The 1947 Partition of British India, otherwise simply known as Partition, marked not only the births of India and Pakistan, but also one of modern history’s largest human mass migrations, in which an estimated million died and thousands of women were subjected to horrifying acts of engendered violence. Scholars, such as Menon and Bhasin (1998) as well as Butalia (2000), have conceptualised engendered violence during Partition as a violation of women’s bodies, sexualities and psyches by men in general, manifested in various forms ranging from abduction and rape to honour killing and bodily mutilations. However, this study is limited to examining how honour killing is depicted as a form of such violence in the novel Partitions (2011) by Amit Majmudar. More importantly, it examines how depictions of the honour killing of women during Partition in the selected text can also be read as manifestations of the negative underside of the concept of biopower conceptualised by Foucault, in which mass death and destruction are necessary to ensure the survival of future generations. This study reveals, based on textual evidence surrounding the botched honour killing of the character Simran Kaur, that the honour killing of women during Partition is due to the perception of the time, place and society that women, as well as their sexuality, are symbolic constructions of male honour. This subsequently leads to women being viewed by their own men-folk as threats against the honour of their respective religions and communities in times of communal strife.

Keywords: honour killing; 1947 Partition; engendered violence against women; Partition fiction in English; biopower

DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2201-17

Ballard, R. (2011). Honour killing? Or just plain homicide? In L. Holden (Ed.) Cultural expertise and litigation: Patterns, conflicts, narratives London: Routledge 123-148.

Basu, T. (2014). The fading memory of South Asia's Partition. The Atlantic, 15 Aug. 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-fading-memory-of-partition-india-pakistan-bangladesh/376120/

Bhalla, A. (2006). Moral action in times of Duragraha: The representation of the Sikhs in Partition fiction. Social Scientist, 34(5/6), 104-131.

Butalia, U. (2000). The other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Dasgupta, P. & Roy, D. (2013). Re-covering women: Reading two Partition stories. The Criterion: An International Journal in English, 12(1), 1-6.

Foucault, M. (1979). The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books.

Gudmand-Høyer, M. & Lopdrup Hjorth, T. (2009). Liberal biopolitics reborn. Review essay: Michel Foucault, The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, Foucault

Studies, 7, 99-130.

Hartsock, N. Foucault on power: A theory for women? In L. Nicholson (Ed.). Feminism/Postmodernism (pp. 157-175). London: Routledge.

Heidegger, P. (2012). The Indo-English novel of partition: Fictional memories contradicting official narratives of history. Masala Newsletter, 7(3), 4-6.

Hill, K., Leaning, J., Malik, S. J., Russell, S. S. & Seltzer, W. (2008). The demographic impact of partition in the Punjab in 1947. Population Studies, 62(2), 155-170.

Majmudar, A. (2011). Partitions. Oxford: Oneworld.

Martin, B. (1982). Feminism, criticism and Foucault. New German Critique, 27, 3-30.

Menon, R, & Bhasin, K. (1998). Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Mills, S. (2003). Michel Foucault (Routledge Critical Thinkers). London: Routledge.

Munawar, R., Mushtaq, S. K., Sadaf, F., Usman, A. & Yunus, A. (2013). Female sexuality as carrier of masculinity: A feminist critique of history of sub-continent Partition (1947). European

Academic Research, 1(8), 2167-2175.

O’ Farrell, C. (2005). Michel Foucault. London: SAGE Publications Ltd

Ojakangas, M. (2005). Impossible dialogue on bio-power: Agamben and Foucault. Foucault Studies, 2(2005), 5-28.

Pandey, G. (1997). Community and violence: Recalling Partition. Economic and Political Weekly, 32(32), 2037-2045.

Patel, S. & Gadit, A. M. (2008). Karo-Kari: A Form of Honour Killing in Pakistan. Transcultural Psychiatry, 45(4), 683-694.

Policante, A.(2010). War against biopower: Timely reflections on a historicist Foucault. Theory and Event, 13(1), 1-9.

Ramachandran, I & Ruzy Suliza Hashim. (2014). Revalorising Paraiyar ethnic identity through literary writings. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 14(3), 243-253.

Rasagam, M. & Pillai, S. (2015). Interpolating South Asian spaces and transnational habitation in Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused. 3L: Language Linguistics Literature The Southeast Asian

Journal of English Language Studies, 21(2), 89-101.

Roy, R. (2010). South Asian Partition Fiction in English: From Khushwant Singh to Amitav Ghosh. Vol. 4. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Saint, T. K. (2015). Revisioning and ‘restorying’ Partition. In U. Butalia (Ed.). Partition: The Long Shadow (pp. 189-207). London: Penguin Books.