India’s Independence is the story of sacrifice and hard-won freedom from colonial rule—a story worth celebrating. But the birth of a nation 79 years ago also witnessed the monumental tragedy of Partition which saw one of the world’s largest displacements of 12 million people.

The gendered impact of this displacement is rarely discussed. One of India’s most eminent feminists, Urvashi Butalia author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India talks about seeing the Partition story through the eyes of women and how some themes, particenceularly those relating to honour continue to play out nearly eight decades later.

Both my parents were Partition refugees. Despite the fact that they had lived through that time and always talked about it, as a young person I paid no attention to their stories because it just wasn't real to us. It was not reflected in anything we were learning in school, for example, about the political differences between Nehru, Congress and the Muslim League.

Then two things happened. The first was when a friend asked me to help identify people for a film on Partition. So, I started talking to people and that’s when I started to listen to the stories.

But even that didn't hit me so hard as 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and the whole shape of Delhi changed as it suddenly became a violent city. You could see buses burning, people shouting, and the administration, as you know, completely collapsed.

A citizen group Nagrik Ekta Manch was spontaneously set up and many of us volunteered. I had the responsibility of recording people’s stories so that we could file compensation claims or at least have documentation. So many people told me, “This is like Partition again.” I thought, if five days of violence can do this to people, then what must that time have been like? Why do we never think of it?

So I started with exploring my own family history and began to see this city as a city of Partition.

When we talk of Partition, the public recounting tends to look at the big picture: The displacement of 12 million........

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