Women's lives in the Punjab, hitherto regulated by strictly set patriarchal norms, saw unexpected and almost drastic change as Partition set in. The motif of Partition has centred on the humiliation and trauma that women encountered and witnessed. While it is true that women were, in countless instances, Partition's ubiquitous victims, in very many ways the chaos and temporality of the post-Partition period allowed several of them to redefine themselves anew.

From Website: " In 1997, after four years as a BBC correspondent based in Delhi, I had the enviable opportunity of making a radio series for the BBC World Service to mark the fiftieth anniversary of India's and Pakistan's independence. India: a people partitioned sought to be a social history of Partition: not about the high politics of independence, nor about the British Raj and those who upheld it, but about the lived experience of the millions who were caught up in the Partition whirlwind.