Abstract

This chapter explores Sindhi Partition refugees’ experiences of settlement and adaptation in India, with emphasis on Sindhi women’s experiences. Women’s refugee histories are often marginal to mainstream discourse, although refugee experiences and subjectivities are deeply gendered. Sindhi women in particular have been relegated to the periphery – both in histories of Partition as well as scholarship on the wider Sindhi diaspora. This chapter thus discusses the ways in which anxieties and negotiations around belonging and identity played out for Sindhi women at spaces such as homes, schools, and workplaces. It seeks to extend and reframe the focus on governmentalities and contestations by refugees in public domains, to address the gendered implications of post-partition resettlement in a variety of social spaces.