Other Side Of Silence Read online

  4

  Women

  DAMYANTI SAHGAL

  ‘A lot of stories to tell . . .’

  I first met Damyanti Sahgal in 1989. At the time she was eighty years old — a diminutive, energetic woman with mischief and humour lurking constantly in her eyes. It was her niece, Lina Dhingra, who introduced me to Damyanti. ‘Talk to my aunt,’ she said, one day when I was talking to her about my work on Partition, ‘she has a lot of stories to tell.’ Damyanti, however, wasn’t too enthusiastic. ‘Why do you want to talk to me?’ she said, ‘I have nothing to say. Just a few foolish stories here and there.’ I persisted, saying I’d be happy to listen to her stories, foolish or otherwise — and eventually, reluctantly, she relented.

  Having decided to speak, Damyanti fell into the project with gusto. She brushed aside my suggestions that I should go to see her in her home and said instead, that she would come to mine. ‘So that,’ she said, ‘you can give me some coffee and lunch and I can have some fun.’ Fun we did have — this was the first and only time an entire interview was conducted in my home. Normally, we had tried as far as possible to meet people in environments they were comfortable in and much of the time, these happened to be their homes. Later I realized that Damyanti’s insistence on meeting in my house came from an essential sense of homelessness that had stayed with her since Partition, such that there wasn’t any home that she would call her own. ‘Unless,’ as she told me, ‘you count my little cottage in Hardwar.’

  On the first day we were to meet, Damyanti arrived with her sister Kamla Buldoon Dhingra and her niece Lina. With me was my friend — and at that time fellow traveller — Sudesh Vaid. This long interview was conducted over many sessions spanning several months. Often, as with many interviews, most of which were collective rather than individual, the whole thing would turn into a conversation with everybody pitching in. There was a point at which, in Damyanti’s interview, her sister began to question her on why she had not done this or that, another at which Kamla took over and began to speak, one at which various people walked into the room and the story Damyanti was telling us was left incomplete, and so on.

  The interview that you see here, however, has few of these elements. It has been constructed as — or more correctly edited into — a continuous narrative. While I have not altered the chronology of the interview, I have, quite consciously, and deliberately, in this as in other interviews that follow, removed the questions Sudesh and I posed, as well as the interruptions and small bits of incidental dialogue and conversation. At two points, however, I have kept the conversations between Damyanti and Kamla because I feel they are particularly significant in what they point to, and presenting them as conversation, as they happened, was the only way, I felt, of capturing what those moments were about.

  When I reread the transcript of Damyanti’s interview (of which the reader will see only a part at this stage of the text) now, it seems to me to fall into four broad, and somewhat overlapping, divisions. The first has to do with Damyanti’s description of herself, her life before Partition and her flight, alone and virtually penniless, from what became Pakistan, to India. This is the part you will see here. In the second part, which appears later, she speaks of her slow, and initially somewhat reluctant, involvement in what came to be known as social work, and in the third and fourth, which follow at the end of this particular chapter, of the actual work, which consisted mainly of the ‘recovery’, ‘rescue’ and ‘rehabilitation’ of abducted and raped women in Pakistan. None of these parts is clearly demarcated and each flows into the other. The third and fourth parts essentially continue the story of the second, and in some ways the description becomes quite linear, assuming the stages of the actual work: first rescue, then recovery, then rehabilitation. The first and second seem to have more danger attached to them, the third is somewhat ‘safer’, although we find out soon enough that both for the women and for the social workers, rehabilitation is fraught with its own dangers. Throughout the narration Damyanti describes a tension between herself as a social worker, a servant, if you like, of the newly formed nation-state — and in a broader sense, an instrument of her private God, her thakur — and herself as a woman who feels for other women. Just as many of the women resist their rescue, so also Damyanti makes her own private rebellion in her work. But, interestingly, she sees no contradiction between the two. The fact that she has more success with her particular rebellion has (as becomes clear in her encounters with a senior official of Pakistan and later, the Deputy Magistrate who is to certify the ages of the women she is in charge of) surely to do with her class and the access that provides her.

