Leaves in the Storm: Narrating Trauma of Children in selected Partition Stories

The 1947 partition of India has been synonymous with a saga of unspeakable violence and trauma. Mostly shrouded in silence among the communities on both sides of the border, the narratives nevertheless, found their way into the literary works of writers such as Sadat Hasan Manto, Amrita Pritam, Bhisham Sahni, etc. While most works in partition literature, portray women as being the primary victims caught in the communal strife, forced displacement, sexual abuse, and violence, in some at least, the focus is on children who suffered a similar if not a worse fate. Several of them were killed or ended up being separated from their parents and families, or else, were left struggling to survive without their guardians. The childhood lost forever; they were like leaves caught in a freak storm with almost no hope of survival. The present paper turns to a few partition stories to explore how their experiences are recorded and narrated. Even as the focus is on the children's predicament, the authors unwittingly end up telling their tales of horror and trauma. The paper attempts to trace the narratives as felt and suffered by the first generation of the young in India after freedom.