The Body as Testimony: Partition, Patriarchy, and the Cry for Liberty

Words by Sonan Tabindah

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This oil painting was done by Edwin Lord Weeks in the 1880s. He undertook his first voyage to India in 1882, where he proved to be a dedicated observer of Indian culture and architecture. "Nautch Girls Emerging from the Taj Mahal" is one of his well-known works. The painting showcases a group of nautch girls, who were traditional Indian dancers and entertainers, emerging from the iconic Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum located in Agra, India, and is considered one of the most beautiful and recognizable landmarks in the world. (Available now as print)

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Recommended:

The Unwanted Children of Partition

EP 35: Partition with Aanchal Malhotra

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The Body as Testimony: Partition, Patriarchy, and the Cry for Liberty

Whenever I see my nani’s wrinkled hands, I am reminded of the untold stories of the past—the wars, the resilience, the grief, and the burdens she has carried for so long. I can still sense the trauma—the tremors that emerge in fragmented bits, clouding her memories. They come from a lineage of women who endured unimaginable hardships, witnessing the devastation of their communities, their bodies, and the heart-wrenching loss of loved ones. They were once ordinary people living their lives, blissfully unaware that war would one day invade their reality.

I was watching an interview of author Arundhati Roy, in which she talks about the word "liberty" in the context of Noor Inayat Khan. Khan, a British-Indian spy who served Britain in France during WWII, was the daughter of an Indian Gujarati Sufi and an American mother. She joined British intelligence to work with the French Resistance as a radio operator. Tragically, she was later arrested, tortured, and eventually shot.

The reason Khan is often talked about is that, as the story goes, when she was being shot, her last word was "liberty." Of course, in what context she said that word and what it could mean was never known. Her story made me wonder about the meaning of the word "liberty" from the perspectives of countless women brutalized by war.

For many women, during the 1947 partition and the 1971 Liberation War, liberty became a much more complex and farfetched idea that was absent in their lived reality. Women’s bodies became battlegrounds for political vengeance and communal honor, and their agency was stripped away in the name of freedom for others.