  To me, Damyanti’s interview was one of the most important of the ones that Sudesh and I did. Over the months that we spoke together, we became friends. She insisted we call her Danti, and said we could add ‘masi’ or ‘auntie’ if we felt better. At the time we met, and for some considerable time before and indeed after, Damyanti divided her life between Delhi, where she stayed usually in her sister Kamla’s flat, and Hardwar where she had a small cottage, or room. Gradually, she began to spend more and more time in Hardwar and at one point, she refused to come back to Delhi altogether, preferring to live — and die — alone in Hardwar.

  Damyanti’s story was important for other reasons too. Partition rendered many thousands of women alone in the way that it did Damyanti. It ruptured their lives, often at the point of marriage, doing away, usually permanently, with ‘normal’ life practices such as marriage. Krishna Sobti, a well known writer and someone who has lived through Partition herself, speaks movingly of a whole generation of women whose lives, she says, were destroyed by Partition. In refugee families all available hands had to be pulled into the process of reconstruction, of rebuilding broken homes. Girls and young women were drawn into different kinds of work — domestic, professional, other. By the time things became more ‘normal’ their presences had already become somewhat shadowy. In some instances families had become so dependent on the labour of women that the women’s own desires and aspirations had to be pushed into the background. In others, they had simply been abandoned by their families, or forgotten about. From her account of her life, Damyanti was one such woman. Virtually homeless, she was pulled into social work by her aunt, Premvati Thapar. But she had little or no contact with her immediate family. Nor, if she is to be believed, were they particularly interested to know where she was. And once into social work, long years of her life were given to it. There is, however, an irony here. That very ‘rejection’ by her family, the very real fact of her aloneness, allowed Damyanti to move into the public world and make something of her life. Just as a whole generation of women were destroyed by Partition, so also Partition provided an opportunity for many to move into the public sphere in a hitherto unprecedented way.

  I have often wondered how Damyanti must have felt about her aloneness. In an earlier part of her interview, she speaks about her desire to look attractive, to marry ... but by the time Partition had happened, all this had been put aside. By her own description, she was too old to marry (she was close to forty at the time), but not, I think, too old to dream. Nonetheless, she took the work on, and my sense of it is that she took it on without a driving sort of ‘commitment’. She did it because she was pushed into it, and, quite simply, because it was there.

  I found Damyanti’s interview important for several other reasons. According to her, it was the first time she was actually talking about all she had been through, the first time, she said, that anybody had asked her, the first time she was remembering with and to someone. Even for her sister and niece, the experiences she recounted were new. At one point Kamla asked Damyanti why she had never told these stories before. Listening to them, I found it difficult to believe that even in the closest of relationships in families, people could be so ignorant of — and indifferent to — what was going on in the life of someone so close to them. Damyanti, I think, understood this proximity of love and indifference much better than any of us
, having seen and lived through Partition in the way she had. It was because of this, I feel, that she chose to live much of her life — especially the latter part — alone. In many ways, she was very close to, often even like a parent, to many of the people she worked with. But at another level, she remained separate, and alone.

  It was because of this that I came increasingly to feel that in her narration of the stories of abducted women, her telling of how they had been basically rendered alone by history, Damyanti was really describing her own life. Despite the fact that at some point, contact was remade with her family, Damyanti remained essentially alone. For some time before her death, she had been ailing — she was, at this time, in Hardwar. But despite the entreaties of her sister and niece, she refused to return to Delhi where she could have access to better health care. When she died, she was, as in life, alone. Later, one of her ‘sons’ — a young man who had been orphaned during Partition and to whom she had been lite a mother — went to fetch her body and to perform the last rites.

