Coming Out of Partition: Refugee Women of Bengal

Out of Partition is a narrative of the Bengali refugee women, both Hindus and Muslims after the Partition of India in 1947. The story of their struggle is not merely a saga of mental and physical trauma, which did exist, but also a portrayal of their hardship experiences for shelter, rehabilitation and employment. In this arduous journey, they came out of Partition and emerged as new women of a distinct category, self-reliant, and soon turned into social, cultural and political activists of a progressive secular dimension. Spaces and roles they could acquire in this new alien situation were earlier denied in their sheltered and secure places in the pre-Partition days.