Women and Partition – A Reader

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.