Speaker 1: Warning. The following episode contains stories of extreme violence. They
Speaker 1: used to read people young girls and then when they
Speaker 1: get pregnant, and all that the pregnant ladies bridge were good.
Speaker 1: They would shut them open their bellies, take the kids
Speaker 1: and they burn it on a pitch like how you
Speaker 1: barbecue of something. Kids were found literally roasted on the spitch.
Speaker 1: You've heard me talk about riots, families being separated, the
Speaker 1: atrocities committed by the British and other men in power,
Speaker 1: but you haven't really heard me discuss the state of
Speaker 1: women during this time. These next two episodes will exclusively
Speaker 1: focus on women and how they were used as weapons,
Speaker 1: as martyrs, and how their mass murders and suicides were
Speaker 1: downplayed for the pitiful excuse of honor. From I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: I'm Mahases and This is Partition a podcast that will
Speaker 1: take a closer look into this often forgotten part of history.
Speaker 1: Around seventy five thousand to one hundred thousand women are
Speaker 1: thought to have been raped and abducted during Partition by
Speaker 1: men of other religions and by men of the same religion,
Speaker 1: some of whom were in fact related to the women
Speaker 1: in question. We had her time and again in many
Speaker 1: villages on both sides of the border, Hundreds of women
Speaker 1: had jumped or were forced to jump into wells the
Speaker 1: same bizarre Could the poll of religion be so strong
Speaker 1: that people, more specifically women would actually kill themselves. This
Speaker 1: is an excerpt from feminist author and activist Urvashi Brutalia's
Speaker 1: book The Other Side of Silence. She collects many memories
Speaker 1: and accounts about women and partition. I met Bassade Corps,
Speaker 1: a tall, strapping woman in her mid sixties, who had
Speaker 1: been present in her village Toakulsa in March when the
Speaker 1: decision was taken that women would jump into a well.
Speaker 1: She watched more than ninety women throw themselves into a
Speaker 1: well for fear of Muslims. She too jumped in, but
Speaker 1: survived because there was not enough water in the well
Speaker 1: to drown them all. She said, It's like when you
Speaker 1: put roties into a ton door and if it is
Speaker 1: too full, the ones near the top, they don't cook.
Speaker 1: They have to be taken out of Coors son Beer
Speaker 1: Bahador Singh watched his father kill his sister. He described
Speaker 1: the incident with pride in his voice, pride at his
Speaker 1: sister's courage. The first time I had been alerted to
Speaker 1: family deaths. The term for men of at least killing
Speaker 1: off their women and children. Was when I had met
Speaker 1: an old man named Mengal Sake. He told me how
Speaker 1: he and his two brothers had taken the decision to
Speaker 1: kill He used the word martyr seventeen members of their family.
Speaker 1: We had to do this, he told me, because they
Speaker 1: would have been converted. Mungo Sing thought he was doing
Speaker 1: his duty. He thought he was doing a kindness. Utalia
Speaker 1: recalls her encounter. He crossed over to Armor, Sir, where
Speaker 1: he began a new life. When I met him, he
Speaker 1: was the only one left of the three brothers. He
Speaker 1: had a new family, a wife, children, grandchildren, all of
Speaker 1: whom had heard and dismissed his stories. To learn more
Speaker 1: about women's experiences during the Partition, I interviewed a partition
Speaker 1: survivor who was a small child. In regardless of age,
Speaker 1: there are things that one never forgets. She wrote an
Speaker 1: historical fiction novel that came out this year titled Love Partitioned,
Speaker 1: a mix of research and moments she witnessed. She used
Speaker 1: this book as a way to cope with the monstrosities
Speaker 1: of the event. In addition to her novel, we discussed
Speaker 1: her family and reflected on seventy five years. Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: Manjela Waldron. I retired as a professor at Ohio State
Speaker 1: University and Biomedical Engineering, and now I am in a
Speaker 1: senior facility in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. And I'm also an adjunct
Speaker 1: professor at Stanford University and School of Medicine and working
Speaker 1: on prevention research for older adults. What I'm doing and
Speaker 1: I'm writing, and my next book is on compassion, then
Speaker 1: I will do a equal to Love Partition, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially following up the plot where I kind of left off.
