Rehearsing the Partition

Gendered Violence in aur Kitne Tukde

Bibliographic Data

ID3946360
AuthorsJaya Menon (0009-0002-6777-9357, corresponding author), Jisha Menon
Year2006
Volume84
Issue1
Pages29-47
Publication date2006-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400299
OpenAlexW2074316042
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited14

This article argues that the specifically sexual nature of the political violence of the 1947 Partition of British India installs women's bodies as unambiguously sexed and ethnic. Through an analysis of Kirti Jain's 2001 theatre production of Aur Kitne Tukde (How Many Fragments?), I consider how Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs appropriate colonialist and nationalist ideologies surrounding the notion of 'woman' as repository of cultural value. The women in Jain's play are not a priori subjects who experience violence but rather the experience of violence makes (and unmakes) them as gendered, ethnic and national subjects. I argue that they come into subjecthood after a violent objectification and are re-constituted by their experience of national and sexual violence. The performance of nationalism - through embodied acts of sexual violence, conversion, martyrdom and state violence - is enacted upon female bodies that are transformed into political artefacts. I ask how bodies are staged and commodified by acts of political violence and argue that marking female bodies through acts of political violence constitutes a mode of transcription to communicate with other men that will encounter this body

Political violence · Sexual violence · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

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