Vol. 9, Issue 7, Part A (2023)

The present study was intended to explore the violence and the oppression of widows during partition as reflected in Bapsi Sedhwa’s Novel “Ice Candy Man”. Out of the several factors that can explain this watershed moment in South Asian history, this paper focuses on the issue of gendered violence and oppression that took place during Indo-Pak partition. This ethnic genocide witnessed two kinds of gender-based violence. Firstly, the violence inflicted on women by men of the opposite religious group that involved kidnapping, rape and mutilation of the genitalia or public humiliation. The supposed aim of this kind of violence was to abase the men of the rival religion to which the women belonged. A second form of violence against women included the violence inflicted on women by their own family members. An analytical study was employed for justifying the results. However, the results of the study reveal that in the novel Ice candy Man, rape and sexual assault were consistently followed by abduction of the victimised women. Bapshi Sedwai highlighted that these abducted women typically became domestic servants and sex slaves. The intensity of oppression was so deep, that many abducted women were sold into prostitution and some, in very rare instances, were married to their abductors and later claimed to be leading happy and respectable lives. In addition to this, after the abduction, many families refused to take their daughters and wives back by claiming that the rescued women had been polluted by men of other religion. A woman without her chastity and her purity had no place in the patriarchal scheme of things.