Speaker 1: Women are at the forefront of Mandula's book histories and
Speaker 1: stories that are often ignored in most narratives of Partition.
Speaker 1: She talks about how her mother and other women she
Speaker 1: admired played characters in her novel, especially the main character, Mangola.
Speaker 1: Love Partition follows Mangola, her mother, her best friend Basanthi,
Speaker 1: and her husband Ann as they navigate their own conflicts
Speaker 1: of religion, sexuality, and social privilege leading up to Partition.
Speaker 1: Mangola is very idealistic and works hard to become an
Speaker 1: advocate for women in the worlds of education and the
Speaker 1: Greater Indian community. Through Mangola, the reader gets the distinct
Speaker 1: perspective of being a woman during this time period. We
Speaker 1: observe her sacrifices, her family struggles, her relationships, and the
Speaker 1: violence and abuse she received an witness firsthand. The character
Speaker 1: the protagonist Mangola, is based on all the women I
Speaker 1: have admired over time. So my father, till my mother
Speaker 1: is dying day would say, well, you know, your mother
Speaker 1: saved our lives, and I'd say how, And my mother
Speaker 1: was hitting up. She didn't want to live through that
Speaker 1: trauma again. And so I didn't know anything from her
Speaker 1: point of perspective or who was who and why and where?
Speaker 1: But I knew she was very keen worker, and she
Speaker 1: did a lot of work with crafts and things, very
Speaker 1: accomplished and also very strong person. And she supported me
Speaker 1: through my education to come overseas and married and everybody
Speaker 1: was close. Again still would have arranged my marriage. She
Speaker 1: just said, no, you just do what you need to do.
Speaker 1: Manjula's mother was a major source of inspiration for her
Speaker 1: characters and love partitioned. Even though her mom remained tight
Speaker 1: lept about her own stories because of the exuberant amount
Speaker 1: of research Mandula conducted for the book, she can only
Speaker 1: fathom what her mother most likely experienced. I did a
Speaker 1: lot of research reading about it, and it was all
Speaker 1: just the books were all about gore and horrid things,
Speaker 1: not representing that there was any transformation, any any way
Speaker 1: in which it could be redeemed. And yet, I mean,
Speaker 1: we were all alive, and my mother was alive, and
Speaker 1: she did a lot for advancement and supporting girls after partition,
Speaker 1: and so how did she find that courage? But she
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk about it because personally it was I could
Speaker 1: understand after I did a lot of PTSD training why
Speaker 1: it was hard for me and why it was hard
Speaker 1: for her, and why it was hard for my father
Speaker 1: to escape just through the skin of their teeth kind of.
Speaker 1: I know you were obviously very young, but do you
Speaker 1: remember anything about partition in the weeks and months leading
Speaker 1: up to it, Like, did you witness any unrest? Did
Speaker 1: you notice kind of a change in the communities in
Speaker 1: which you were living? Yes, And as I talk, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of having those body reactions. Yes. Um. The Direct
Speaker 1: Action Day is based on essentially body recollections, but of
Speaker 1: course fictionalized, but all the coinage that I saw is
Speaker 1: seared in the brain of the Direct Action Day because
Speaker 1: I had gone to Delhi for my birthday to my grandparents,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, parts of it are real from
Speaker 1: my memory. It's so it's a body memory. And so
Speaker 1: that was very unsettling, and I tried to write it
Speaker 1: in my continuing Studies at Stanford writing classes, but I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. I had to fictionalize it. So
Speaker 1: so those kind of carnage are very vivid, the headless bodies,
Speaker 1: for example, the train right, you know, everybody was having
Speaker 1: one reaction to things that I was having totally different reaction.
