Soon after Independence, India and Pakista commenced a Central Recovery Operation under the Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act (1949) to “recover” persons abducted during Partition. An abducted person was defined as “a male child under the age of sixteen or a female of whatever age” living with another family across the border. A minor and a woman were accorded the same decision making status. In a Parliamentary debate a minister, Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava argued that India should retain recovered Muslim women as hostages till Pakistan returned “our” women. In the operations that followed until 1960, it was presumed women living with a man of another religion were abducted and if women stated they chose the relationship it was discounted as a claim made under pressure.

Thousands of women were raped and killed during Partition. Scholarship by Veena Das, Kamala Bhasin, Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia, and many works of fiction have shown, not all of these deaths were at the hands of “the other side”. Many families preferred to kill their women: death over dishonour. Accounts of recoveries record how many women did not in fact want to return for myriad reasons. Many who returned were rejected by their families as being despoiled by other men. Many remained in camps and homes, alone and penurious, until death.

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In 2015, journalist Rukmini S analysed cases of sexual violence in the Mumbai High Court to reveal that many of these were filed by parents in consensual elopements. A police officer admitted that when it was found the elopement was consensual and the woman might not even be a minor, they added a rape charge. Recently, the NGO Enfold analysed 1,500-plus cases filed under POCSO and found 88 per cent were consensual, with parents seeking to control their daughters’ choices. Not only do these burden the system, these cases criminalise young men, ruining their lives and loves.

Each of these instances—tracking inter-faith unions, recoveries of women, those POCSO cases—reveal an inability to see women as full citizens, not merely subsets of their families and communities. That is why, irrespective of faith, when women do approach the system in moments of violence their citizenship rarely translated into right or even care. There’s a reason 77 per cent of domestic violence victims don’t report. 

Recently, it emerged that the Maharashtra government was using cars acquired under the Nirbhaya fund, as security escort for legislators. A symbol so on the nose, it hurts.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com