When religion defines nationality: Women and the abduction crisis of 1947

By Natasha Sharma

1947. A year that witnessed brutal and worsening, religion-based riots shaking an undivided county, and birthing two nations: India and Pakistan. Amidst the violence and mass migration, about 15 million people found themselves on the wrong side of a hastily drawn border.

The effect of Partition lingers on today, having influenced lives and laws, and having left behind a conflicted legacy, the most recent of which is the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) implemented this month in India. The CAA provides a pathway to Indian citizenship for certain religious minorities from neighbouring countries.

We can still conjure up images of unprecedented violence breaking out in 1947, crackling sounds of the greedy fire as it consumed the hope and lives of the people, the echoes of women screaming, the sight of dead bodies lying strewn, and the whiff of the everlasting smell of decay. Not just of human bodies, but one of dying humanity.

Underneath the visible trauma, there were several others that rarely saw the light of the day, at least in the public eye.

In the ensuing chaos, countless women were abducted and forced into marriages across religious lines. Women in South Asia were (and still are) considered as symbols of communal and family honour, and hordes of men attacked the fairer sex so that they could ‘punish’ the other side.

Mutilating, violating, and inflicting atrocities were much more than isolated acts of violence against women – but revenge against a certain community via its women.

Driven by the human-rights violation, political pressure, flawed understanding of loss, and good intentions, the nascent governments of India and Pakistan united to discuss the grave issue.

This resulted in the ‘Inter-Dominion Treaty’, a pre-cursor to the ‘Rescue and Restoration Act’. It aimed at retrieving women abducted during Partition and reuniting them with their families, if possible. Or at least ‘returning’ them to their countries of religion. The agreement empowered government officials and social workers to investigate and locate abducted women.

It is telling that the title of the act itself assigns women no greater agency than being pieces of property, much like cattle, who need to be rescued and restored back to their owners.

Special ad hoc camps and later ashrams were set up to house these women and offer them physical and emotional support. The result was a mixed bag.

Many freed women faced suspicion and even ostracisation from their own communities because of the stigma associated with abduction and forced conversions. Most of these women spent their entire lives in the government-run ashrams, neither welcome in their birth families nor their new countries.

For some, the act was a lifeline. It allowed them to escape years of physical and emotional abuse, reconnect with loved ones, and reclaim some semblance of their stolen lives. It was an important record of our times: a slice of forgotten history.

However, the act’s good but misplaced intentions denied agency to the very women it aimed to serve. The option for women to stay back in Pakistan had to be supported by an affidavit. Many times, external familial or male pressures heavily influenced the women’s voices and choices.

Further, the agreement did not give women the option to choose whom they married or where they stayed. The official decision did not take individual cases into consideration.

Women who had married their ‘abductors’ and had children preferred living with their new families. As per the law, even if they wanted to return to their country, the condition was to give up their offspring.

Whether staying back or leaving, the only way for mothers to return from Pakistan to India was without their children. For pregnant women, the options were limited to an illegal abortion, which flourished under the governments’ blessing, or giving their infants of mixed origins to orphanages.

Hindu families were reluctant to accept women who were ‘impregnated’, or birthed children, or even had ‘relations’ with men of other faiths, whether or not consensual. Chastity and purity of honour were the crosses that women bore.

Social workers struggled with the dichotomy of upholding the law or listening to the women, especially those who wanted to stay back with their abductors and children.

While men had the choice of choosing their citizenship, India or Pakistan, for the women it was a complicated affair. Three factors decided a woman’s citizenship. The father’s or husband’s citizenship, her religion at birth, and a derivation of the two defined where she belonged. Her nationality was decided by her biology.

The juxtaposition of religion over citizenship meant that, for abducted women, India could house only Hindu and Sikh women, and all Muslims had to move to Pakistan. Besides being stripped of the choice of a lifelong partner, the act imposed ‘nationality’ over women, based on the assumption that she was incapable or unable to undertake the choice for herself.

Not only were mothers denied a chance to be with their children, but the children were denied their rights too. Why did the child stay with their mother’s abductor? And why must they follow the father’s faith and not their mother’s? And to be denied nationality irrespective of the one held by their mother? The answers to these questions can only be gleamed through the patriarchal lens.

Until 1957, when the act was repealed, an approximate 20,000 women were rescued and restored to their respective nations, determined by biological citizenship.

Based on official numbers, 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were reported missing from India while 21,000 Muslim women were reported missing from Pakistan. The Central Recovery Operation estimates that 8,000 women – many of them not reported missing – have been found. 

Natasha Sharma is a Pune-based IT professional and writer. Her stories and op-eds weave social awareness and humour, and have been published on various media platforms. Her debut novel Beneath Divided Skies released this month. Set against the backdrop of the Rescue and Restoration Act, the book dwells on love, sacrifice, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and the choices that shape our destinies. Buy it here.