While Malka's is a unique case of betrayal, there are countless others like her in Bhagalpur, in Nellie (Assam) and now in Gujarat. Take the case of Bibi Shakina of Logai village in Bhagalpur who saw her husband being chopped to pieces 13 years ago. Today she suffers a fate worse than death while her husband's killers roam free. There are thousands and thousands of Malkas and Bibi Shakinas.

In any riot, the worst sufferers are women and children. Northeast expert and writer Sanjoy Hazarika, who was one of the first to visit Nellie where in one single day "1,753" people were killed, describes the scene when he visited the village on February 20, 1983, "We walked on and came to the canal. A small dugout took us across. As I clambered up the small bank, my eyes were attacked by perhaps the most hideous scene that I have seen in all my years. An entire family was laid out at the top of the bank: parents and five children, of varying ages - the youngest was no older than an infant. Each one was dead, stabbed, slashed; the tiny one had been beheaded. Its head lay beside the body.

"I looked up and saw more bodies. I think that after that, we became numb to feeling - the paddy fields were full of young women, older women, old men, young children who were struck down. In one small patch of land, I counted 200 bodies, which lay where they had fallen. Yet, how had the young survived? The answer was simple: because they could run faster than the women, the old, the infirm and the children". (Rites of Passage, Penguin). What happened in Nellie was not new.

Several observers described the violence that erupted so fiercely between Hindus-Sikhs and Muslims in 1946 and 1947 as "a war on each other's women" or, alternatively, a war waged especially on women and children. Unless Muslims and Hindus stop this war on each other's women folk, F.V. Wylie, the governor of Uttar Pradesh, wrote immediately after the Garhmukhteshwar (near Meerut in UP) massacre of November 1946, 'the whole country will go mad." These turned out to be prophetic words in view of what happened in the wake of the Partition when lakhs of people were massacred on both sides of the divide.

How do families react to riot-related violence? The story of Thoa Khalsa as recovered for Partition historiography by Urvashi Butalia and Sudesh Vaid as quoted in Remembering Partition by Gyanendra Pandey (Cambridge) are instructive. A prominent survivor gave them a vivid account of the mass suicide at Thoa Khalsa:

"In Gulab Singh's haveli 26 girls had been put aside. First of all my father, Sant Raja Singh, when he brought his daughter, he brought her into the courtyard to kill her, first of all he prayed (….did ardaas) saying 'sacche badshah', we have not allowed your Sikhi to get stained, and in order to save it, we are going to sacrifice our daughters, make them martyrs, please forgive us…

"About the sacrifice at the well later the same day, Bir Bahadur Singh had this to say: "There was a well… at the well Sardarni Gulab Kaur… in my presence said 'sacche badshah', let us be able to save our girls… This incident of 25 girls of our household [being killed] had already taken place… she knew that sant Raja Singh had killed his daughter and other women of his household… those that are left, we should not risk their lives and allow them to be taken away… after having talked among themselves and decided, they said, we are thirsty, we need water, so the Musalmaan took them to the well. I was sitting with my mother… Mata Lajawanti, who was also called Sardarni Gulab Singh, sitting at the well, she said two words, she did ardaas in two words, saying 'sacche badshah' it is to save our Sikhi that we are offering up our lives… forgive us and accept our martyrdom… and saying those words, she jumped into the well, and some eighty women followed her… they also jumped in. The well filled up completely… one woman whose name is Basant Kaur, six children born of her womb died in that well, but she survived. She jumped in four times but the well had filled up… She would look at her children, at herself… Till today I think she is alive."

Of course, such stories of valour are not exclusive to one community. A Muslim trader witnessed the plight of a Muslim girl at Garhmukhteswar. The Dawn (November 10, 1946) reported his version, "I saw a girl of about 15 or 16 being taken by a huge mob towards the Ganges. She was ducked in the river and asked to take 'Ram nam' [the name of the Hindu deity Ram]. She cried out, "Ya Khuda" (invoking Allah), and refused to say anything else. She was beaten to death.

"I saw other women whose clothes had been removed. They were taken round the fair (Garhmukhteswar) in that helpless condition, the brutes making fun of them and treating them in indescribable fashion… Not a single one of them agreed [to get converted] … and they were murdered."

In the folklore of Partition, there have been many stories of parents killing their young daughters, husbands killing their wives and brothers slaying their sisters for fear that they would fall into the hands of rioters or would be abducted. It happens in a milieu in which it is considered "women do not have any religion at all (auraton ka to koi dharam hi nahi hota) This is in line with the misogynist north Indian proverb, beeran ki kai jaat (What caste or nationality can a woman have?) - for she belongs to someone else, therefore, to his caste, nationality and religion.

During the Partition riots, thousands of women were abducted. "You will remember, Sir", declared a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, debating the question of recovery of abducted persons in December 1949,"how when one [Mrs] Ellis was kidnapped by some Pathans the whole of Britain shook with anger and indignation and until she was returned Englishmen did not come to their senses. And we all know our own history, of what happened in the time of Sri Ram when Sita was abducted. Here, where thousands of girls are concerned, we cannot forget this. We can forget all the properties, we can forget every other thing, but this cannot be forgotten."

And another, in the course of the same debate: "You are not prepared to go to war over this matter. I do not know why. If you are prepared to do so for a few inches of land in Kashmir, why not over the honour of our women?"

Faced with such protests, the government enacted a new law, Abducted Persons (Recovery and Restoration) Act. Considerable force was used to recover such women and hand them over to the Pakistani authorities. On their part, the Pakistani authorities were supposed to recover the Indian women in their country and hand them over to India.

As searches continued for such women, nobody bothered about their mental agony. When some of the abducted women began giving birth to children, the government came up with a strange order that children born in circumstances of 'abduction' would have to be left behind in the countries where they were born. Again, there was no thought about the mental condition of the women concerned, many of whom had found a new home, a new family to cling on. These women had become unconsulted objects in an unthinking game of boundary making. Who bothers about human values in such circumstances? Not in Bhagalpur, not in Nellie, not in Gujarat. Particularly when those entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the rule of law instigate people to take the law into their own hands so that they can win elections in the future as in Gujarat.

The writer can be reached at ajphilip@yahoo.com

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