7 - Lost voices of Partition: carrying gender, nation and femininity across the life course

Summary

As the child survivors of Partition have aged, contemporary social science literature has barely acknowledged the long- lasting effect of Partition and the impact of how the sexualisation of women and girls, of all ages, has influenced age(ing). Moreover, there remains a fissure in the narratives from those who ‘lived’ Partition and are now in later life. In Holocaust studies, child survivors have only recently come to the fore as having experiences that were distinct from those of adult survivors (Krell, 1993, p 384). Therefore, to appreciate the ways in which South Asian migrant (SAm) women claim (de)sexualised later life positions, it is useful to examine how the interconnections of socio-historic events, such as Partition, magnified the sexualisation of the female body – to make it sexual or viewed in a sexual way – and trace the way in which early life course socialisations of gender and femininity continue to shape intersectional, ethno- religious cultural sexualities and identities.

For older migrants who have aged in their place of migration and settlement, inclusive insights in ageing studies can only occur when we extend discussions from post- migration experiences that are situated solely in the United Kingdom (UK) and begin to include pre- migration experiences. By taking a step back and looking at the whole life course, this chapter ameliorates understanding of the intersections and complexities of gender, age, sexuality and nation; lived across transnational histories and geographies.

By adopting a long view that includes a historical review of Partition, sociocultural ideals, practices and then later life, this chapter draws on Partition and social science literature, as well as selected quotes from empirical research conducted as part of my PhD research. It aims to interrogate the sexualisation of older SAm women through a decolonial lens (see Lugones, 2010, 2020) and invite discussion around ways of seeing gender and sexuality in later life. On the one hand, I wish to avoid homogenising the experiences of older SAm women and recognise the individual experiences of women in this chapter (in addition to the complexity of the term ‘South Asian’; for a full critique see Puwar and Raghuram, 2020) and the diversity in which this term is situated in relation to national identity, variety of religions, class structures and sociocultural conditions of caste (society divided by social class and privilege).