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as she narrates the moment she watched as Raghuvir murdered her parents. 
This harassment is shown further through Raghuvir’s threats of physical assault, 
and by his character repeatedly grabbing Saadia’s arms despite her pleading him 
not to. This is the audience’s first glance into the “traumatic history” of the  
Partition, a singular staging of “the fact that around 75,000 women were estimated 
to have been abducted and raped by men of various religious communities” (Singh 
2009: 447). 
When brought to Raghuvir’s mother, her immediate reaction upon learning 
Saadia’s name, which is typically Muslim, is to immediately change this to  
Sumangala, a name connoting the Goddess Lakshmi in the Hindu religion. They 
establish her place as a housewife in Raghuvir’s household, a stark contrast to her 
role as the playful daughter and sister before she was abducted. Underscored by 
a sorrowful version of Sada Chirian Da Chamba, a solemn realisation dawns on 
both Saadia and the audience: that Saadia was made to be a wife against her will, 
and that she never experienced the wedding she imagined. This imposed change 
of name is indicative of the concept of male ownership over women, reinforcing 
archaic gender roles. With Saadia’s story, Jain begins to stage the development of 
dangerous nationalism, and how “women become targets of continuing violence 
by being made symbols of the family/ community/ nation’s honour” according to 
her Director’s Note in a 2001 brochure for Aur Kitne Tukde (cited in Singh 2009: 
450). 
One of the most graphic depictions of gendered violence towards women during 
the Partition is Vimla’s account of being raped, and her body being mutilated, by 
five Muslim men on a train journey to Amritsar, East Punjab. The moment she is 
attacked is visualised through Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari’s physicalised performance. 
At one point, Tewari falls to the floor, facing the audience as she spreads her legs 
and holds her hands behind her back; this powerful image recreates the moment 
she was raped on the train. She delivers a harrowing line, expressing the trauma of 
having her body mutilated, as for her, “it wasn’t the nation that was cut up – it was 
[her] body”, as translated by Jisha Menon (2006: 38). 
This scene is heavy and difficult to watch due to Tewari’s raw, personal  
performance, therefore attributing a strong significance and reclaiming power to 
the anecdote, which Shruti Bala argues has ‘gained prominence in methodologies 
such as oral history and feminist ethnography’ (2017: 335). Menon also comments 
on this, as the scene not only acts as an “affirmative representation of the Partition 
survivor”, (2006: 37) following Urvashi Butalia’s aim of providing a voice for women 
targeted by sexual violence, but also “challenges” structures of male power. It can 
be argued that female bodies were used to “emasculate men from other  
communities”, as their “inability to protect women signalled the effeminization of 
their male counterparts” (Menon 2006: 38). Once again, this indicates concerns 
surrounding cultural and gendered inferiority during the turbulence of the Partition. 

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