Physical Torture and Trauma of Indian Women in Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar: The Skeleton
Author : Dr. Gunjalwad Bhagwan D
Abstract :
Amrita Pritam was an Indian novelist and poetess who wrote in Panjabi and Hindi. She is a prominent writer in Panjabi literature. She got Sahitya Akademi Award in 1956. She is the most remembered for her poem ‘Ode to Waris Shah’. Her most popular novel is Pinjar which is written in 1950.
She was born in 1919 in Gujranwala, Panjab in Imperial India. She is the child of Raj Bibi and Kartar Shing Hitkary. Her father was a scholar of Braj Bhasha. He was preacher of Shikh religious faith. Raj Bibi died when Amrita was ten years old. Amrita married to Pritam Singh in 1935. She started writing at the age of sixteen; also she became member of Progressive Writer’s Movement. i.e. Aakhil Bhartiy Pragtisheel Lekhak Sangh. She also criticized Bengol femine of 1943. After independence she participated in the social work such as Janata Library in Delhi. She died on 31 0ctober 2000. Amrita Pritam having born in a Punjabi family of united Indian in 1919, has been credited with astute knowledge of the communal violence in 1947 that followed to the partition predicament of Indian and Pakistani people. She started penning her experiences at a very young age of twelve or thirteen as she had extensive observation of Indian life both from Indian and Pakistani context. Her debut novel Pinjar: The Skeleton is set against the backdrop of true love which is far more important than the physical intimacy of the characters. Rather, her acerbic observation of women’s physical torture, psychological disintegration and circumstantial failure of Indian women presents the darker side of the contemporary Indian ethos.
The present research intends to explore the gendered exploitation of Indian women during the partition predicament. Simultaneously, the same uncovers the social discrimination, love and separation, communal violence, cultural deterioration and identity crisis of Indian women during the period at large.
Keywords :
Woman, abduction, partition, rape, exploitation, communal violence, marginalization, etc.
