The Imprint of Partition on the Representation of Rape in Samina Ali’s Madras on Rainy Days

Abstract

This essay examines questions about trauma in the context of the gendered violence that constituted the Partition of India in 1947 and continues to affect millions of Indians through present-day “communal” (sectarian) violence. I hope to demonstrate through my analysis of a literary representation of gang-rape and murder how studies of inter-generational, transnational, collective trauma nuance the relationship between history and memory, and further the debate on how gender and gendered violence create and connect personal/individual and communal/collective trauma in postcolonial contexts.