Stella Basu 01 Partitioned Identity In Mahesh Dattani’s Where Did I Leave My Purdah: The Aftermath Of Rape Rape has been a serious issue since a long time. The position of women has been precarious in a world of men. The physical assault that is committed against women is itself an offensive act. But the impairment etched by rape on the victim’s mind is more disastrous than the act itself. It devastates the woman’s mental fiber who is wronged. Mahesh Dattani’s play Where Did I Leave My Purdah primarily emphasizes the life of a “doyenne” ( Dattani 40 ) of the theatre, Nazia who migrates to India from Lahore in 1948 just after the Independence during the Partition but it addresses issues that involves coercion accomplished through rape and its corollary on a mind that is sensitive. Even today when we hear the word ‘partition’, we cannot stop ourselves from imagining the gruesome, heinous scenario of 1947 which the people of both nations had experienced. The dreadful macabre did not fall over a particular person or on a particular community, rather it destroyed the rich cultural heritage which these two nations enjoyed once upon a time, as a single, united nation. But the price which the innocent common people paid for the freedom of their nation is the horrific experience for a life time, even the generation which came into existence much after that of partition had experienced its aftermath and the effects have left abrasions on the minds of people. Independence and partition came together in 1947 and is an important event in the history of the world. While there was a happy note for obliterating the British Raj from the face of the nation, there was a parallel note of sorrow and destruction for the decision of partitioning a vast united nation. Partition not only brought economic loss, communal uprisings but also a loss of identity for the migrants. Princes became paupers, people who had shelters became shelterless and those who earned food, suffered for a single crumb of victuals. The crisis of identity persecuted people. The men lost their family members, properties, their ancestral lands and their cult but women besides losing all these things, lost one more thing, their self, their own body. Rape becomes the ultimate weapon of terror which the male uses against the “other” ( Beauvoir ) and induce fear in them. The forceful intruding of the male genital in the female’s body not only impose male’s natural superiority on the female but also symbolizes male’s celebrations of his “manhood” ( Brownmiller ) as he succeeds in conquering the female body for his pleasure, despite her physical resistance. The fear of rape acts like the ‘lakshman rekha’ for all women say from the prehistoric times to today’s present time, to keep women under check, to force them to become submissive to all mighty powers of manhood. Women’s body can be compared to the fort and hymen is the protective sheath.