
two states. However, the excitement, celebration and joys foreshadowing freedom from the

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The Partition Holocaust and Women: A Study of “The Final Solution” and “Bitter Harvest”

clutches of British slavery were overshadowed the unparalleled savage massacre that enthralled
Punjab and other areas of the sub-continent. The violence let loose by the religious insanity
was so intense that it rendered the common man numb in disbelief. Undoubtedly, the
repercussions of this ghastly event were far reaching. It not only resulted in mind boggling
death toll but also set off the “largest ever processes of forced migration” (Aiyar 15). What is
more abominating and horrendous is that women became the worst victim of the violence
triggered by the partition of India. This is not for nothing that Jawaharlal Nehru was forced to
say in an Indian women’s conference in December 1947 that the last few months have seen
“terrible happenings in northern India and women have perhaps been the chief sufferers”
(Major 57). They were pulled out for inflicting upon them the humiliating treatment at the
hands of the men of the rival community. Thus by humiliating women the whole targeted
community was punished and this was the best justification men could offer for being callous
to attack women through molestation, rape, mutilation, abduction, forcible conversion,
marriage and death. Not only this, sometimes women were killed by their own men to save
the ‘honour’ of women who were vulnerable to be assaulted.
The concept of ‘honour’ is so deep rooted in Indian society that women often fall victim
to it. This notion of so called ‘chastity’ or ‘izzat’ has caused havoc in the life of women during
post partition violence. Women were seen as an easy target to wreak vengeance on the rival
community. Being vulnerable targets of violence women suffered inter-community as well as
intra-community violence during the partition. The post-partition period brought with it
violence, disgrace and permanent scars in the lives of women. Though women and common
man had no role in deciding the fate of India at that time, they suffered badly due to the
decisions of selfish politicians to divide India into two countries. Men of both the
communities—the Hindus and the Muslims were worried about their women not because they
loved them but because they feared violence to their ‘chastity’ which would bring shame and
dishonour to the whole community. Since chastity of women was valued much countless
women saved their honour by jumping into the wells or by throwing themselves into burning
houses and the burnt themselves alive ( Hansen 176) as they knew that virtue in women was
valued much by the male-dominated society and any aberration meant devastation in their life.
Men started worrying overnight about their women as they symbolised honour to the
whole religious group to which they belonged. Men displayed concern for women as “women
are more easily defiled and given social attitudes. This brings disgrace both to the women and
family in which they are born and the one in which they are married (Dubey 107). How women
became a symbol of community honour during the partition is obvious in the words of Urvashi

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The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 13, Issue-III, June 2022 ISSN: 0976-8165

Butalia, “If colonialism provided Indian men the rationale for constructing and reconstructing
the identity of the Hindu woman as a ‘Bhadramahila’…. Partition provided the rationale for
making women into symbols of the national honour.” (145)
This shifting notion of honour gave men of one community a chance to take it as an
opportunity to punish and disgrace the ‘other’ community by inflicting the wickedest kind of
violence upon the women of the ‘other’ community. Women became a target of violence—
abduction, rape, molestation and even murder during those days (Hansen 176). Women were,
thus, forced to bear the brunt of inter-community violence during the partition. Besides, It what
went against women was the belief that if chastity of women got defiled, it would be a
permanent reminder of a community’s dishonour. It becomes very clear, here, that rape is a
powerful tactic (Abdulali 199-200) because the raping a woman is a way of demoralising and
defeating men as it has been a case in patriarchal cultures for thousands of years. Evidently,
women remained mute sufferers and more sinned against than sinning.
The partition of India saw the worst kind of heinous crime against children, girls and
women. Innumerable older women had been abducted—women in their fifties and sixties. The
social workers who were the eye witness to these shocking acts observed that this was not
uncommon because abductors often knew the circumstances of women they were picking up.
They would take away older women and widows or those with those whose husbands had been
killed, for their property. They would then ask to become their ‘sons’ a shortcut to quick
acquisition of property (Butalia102). The post partition violence also, in this way, displayed
the nastiest kind of greed for property and it was the worst time when people were ready to do
adopt deceitful ways.
Once the women were assaulted physically they became victims of physical as well as
mental violence. At the one hand they suffered physical scars at the hands of the rival
community and on the other hand, their own men started looking at them as defiled and polluted
ones and started maintaining distance from these victimised women. Now their own
community treated them as untouchables or social outcast. Many a victim was turned away and
ostracised by their kith and kin. This not only wreaked physical pain to women but also added
to the mental trauma in the life of women belonging to the Hindu and the Muslim communities.
Religion did not matter for women. Their fate was almost same. This mental and physical
trauma is laid bare before the readers by the writers of short stories as the stories focus on the
plight of numerous women both Hindus and Muslims. The stories give us an idea of the
pervasive violence suffered by women during the communal frenzy of the partition.