Speaker 1: And the rock War was very hard for me. I
Speaker 1: couldn't watch. I had to do a TV fast and
Speaker 1: which was president for almost for a year. I discussed
Speaker 1: Direct Action Day in great detail in last week's episode.
Speaker 1: The savagery of the riots, looting, and murder that took
Speaker 1: place is not for the faint of heart. It has
Speaker 1: proven that smell is a sense most associated with memory
Speaker 1: and form and jula. That statement could not be more
Speaker 1: true the spell of Charred Flesh. Because I was vegetarian.
Speaker 1: I didn't come across sit until I was at Stanford
Speaker 1: and I was pregnant with my son, and I guess
Speaker 1: all the hormones too, which just brought up everything. And
Speaker 1: comes six o'clock, you know, the whole California lights up
Speaker 1: with barbecues and summer and hamburgers and things, and I
Speaker 1: just I just couldn't bear it. I needed to fly somewhere,
Speaker 1: and of course I couldn't those stuck at Stanford as
Speaker 1: a graduates too. That smell I still have a lot
Speaker 1: of problems with, because I guess there's no difference between
Speaker 1: cows flesh and human flesh when it's put on fire.
Speaker 1: At the top of the episode, you heard a clip
Speaker 1: from my great aunt. The disturbing sentiment she described is
Speaker 1: echoed Amandula's book Mangola looks out the window by the road.
Speaker 1: She sees dried up bodies of three women. Their abdomens
Speaker 1: have been slashed open, and their fetuses lie beside them
Speaker 1: in a neat arrange. It You've heard me say this before,
Speaker 1: that many people who were trying to escape on trains
Speaker 1: didn't make it to their destination alive and love partitioned
Speaker 1: when Doula wrote a collection of scenes that took place
Speaker 1: on trains, a lot of which was drawn from her
Speaker 1: own experience escaping with her family. We were to be
Speaker 1: on the train where everybody was massacred and my mother
Speaker 1: and that part is I remember them fighting, would be
Speaker 1: you know, a fictionalized version, but still it was real
Speaker 1: that my father wanted to just take one more day
Speaker 1: and beyond the train were supposed to be. But my
Speaker 1: mother was listening to everybody and she said no, she
Speaker 1: was going to leave the day before, and he said,
Speaker 1: are you crazy. You know, it's just one day. We
Speaker 1: won't have a place, we won't have this, we won't
Speaker 1: have that. She said, well, then I will leave with
Speaker 1: the children because I'm here. We won't make it because
Speaker 1: all the trains were coming back with dead bodies and
Speaker 1: only a few people survived, and so my father finally said,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll go, and we just escaped because you know,
Speaker 1: all those headless bodies and own the people who were
Speaker 1: massacred were there around us, and so we just had
Speaker 1: to hide in the train and make sure. So some
Speaker 1: of those things, again it's you know, not real, but
Speaker 1: historically correct. So it's something that you had to be
Speaker 1: on that train to experience, and if you were on
Speaker 1: the later train, then you didn't experience because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be here talking to you. Her mother truly did save
Speaker 1: their lives. Something else I wanted to ask you, You
Speaker 1: know this year does mark anniversary as you know, um,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling about that? Well, that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I wanted to finish this book, because they
Speaker 1: are not too many people living your age and others
Speaker 1: who really know what happened exactly. And there's a hopeful
Speaker 1: side to things, but there's also hopeless side, and it's
Speaker 1: our choice where we focus. What Monjula says here is
Speaker 1: so accurate. People my age don't know about this, regardless
Speaker 1: of partition is a part of our history or not
Speaker 1: when speaking to my other friends who are South Asian
Speaker 1: more off and then not when they do find out
Speaker 1: about it, it's by accident. The seventy five anniversary, to me,
Speaker 1: is very timely for the book to come out because
Speaker 1: it's not only the seventy five anniversary of independence, it's
Speaker 1: also the seventy five anniversary of Pakistan being born. Mandul
Speaker 1: ever called Sean Gandhi after he passed, of course, assassination
Speaker 1: of Gandhi where I was and it still is memory
Speaker 1: in my brain about him being assassinated, so that one
Speaker 1: again is real, fictionalize is real. But I can see
Speaker 1: his body lying there, you know, And and all the
Speaker 1: grown ups were crying. I've never seen grown ups crying.
