Within patriarchal structures, women are often considered as embodiments of the honor of the whole community. Accordingly, in times of ethnic, religious or other violent conflict, they become major targets. Rape has always been a potent weapon of war in humiliating and emasculating the enemy. This Factsheet provides a glimpse into the magnitude and nature of the sexual violence that was unleashed during the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 and the issues that germinated from it.

This chapter explores Sindhi Partition refugees’ experiences of settlement and adaptation in India, with emphasis on Sindhi women’s experiences. Women’s refugee histories are often marginal to mainstream discourse, although refugee experiences and subjectivities are deeply gendered. Sindhi women in particular have been relegated to the periphery – both in histories of Partition as well as scholarship on the wider Sindhi diaspora.

Informed by Afghan and Pakistani expert interviews, this report explores the historical dynamics and future trajectory of the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship and its impact on Afghan stability.

Abstract: The mediation, through representations, which gives rise to cultural trauma, sets off 'a dramatic loss of identity and meaning, a tear in the social fabric, affecting a group of people that has achieved some degree of cohesion’. An application of Bon Eyerman’s theory of cultural trauma as it relates to the formation of the Indian and Pakistani identities depends largely on the experiential mediation of the partition violence of 1947 — a mediation which conjoins collective memory and national identity through cultural templates.

Abstract: The focus of this essay is gendered collective memory of the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947, at the time of Independence from British rule. The essay addresses the question of whether there are similarities between trauma studies that developed within a Western Freudian psychoanalytic framework and the anti-colonial theory practiced by decolonizing nations. Taking two women's texts, the essay examines how gender manifests itself within the framework of trauma and how it is played out in collective memory of partition.

Refugee history at present lacks a conceptual framework, notwithstanding the proliferation of recent contributions that contribute to enlarging the field. Our article seeks to advance refugee history by drawing upon extensive research into historical case studies and proposing the framework of refugeedom.