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The Partition Holocaust and Women: A Study of “The Final Solution” and “Bitter Harvest”

The short stories taken up for in-depth study are replete with the theme of violence
against women. The stories reflect how women were the real victims during the partition. It is
only through the short stories based on the partition that the whole tragedy of women is laid
open before us. We observe how in these stories physical violence ranges from verbal ill-
treatment and humiliation to beatings; from abduction to rape; from restoration to rejection and
further seclusion. Women became targets of molestation, abductions, rapes, mutilation, forced
conversions, marriage and death. The short stories that deal with the trauma and agony of
women are “The Final Solution” and “Bitter Harvest”.
“The Final Solution” (Bandopadhyay 17) is a story by Indian Bengali author who
writes about the demolition of values, the politics of power and sexuality in the escalating
refugee problem in Calcutta, which was a direct outcome of the Partition of India in 1947. In
this story, Manik Bandopadhyay distinctly recalls how the overarching effects of the peace
committee, rehabilitation programmes and the inhuman conditions in the refugee camps leave
deep and long lasting scars on the minds of the women survivors. The story underlines the
struggle of a female protagonist against a depraved society that turns out to be capitalist,
hegemonic, androcentric and patriarchal to the core.
The story is a poignant account of those Hindu families who are forced to leave their
homes in East Pakistan owing to the threat to their life caused by the post Partition violence.
They come to West Bengal in India but unfortunately fail to find refuge in the overcrowded
refugee camps. They are forced to settle in any place they can find, including public places like
the Sealdaha Railway Station. The protagonist of the story, Mallika, and her family arrive
Kolkata, having lost everything except the clothes on their body. They take shelter on this
railway platform, “Mallika’s family had a place, the length of a spread out mattress.
Everything, everyone is squeezed in there—Mallika, her husband Bhushan, their two-and-half-
year-old son Khokon and her widowed sister-in-law Asha; tin suitcases, beddings, bundles,
pots and pans” (19). The Partition has rendered them so vulnerable that they can do nothing
except embracing the destitute circumstances.
The story reveals how people became homeless overnight and the very precariousness
of such a location foregrounds the family’s rootless and destabilised existence, and the irony
of having a “mattress kingdom” is sharper in the context of the irreversible displacement
suffered by them (19).
Those were the dark days for women as there were people ready to exploit their
circumstances. When the tout, Pramatha comes to Mallika with the offer of “some jobs still
available for women”, she understands the risk, yet one look at her child that is “now reduced

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to a skeleton”, makes her agree because, as she says, “There’s no other way out for us” (21).
The Partition wreaked not only physical onslaught on women but also the psychological trauma
as it is rather easy to heal the physical wounds but the scars inflicted to the mind and soul are
irrevocable.
A mother can never see her hunger stricken child wriggling in pain. It is that
compulsion arising out of maternal love that prompts her to compromise her body and self-
respect. She surrenders saying, “Okay, I'll do whatever you ask: dance naked if you so wish.
But you will find a room for us first, won’t you? An enclosed space and a drop of milk for my
child, otherwise he will die” (22). When Pramatha arranges everything, she holds his feet and
sobbingly says, “Are you a man or god?”(22).The price she has to pay is heavy as she senses
the built-in and structured sexual exploitation. She says to her sister-in-law, Asha, “I would be
ready to die if that could keep my child alive” (23).
Not only Mallika is a target of sexual violence but people like Pramatha—the so called
social workers— have also an evil eye on every woman who is victim of the Partition violence
leading to uprootedness, penury and homelessness. These so called social workers want to
exploit Mallika’s sister-in-law, Asha and they were too happy to kill two birds with one stone.
Mallika resorts to prostitution so that she might save her child and family from
starvation that is rather forced on them by the Partition. For a woman it is difficult to find some
suitable job amidst such social upheavals as they find all doors of employment shut on them.
Painfully enough, it becomes easy to sell their bodies. Yet she finds it difficult to give in. It
hurts her and she opposes the sexual advances of Pramatha. Her agonised self is laid open
before the readers in the following words, “She had accepted the fact that Pramatha was going
to engage her in prostitution, but she couldn’t tolerate the thought that he had planned to enjoy
her first, before introducing her to the profession” (29). He himself wants to exploit her
sexually. Having consumed a few glasses of wine, he draws her to himself and pulling her close
to his bosom, Pramatha tenderly murmured, “It is how I want you… come and be with me for
a while and then you can go back…” (29). It is how male dominated society pretends to help a
woman just to exploit her. Men are not ready to extend the helping hand if she has nothing to
surrender before them.
Whereas prostitution is a humiliating act, yet circumstances make it a depersonalised
and necessary act when no one is in sight to help her. She is forced to engage in such heinous
act in the hope of a better present for her family. Pramatha’s attempt to violate her body is like
a personal betrayal of her trust in him. This act of betrayal breaks the boundaries of her

