‘The Partition: A Memoir of Recovering the Abducted Women’
Koral ‘Purnoor’, Demokratic Front, Panchkula – 14 August :
Lecture titled ‘The Partition: A Memoir of Recovering the Abducted Women’ on the occasion of Partition Horrors Remembrance Day
On the occasion of Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, Centre for Distance and Online Education (CDOE) and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Panjab University, Chandigarh organised a special lecture on ‘The Partition: A Memoir of Recovering the Abducted Women’, delivered by Dr. Karamjit Kaur Malhotra, Department of History, Punjabi University, Patiala on 14th August, 2024. Prof. Anju Suri from the Department of History, Chaired the session. Professor Harsh Gandhar, Director CDOE, gave an overview of the theme of the lecture and Professor Sheena Pall, Coordinator, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Centre, introduced the speaker.
Dr. Malhotra, used the memoir of Akali Chakkar Kaur Singh, a social worker, to shed light on the history of recovery of abducted women and their plight following the partition. She underlined the atrocities committed on the women and the complex feelings, the social anxieties and the official processes involved in tracing and rehabilitating the abducted women using excerpts from the memoir. The lecture also brought to light efforts and contributions of many such social workers who at times risked their lives to recover the missing children and women after the partition. The speaker focused on the motives of these recovery missions and also dwelled on the conditions of the recovered women and children. The lecture was followed by a lively discussionwith the students and faculty in the audience.
