Our Bodies, Their Battleground: A Study of Gender-Based Violence in Amrita Pritam’s The Skeleton

Abstract

This paper focuses on patriarchal dominance embedded in the everyday life of Indian society, which becomes the root cause of the gender-based violence that took place during the Partition. In a male-dominated society, rape and other sexual violence against women are likely outcomes since they provide space for men to exhibit and preserve their authority and power over women. As such, women’s bodies become the site of violence in patriarchal displays of power. In this context, Amrita Pritam’s novel, The Skeleton (2009), is basically concerned with both (personal and collective) forms of the gendered nature of violence, loss of control and autonomy over female bodies, and violation of bodily integrity in both the public and private space before and after the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. Through the textual analysis of the novel, this paper explores the connections between patriarchy and the gendered nature of violence perpetuated against women and the complex and complementary relationship between bodily integrity and women’s empowerment, especially in the context of abduction and honour killing. It highlights the silent suffering of women who are coping with the traumas the female body endured. The act of abduction and honour killing of women is seen as an embodiment of patriarchal, and not communal or political, power play of vendetta.