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The Partition Holocaust and Women: A Study of “The Final Solution” and “Bitter Harvest”

patience, and she strangles him to death. The money she takes from the dead man’s pockets
represents “the final solution” to her.
Confronted with violence, Mallika turns out to be a heroic figure in the end as she
doesn’t give up in the face of calamities. However, in her case, mental trauma is thrust on her
by the devilish forces that dispossess and degrade her identity. The act of murdering Pramatha
empowers her, and she says, “What did he take me for? Am I weak just because I’m a woman?”
(30).
She is thus a figure of courage as she thwarts Pramatha’s plan to exploit her and other
women in their state of helplessness and daringly impedes Pramatha’s advances towards her
by strangling him to death. Her final revenge brings an apt closure to the tales of misfortune
heaped on innocent, gullible female victims by spiteful, stone-hearted sexual maniacs.
Maliaka’s courage in the face of adversities wins the hearts of readers as she stays undaunted
by the final catastrophe and reaches the final solution through her strong will and presence of
mind.
Despite its unnaturalness and unexpectedness, the ending evokes a sensation of shock
and bewilderment, but it has a plausible justification. Finally, her cool and collected reaction
dispels any doubts regarding the propriety of her actions. She boldly speaks,
Have you-all eaten?....We’ll never be hungry again, Thakurjhi never, ever...My son
will have milk four times a day....I’ll go to the railway station every evening in my
frayed sari. The sharks will come to pick me up for the sure... But this time I‘ll be
carrying a sharp knife with me, you understand Thakurjhi. (46)
She resolves to carry a knife whenever she interacts with men, because violence has
become the currency of human negotiation during the Partition. She transforms from a victim
to a mastermind in charge of her own and her family’s fate.
Any moral guilt that she might have felt is erased by the fierce mother-love that propels
her. The text is open-ended; the writer does not judge her morally or punish her legally, and
even the reader is compelled to withhold judgement in the context of the sheer desperation of
the plight of the refugee mother.
Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Bitter Harvest” (239) is a thought provoking story. It takes us
into the world where violence begets more violence. The story begins with the injured Muslim
Quasim, who discovers the blood soaked lifeless body of his wife lying in the courtyard, and
that of his raped daughter, Sharifan, on the floor.
On the floor was the nearly naked body of a young girl, her small, unturned breasts
pointing at the ceiling as she lay on her back. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t.

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He turned his face away and said in soft, grief-sticken voice, ‘Sharifan’. Then he
picked up some clothes from the floor and threw them over her. He did not notice that
they had missed their target by several feet. (239)
The trauma of witnessing the death of his daughter affects Quasim in a manner that
instead of breaking down he himself indulges in strange madness of vengeance. “As he ran out
of the house, axe in hand, he was no conscious of the bullet in his thigh or the blood-soaked
body of his wife, but only of Sharifan, the naked Sharifan lying dead in a heap on the floor of
her room.”(239)
He wants to die and he feels disappointed that he has not been killed by them.
Nevertheless, the burning fire of fury remains unquenched, he moves forward to infiltrate into
a Hindu house in the neighbourhood where a Hindu girl of his daughter’s age lives. Quasim’s
psychological trauma can be gauged from the fact that Sharifan’s murder turns the victim into
a killer and he targets a Sikh man along with three others chanting the religious slogan.
“Qasim threw away the axe and pounced on her like a wild beast, throwing her to the ground.
Then he began to tear at her clothes and for half an hour he ravaged her like an animal gone
berserk. There was no resistance; she had fainted.”(240)
After Bimla’s murder he realises his misdeed and he covers her dead body with a
blanket and turns numb. The story follow a cyclic pattern with Qasim, after putting young girl
into death he partially regains his senses and repeatedly the act of covering the raped girl
Bimla’s dead body with a blanket, like he did with his daughter Sharifan. But this time his
position shifts from victim to culprit. This shows that the Partition violence and religious frenzy
have turned even the sane into mad one as one has started acting irrationally.
On being asked by Bimla’s father of what is he doing in his house, Qasim merely points
out towards the dead body of Bimla with his trembling voice as ‘Sharifan’. Qasim is in a dazed
condition unable to distinguish between Sharifan and Bimla.
Bimla’s father, on witnessing the whole situation turns mad and in order to quench his
vengeance moves out of the house to avenge it, wailing, “Bimla, my daughter, Bimla.”(241)
The tragic tale highlights the irony that in the utter demand of revenge and anger
everyone had been involved in sexual violence and murder of their own daughters. Even
children were not safe from sexual violence.
For Quasim’s traumatised mind, the probable Hindu or Sikh mob who have raped
Sharifan, assumes the form of all Hindus and Sikhs and Bimla’s body transforms into the
specific site for the manifestation of her father’s desire for vengeance. As both Sharifan and
Bimla are of the same age therefore through some macabre logic Bimla becomes the ideal

