Question

Read the following source carefully and answer the questions that follow:

What “recovering” women meant Here is the experience of a couple, recounted by Prakash Tandon in his Punjabi Century, an autogiograpical social history of colonial Punjab: In one instance, a Sikh youth who had run amuck during the partition persuaded a massacring crowd to let him take away a young, beautiful Muslim girl. They got married, and slowly fell in love with each other. Gradualy memories of her parents, who had been killed, and her former life faded. They were happy together, and a little boy was born. Soon, however, social workers and the police, labouring assiduously to recover abducted women, began to track down the couple. They made inquiries in the Sikh’s home district of Jalandhar; he got scent of it and the family ran away to Calcutta. The social workers reached Calcutta. Meanwhile, the couple’s friends tried to obtain a stay-order from the court but the last was taking its ponderous course, From Calcutta the couple escaped to some obscure Punjab village, Hoping that the police would fail to shadow them. But the police caught up with them and began to question them. His wife was expecting again and now nearing her time. The Sikh sent the little boy to his mother and took his wife to a sugar-cane field. He made her as comfortable as he could in a pit while he lay with a gun, waiting for the police, determined not to lose her while he was alive. In the pit he delivered her with his own hands. The next day she ran high fever, and in three days she was dead. He had not dared to take her to the hospital. He was so afraid the social workers and the police would take her away.

1. Explain any two reasons of massacre happened during partition of India?  2
2. Why were the social workers and police tracking down the young couple?  2
3. Do you think the authorities were right in trying to take back the girl? Explain reasons to support your answer.  2

Answer 1

1. • Communal hatred and reciprocal revenge: long‑standing religious tensions between communities boiled over during Partition; rumours, fear and cycles of retaliatory attacks turned local conflicts into organized massacres.
   • Breakdown of law and order during mass migration: the huge, chaotic population movements and a weak/overstretched administration allowed mobs, armed bands and undisciplined individuals to commit violence with little immediate restraint.
2. Because the woman was seen as an abducted Muslim girl and the police/social workers were “labouring assiduously to recover abducted women” and return them to their original families/society, so they were trying to locate and “recover” her. (This is described in the passage you supplied.)
3. • Their aim,to rescue women who had been taken by force and to uphold the law,was legitimate, but the way recoveries were often carried out lacked sensitivity to the women’s welfare and consent.
   • Reasoning: On one hand, authorities had a duty to prevent abduction and to protect people from crimes committed during the violence. On the other hand, many women had by then formed new attachments or were fearful of forcible removal; aggressive, public recoveries could retraumatize them or put them in danger. The episode you gave shows the tragic consequence of an insensitive or heavy‑handed approach: fear of recovery kept the couple on the run, the woman avoided hospital care, and she died after childbirth. That outcome suggests recovery efforts needed to balance legal aims with the woman’s safety, informed consent, and careful, confidential handling.