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NO
WOMAN’S LAND: Women
from Pakistan, India & Bangladesh Write
on the Partition of India
Ritu Menon (Ed.)
Rs 300 Hb 2004
81-88965-04-9
(All rights available.)
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Never
before has a single volume featured non-fiction
writing by women from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh
on the Partition of India. Here, for the first time,
are Ismat Chughtai, Sara Suleri, Anees Kidwai, Phulrenu
Guha, Meghna Guha-Thakurta, Shehla Shibli, Manikuntala
Sen, Kamlaben Patel and many others, speaking and
writing about communalism and literature; what they
learnt from refugees, what Partition means to them
50 years later, and how they define themselves Hindus?
Muslims? Indians? Pakistanis? Bengalis? All of these
or none? Either or neither? Not-Indian-not-Pakistani?
Bangladeshi not Pakistani? Above all, their accounts
raise that most troubling question: do women have
a country?
An unusual mix of memoirs, interviews, reminiscences
and reflective essays, this anthology is the first
attempt to present women’s perspective on
the Partition of India based on the experience of
three countries.
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RITU
MENON
is a publisher
and independent scholar. She is co-author of Borders
and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition,
and of Unequal Citizens:
A Study of Muslim Women in India; and
editor, In a Minority:
Essays on Muslim Women in India,
co-edited with Zoya Hasan. She has edited several
anthologies of stories by Indian women and is a
founder member of Women’s WORLD, an international
free-speech network of writers, translators and
publishers. |
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