ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

The Ethics o f Refusal: Abduction, Trauma, and Subaltern Womanhood in n Partition Literature

The historical rupture of 1947, often termed as “The Partition of India,” was one of the most grief-stricken and deadly massacres. The legacy of this historical divide generates a profound ethical discomfort whenever discussed, as most of its enduring consequences were disproportionately borne by abducted women, marked with the stigma of impurity and communal disgrace. While post Partition recovery operations sought to retrieve abducted women in the name of national honor and rehabilitation, these efforts frequently resulted in further psychological harm. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s Subaltern Theory, this paper examines how marginalized voices, particularly those of abducted women, remain silenced and excluded from dominant narratives, and how this structural invisibility compounds trauma. By placing an unnamed Sikh woman’s testimony from Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence in dialogue with Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar, the paper argues that recovery often intensified trauma by forcing women to abandon newly formed familial bonds while denying them meaningful reintegration into their natal communities.. The study concludes by reading Puro’s refusal of recovery not as submission or passivity but as an ethically justified response to irreversible loss and structural abandonment. By foregrounding women’s testimonies and literary representation,the study challenges celebratory narratives of recovery and calls for a rethinking of rehabilitation as a site of continued domination rather than healing.