  There is another reason why I find Damyanti’s narration so significant. She worked for many years in the Indian State’s recovery and relief operation. She travelled, usually accompanied by Pakistani policemen, who were often hostile not only to her, but to the whole idea of the operation, into the interior areas of Pakistan to locate abducted women. In interviewing her, I learnt more about the nature of the relief and recovery operation and about the women who were recovered through it, than I have found in any book. I found her insights and descriptions particularly valuable in retrieving the history of such violence — rape, forcible abduction and marriage, and a further violence of the kind perpetrated by the State in its relief and recovery operation. In looking into this, the researcher is faced with a difficult dilemma: how can she recover the voices of women who experienced such violence? Ought she to attempt to locate women who have been through such violence, to get them to speak? For me, Damyanti’s description of the anguish abducted women went through, thus becomes doubly important.

  For all of these reasons, I have deliberately chosen Damyanti’s narrative as the thread that weaves together this long chapter on the histories of women’s abduction and rape during Partition.

  DAMYANTI SAHGAL

  At the time of partition I was in my village Kotra. Just thirty miles from Lahore, near Raiwind station on the road to Multan. Everything we owned was there. We had a factory. Because I didn’t get married, I stayed with my father. I had no mother. I was my father’s companion, whatever happened ... my father thought that because he had all his property there, his workers would help him out of whatever trouble there was. So much faith ... my uncle P.N.Thapar was a commissioner of Lahore division at that time. He sent a man to say that in Jandiala the Sikhs had held a conference, they’d met in a gurudwara and taken oaths that they would avenge Rawalpindi on the Musalmaans, and had sworn that on such and such day — I don’t remember the day — they would begin the wholesale slaughter of Musalmaans. So my uncle Thapar sent this message that you should go away from here because I have this confidential report that in Jandiala village, near Amritsar, Sikhs have met in the gurudwara and have taken oaths that on such and such day we will put an end to Musalmaans. This will have repercussions. Musalmaans will kill Hindus. They said, whatever has happened with our women in Pindi, we will not let that go unavenged ... My father said, well, this Thapar is a coward ... how can we leave everything and just go? I have so many men, they will protect me. There’ll be some noise for a few days and then everything will come back to normal. So he refused to go. Then a second message came ... my uncle said your father is stubborn, so you should go. At the most he will be killed, but you, you will be gutted ... and this is very difficult for us to tolerate. You will be gutted ... so you should leave.

  Father didn’t agree ... the workers in his factory were mixed: Jats, Hindus, but on the whole it was a Muslim village so most of the workers were Musalmaans ... at the time they were respectful and humble. They seemed safe ...

  When I tried to persuade my father he said, well if you feel scared you go. I said but bauji, he said, no bibi, if you feel scared you go. But where do I go? Then I came to Lahore. I remember asking what I should do, where I should go, my father was refusing to go. And they said the safest Hindu area is — now what is it called? Kamla, what is that, just north of Beasa ... my brain forgets very fast. Oh yes, Kulu, Kulu Manali that whole area.

  Partition had started. I went alone, and there was rioting in Amritsar ... I went alone. We used to have a small boy with us, I don’t remember what his name was, Dipu or Tipu, a small boy. Bauji said you take this servant with you and money ... whatever, some two or three hundred, whatever was in the house he handed to me. I don’t exactly remember. And he said once you get there, in Kulu, Dr Devi Chand told me that they have a house there and that I should go there. You’ll be safe there and when all the disturbances finish you can come back ... So I took the servant and some rupees, some two or three hundred, I don’t know how much, perhaps it was only a hundred. When we came close to Amritsar, we found that they had started stopping trains, killing people in them, but we were lucky. Everyone said put your windows up, they are cutting down people.

