ASSIGNMENT

 NAME- ARUSHI BHATIA

 ROLL NO - 1226
 YEAR- 3rd
 COURSE- BA ( HONS) ENGLISH
 SUBJECT- LITERATURE & CINEMA
 SUBMITTED TO- VIOLINA MA’AM

Ques. PINJAR- the novel and the film challenges the patriarchal ideologies and the
dominant narrative around the figure of the abducted woman. Discuss.

Ans. Amrita Pritam’s debut novel Pinjar, later translated as “The Skeleton” by Khushwant
Singh, came as a saga of pain and problems experienced by females before and during
Partition.

"It was a sin to be alive in a world so full of evil, thought Hamida. It was a crime to be born a
girl." Amrita Pritam raises a feminist voice through the women characters of her novel.
Through, Pinjar author describes the agony and plight of women who were the victims on
both the sides. Set in the time of 1947 partition, the novel shows that communal hatred was
mainly and deeply rooted in the minds of Hindus and Muslims. The novel is a tale of the
sorrow and compassion of women. Amrita had not just heard of Partition, but had also
witnessed it herself. She was aware of the torture and inhuman insults women had suffered
before, during and immediately after Partition and thus, she portrays the pathetic and
falling standard of our human spirit in her novel.

Amrita’s story of Partition, its horror and tragedy has man as the tormentor and woman as
the sufferer. It focuses more on the trauma of women abducted, raped, murdered, forcefully
married or made slaves by the opponent community. Author appropriately draws the
woman dilemma and frustration in the novel through various incidents. As the title Pinjar
suggests which means skeleton is connected with the idea of devaluing women and
reducing them to mere objects of men’s pleasure. They are nothing but mere hollow
creatures bereft of love or any other emotion. In the later part of the story, we see a
mentally unstable woman who gets raped and impregnated. She later dies in labour and
gives birth to a child who is reared by Pooro, the protagonist . Her episode depicts that for
some men, a woman’s body is nothing but a ‘pinjar’ which can be used for any desired
purpose. While for some it is a matter of honour, for others it is only an object. ’Pinjar’
means skeleton. A skeleton with neither a face, nor mind, nor a will, nor identity.
Additionally, Pooro’s role is a classic portrayal of victim of partition and Patriarchy, a
feminist tale on the problems faced by women during and after partition. Since, Pooro was
abducted and forcefully married to Rashid as an act of revenge between men of two
different communities , she was used as an instrument to take revenge. Later she has to
meet the disapproval of her acceptance from her family when she managed to escape from
Rashid. Mother says to Pooro that they are impotent to help her, she must accept this
misfortune as her destiny and they cannot accept her as the community will discard and
nobody will marry her younger sisters as she has lost her religion. If sheiks will come to
know that we given u shelter they would not leave any traces of her father and brother.
Here Pooro has to make another sacrifice for her family by not asking them to accept her.
She was already a victim of revenge between two families and still sacrifices were
demanded for the well being of the members of family specially male. In a society where,
Women were idolized as an epitome of honor Ramchand, Pooro’s father and her brother
become the symbols of helplessness in front of the orthodox conventional thinking. One
recurring idea in the film is the virginity of a girl being a sign of the family’s honour. The
rivalry between Pooro’s and Rashid’s families is also attached with the women in the house.
The rivalry between the two families started off when Pooro’s granduncle assaulted
Rashid’s aunt for three days in a row. To avenge this, Rashid is asked to abduct Pooro and
assault her. The idea of associating a woman’s virginity to a family’s honour is something
which persists even today where a rape survivor is blamed for ‘getting raped’ and is
considered a social outcast. The movie also shows a policeman blaming Pooro for ‘secretly
eloping’ with Rashid and dismisses the allegations made by her brother, Trilok. This again
reflects the present-day scenario where the rape survivor has to bear all the brunt of the
violence meted out to her. The reputation of a family comes at stake if a girl or woman is
abducted from it and social norms do not allow the girl/woman or the members of the
family to retrieve the past relations. Once a girl is abducted she is no longer a part of the
family and is considered dead for them. Such oppression of a woman by the members of
her own family, especially by her own parents is an emotional violence and it has continued
for centuries. The novel/film raises the problem of women who have been abducted and
their unwelcomed return into their own family. The novel raises the question why such
innocent women have to suffer both in and outside the family.

In the movie the deep desire for bearing a son and considering daughters as burdens is
revealed throughout with Pooro’s fifty-year-old pregnant mother who is constantly shown
to be praying to beget a son. The father, on the other hand, keeps calling their daughters
“sir ka bojh” and wants to get rid of them as soon as possible by marrying them off. The
song “Charkha Chalaati Maa” written by Amrita Pritam, perfectly highlights this tension
behind the scenes as the song literally suggests that it is better off for a girl to die than to
grow up and become a burden to her family. The mother laments the fact that daughters
must leave their homes and take “a stranger’s hand,” while the sons continue their legacy.
Though Pooro is shown heroic as Rashid’s love for Pooro provides her an opportunity to
control Rashid. She enjoys domination over her husband, Rashid, and makes him do what
she wishes and this is all possible because she has her husband along with her who takes it
all as repentance of his crime committed by abducting Pooro. Pooro not only fights for her
rights along with those of other women, but also dominates the family she lives in. She
moves from her oppressed conditions to a possessive woman who enjoys all power in the
family and interferes in making decisions. She challenges the fear of humiliation,
superstitious set norms of patriarchal society to restore the past of those women who were
kidnapped, raped and violated in the riots during the partition.

Her arm was tattooed on with a new name –‘Hamida’. With that inscription her Hindu
name Pooro became lost. Pooro was reduced not only to a derelict but also being without
any identity. As Amrita says “It was a double life. Pooro became Hamida by day and turned
back Pooro by night. In reality she was neither Hamida nor Pooro; she was just a skeleton,
without a shape or a name.” But when she declares Pakistan as her home, according to
Priyadarshini Dasgupta: “Pooro, thus, makes the non-normative choice to refuse the offer
of inclusion and interpolation into family, community, nation that was once denied to her.
In doing so she recreates her own identity, ‘Hamida’ which had been once thrust upon her.”

She returns to Rashid and submits to her destiny by losing her religion, name, and identity
in the process. Her character takes an unexpected turn towards the end when she reunites
with her family but decides to stay with her husband. Unlike other Partition novels, Pinjar
ends with recognition, recovery and rehabilitation of the abducted women. It ends with the
discovery of self, the acknowledgement of Hamida by choosing Rashid over her family.
Once again she did not wanted her identity to be fragmented anymore and accepts Rashid
as her truth. Pinjar is a story of woman with extraordinary courage and compassion and
how she happily accepts her home in Pakistan as her reality.

Works Cited:
1. Pritam, Amrita. (2003), The Skeleton and Other Writings. Translation by
Khushwant Singh.
2. Vishwakarma, Sanjeev Kumar, From Imposition to Subversion of Patriarchy in
Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar: A Critical Study