Speaker 1: And then you know, when they found it was a
Speaker 1: Hindu who killed they were all relieved because at least
Speaker 1: the carnage will stop. Even after all this time, Mandula
Speaker 1: recounts how when she sees any type of film or show,
Speaker 1: if there is blood, she can't watch it. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't see blood. I couldn't see gore. I you know,
Speaker 1: my children will say, okay, Mom, you can open your eyes.
Speaker 1: It's gone. I just couldn't see it. I couldn't experience
Speaker 1: it as an adult, as you know, my children were
Speaker 1: older teenagers. But I just couldn't. Mandula visited an exhibit
Speaker 1: where a lot of recreations of Gandhi through tech triggered
Speaker 1: more memories for her. I would compare her experience to
Speaker 1: confronting a ghost from your past. How would any of
Speaker 1: us react if one place? How so many recollections we
Speaker 1: may want to forget? So then I sat there and
Speaker 1: I kind of lost it. I just cried and cried
Speaker 1: and cried and cried. So written that up going to
Speaker 1: Gandhi music em as a story, but it was very
Speaker 1: difficult and that I think made some connection in the
Speaker 1: body and mind for me to even look at it.
Speaker 1: And so this was two thousand and six, two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven when I went to Delhi. So that was
Speaker 1: also the essentially genesis of this novel, was this experience
Speaker 1: of oh, okay, so my memories aren't as bad as
Speaker 1: I think they are because this actually happened, and I,
Speaker 1: just as a child, couldn't make sense of it. Because
Speaker 1: after independence we were supposed to live happily ever after,
Speaker 1: and that's how everybody projected, you know, rah rah rah,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't rah rah rah. It wasn't hard to
Speaker 1: enmirement Julia. While listening to her speak, she possesses tenacity
Speaker 1: and poise at the same time. When I mentioned this
Speaker 1: to her, she told me that for a long time
Speaker 1: she disassociated herself with partition and it was until she
Speaker 1: was older that she was able to talk about it
Speaker 1: in this way. In a way, it's like we both
Speaker 1: had a reckoning with ourselves later in life when it
Speaker 1: comes to partition. For me, it was finally knowing about
Speaker 1: it and trying to understand all the pieces from Anjula.
Speaker 1: It was coming to terms and trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of her memories and experiences. If I didn't have it
Speaker 1: in my body, see it in my brain, I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to put this book together. Next time,
Speaker 1: I tried to find out what we can do to
Speaker 1: acknowledge these countless women, the ones who fiercely protected their families,
Speaker 1: the ones who met a terrible fate because of their
Speaker 1: male relatives, the ones who went missing. Listen in to
Speaker 1: hear my conversation with artists Berthicocholry and her work with
Speaker 1: anti memorials. I wanted to understand how this construct of
Speaker 1: Mother India had maybe enabled the perverse logic of using
Speaker 1: rape as a weapon in communal rights, where you know,
Speaker 1: the body of the women of a community can become
Speaker 1: the symbolic battleground, where if you violate the women's bodies,
Speaker 1: you can inflict a very deep wound and humiliation to
Speaker 1: the men of that community. This is how she pays
Speaker 1: tribute to those who never got a chance to share
Speaker 1: their perspective Until next week. I'm Nejaze's and this is Partition.
Speaker 1: Partition was developed as a part of The Next Up Initiative,
Speaker 1: created by Anna Hosnier, Joel Monique and Senia Median. Partition
Speaker 1: is produced by Anna hosni A, Tricia Mukerjee and Beca Ramos.
Speaker 1: It is edited by Rory Gagan, with the original score
Speaker 1: composed by Mark Hadley H