  Train, train. Everyone was full of fear ... they kept saying put your windows up, put your windows up, Amritsar is coming and they’re cutting people down there. We put our windows up ... God knows what they were doing outside, we were too frightened even to look, we kept praying our train would not stop at the station. And from there our train passed straight through ... we had heard that killing and looting had begun there, that the Musalmaans had also risen up in arms, so also the Sikhs. Anyway, we went from there and I went straight to Kulu, and stayed there some time in Devi Chand Vohra’s house. The small boy, the servant, was also with me. After this I left the house and went to — what was it Kamla, your nagar? I went there too, and to Manali, I roamed about a lot in this whole area, I had to stay in rest houses. In rest houses they have some specific days — they let you stay for 8-10 days. On arrival, when I got there, I used to sign, the chaprasi would bring the book, the visitor’s book and then, they would come and say now your time is up and you must leave, and we had to pay the rest house, after that. After a short while in their house they sent me to Nagar, that’s what I remember. When I left, when I ran away I went with just one or two dhotis. Yes, my father had said that once I arrived I should take a house on rent, and then send him a telegram or letter and he would come then. He said, I don’t want to come like this with you. I’m an old man, where will you carry me around? I’m not willing to go like this, but once you manage to arrange something let me know and I’ll come. But what was there to arrange?

  First of all, I went to Dharamsala. That little boy realized that I had no money left, some ten days or a month he stayed with me. Then there was no money even to feed myself, let alone him. So he thought she has nothing left, and he quietly ran away. Towards Kangra, I don’t know where he went. The next day I kept calling for him, Dipu, Dipu, but he was nowhere to be seen. He had run off. Then in the rest house the chowkidar asked me for money, I told him I had no money, but that I’m from an important family and I can sign and put my name down ... I’ve run away from my home and can’t go back there. It was in the newspapers and on the radio that there was looting and killing going on there. I don’t know where my relatives are, but the moment I get news of anyone from the family, I’ll get you money. From there I went to Nagar and came back — which place was it, I don’t remember. It was another place. Here there was killing ... there were Gujars and they started killing Musalmaans. The Jansanghis used to kill, they would drink and kill. Hindus can’t do this, they’re afraid. Young boys would drink a lot and then they would come and kill Musalmaans. There was one young boy, small, but strong and handsome like a Pathan. I was at Dr Devi Chand’s house at that time. I was standing there when they began crying and shouting, ‘They’re going to kill him, they’re going to kill him’ and people b
egan to plead, ‘Don’t kill him, don’t kill him, he’s so young ...’ and they replied, ‘Well, we’re telling him you become a Hindu and ... if he becomes Hindu we will leave him, otherwise we’ll not leave him.’ We tried to persuade him, we said, child, become a Hindu. But he roared: ‘I WILL NOT BE COME A HINDU, THEY CAN CUT MY THROAT BUT I WILL NOT BECOME A HINDU!’ Such courage, I’ll have my throat cut. They took him away screaming, I don’t know whether they killed him or not. Things were bad then, bodies used to be found lying around, the Beas had risen so much ... there was so much rain. I have never seen rain like that, the river broke its bounds, bodies would flow down the river ... I had no money, no clothes, only rags. Somehow I managed to buy a thali and I would scrape together some atta and cook on the thali itself ... things were bad . . .

  One evening, I was walking on the banks of the river . . . I had a mala in my hand, no money in my pocket ... you see, at one point I had become almost an ascetic, when I was in Kotra, when I decided that I didn’t want to marry, I have been married to my god, my thakur, I loved only him, and it was because of that that I was putting an end to one kind of life. So the mala used to be in my hands and his name on my lips ...

  Earlier, of course, I used to be very fond of dressing up, of looking after my figure, my sisters were fair and I was dark, but I used to be proud of my figure and I was always measuring myself with a tape measure, so much from here, so much from there ... and all those things you know, eating grapes to make the breasts grow larger, and this should be like this and this like that, so I used to examine myself, up from here, in from there, so much outwards, so much inwards ... curly hair was fashionable and we thought that putting some kinds of leaves in the hair made it curly! So I used to put those leaves and hide. Then someone said you’re doing the wrong thing, you should put beri leaves, and then someone said you should put kerosene oil ... And I can’t tell you for how long I put kerosene in my hair ... I thought it would keep it from going white. Of course the hair became what it had to become, but I’m just telling you ... nails, waist ... and then, when God blessed me ... why and how I don’t know, but after that I simply spent time in Hardwar, on the banks of the Jumna. I used to always think of my god. And then they said, my father thought something had happened to my brain, and I used to roam about alone praying, and it was in this condition that Partition happened ...