Non-Teaching Credit Course (NTCC)

WOMEN IN INDIA’S PARTITION THROUGH THE LENS OF PROTIVA BASU’S

‘THE MAROONED’.

A Summer Project [AHSJSP600]

Submitted to

AMITY University, Kolkata

for the partial fulfilment of the award of the degree

MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH

By

Priya Bhattacharjee.

Enrollment Number: A91610321065

Guide

Prof. Ranita Chakraborty Dasgupta

AMITY INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH STUDIES AND RESEARCH

AMITY UNIVERSITY, KOLKATA

 Abstract

Focusing on the condition of women during India’s Partition, this paper highlights how
Partition, like wars and other forms of violence, affected women differently than it affected men
through the harrowing experiences of Bindubashini and the members of her family in Protiva
Basu’s ‘The Marooned’. Protiva Basu’s short story, ‘The Marooned’, lays bare the atrocities
committed on women during and after the partition of India, one of the worst ethnic genocides of
modern times. Though violence was mostly committed on the women of one religious
community by the men of another, Basu’s story exposes how the political chaos of Partition
made women universally vulnerable to men with predatory and exploitative instincts so that
many were victimized by the men of their own communities. Since, in a patriarchal society,
women with no male family members to act as protectors are seen as easy targets by
opportunistic men. The middle-aged widow Bindubashini, her widowed daughter-in-law Uttara
and her young granddaughter Mrinalini, fall easy preys to rapacious men. The title of Basu’s
story ‘The Marooned’ brings out their homelessness on both sides of the border, having to
abruptly abandon their original homeland and having no safe shelter in their new place of refuge.
The paper brings in references from Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition by
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin; and Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to
bring out the condition of Women in India’s Partition. The paper, therefore, examines a record of
exploitation of women during the Partition in a heart-wrenching manner, where the female
members of a family of estate owners became beggars and then were lost to oblivion.