Semester Award Granted

Spring 2025

Submission Date

May 2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Stacey Balkan

Abstract

This article argues that representations of women’s bodies as symbols of honor during the partition of India and Pakistan in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India and Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Lajwanti frame violence against these bodies, and forced conversions and marriages, as forms of dishonor among religious rivals within split territories, which attempt to uphold men’s nationalistic identities. Many scholars, such as Rachna Mehra and Rituparna Roy, have studied the displacement of recovered and rehabilitated women in these texts. There has been less scholarship, however, that explores gendered forms of violence with Hindu nationalist notions of masculinity. Through the lens of postcolonial feminist theory, this article analyzes the tension between the symbolic power of female characters’ bodies and the powerlessness of the actual women who possess them. By dismembering, violating, or claiming ownership of a woman’s body, male executors of war in these texts attempt to exhibit the strength of their God and nation.

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