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The Partition Holocaust and Women: A Study of “The Final Solution” and “Bitter Harvest”

person to pay the price for brutality imparted on Quasim’s wife and daughter. This form of
retributive justice associated with blood thirsty revenge, has its strong roots in the human
psychology and is known as law of retribution.
Through this story Manto explores different social and psychological spaces born out
of the abyss of partition. At the crucial phase of partition looking into the dynamics of the
inhuman and devilish behaviour one could witness the fact that under the masquerade of
religion and nationhood women and children were the worst sufferers. Violence was initiated
by man but inflicted on women and children, who were subjected to ineffable brutality.
Manto concluded the story in a running note as if to suggest that vicious cycle of
revenge and violence is never ending and it will continue as long as the human beings are in
this world. Opening of the story where Muslim father in mad grief screaming his daughter’s
name, ‘Sharifan, Sharifan’ and closing of the story where Hindu father shouting his daughters
name, ‘Bimla, Bimla' and this never ending vicious cycle continued and still continues. The
question still remains unsolved as who was benefitted of all this ghastly violence. Women
belonging to the Hindu, the Muslim and the Sikh communities suffered for no fault of their
own. Unfortunately the recurrent feature in these attacks was the emphasis on the symbols of
sexuality and reproduction as the female body presented an opportunity to conquer the enemy
territory. The attacks on the women were made on two levels. First, women were seen as
symbols of community honour and second, their bodies were seen as site of community
reproduction. The modus operandi included gang rapes, stripping, parading naked women
through town, branding the breasts and genitalia with slogans like ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ or
‘Hindustan Zindabad’ (Hansen 162). Not only this, the breasts were amputated, the wombs
were knifed open, and the foetuses were killed. Thus ‘rape’ was particularly used as a weapon
not just to disgrace the ‘other’, but also to sow one’s own seed in the enemy womb (Hansen
162).
Thus the partition stories represent trauma of uncountable women to whom the partition
was an experience full of pain and humiliation. In a way the partition violence was not only an
example of collapse of law and order in 1947 but also a serious collapse of moral values as
virtue of women was trampled only for the simple reason that they belonged to the ‘other’
community.

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Works Cited:
Aiyar, Swarna. “August Anarchy: The Partition Massacres in Punjab, 1947” in Freedom,
Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence, ed. D. A. Low and Howard
Brasted. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998.
Abdulali, Sohaila. “Rape in India: An Emprical Picture.” Rehana Ghadially (ed.) Women in
Indian Society. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1988.
Bandopadhyay, Manik. “The Final Solution.” Debjani Sengupta (ed.). Mapmaking: Partition
Stories from two Bengal. New Delhi: Amaryllis, 2011.
Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence. New Delhi: Viking: 1998.
Dubey, S.C. Indian Society. Rpt. 1990. New Delhi: National Book Trust of India, 1994.
Hansen, Anders Bjorn. Partition and Genocide Manifestation of Violence in Punjab, 1937-
1947. New Delhi: India research Press, 2002.
Major, Andrew J. “‘The Chief Sufferers’: Abduction of Women During the Partition of The
Punjab”. Freedom, Trauma Continuities: Northern India Independence. Ed. D.A.
Low and Howard Brasted. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998.
Manto, Sadat Hasan. “Bitter Harvest”. Trans. and ed. Khalid Hasan. Gurgaon: Penguin
Books, 2008.

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