Issue #0

Torn from the Roots: A Partition Memoir

Plot

An extraordinary first-hand account of Operation Recovery, an operation carried out by the newly constituted governments of India and Pakistan in 1947 to recover abducted women and children and restore them to their families. Kamlaben Patel, right-hand woman of Mridula Sarabhai who oversaw Operation Recovery, conveys the pathos and urgency of those turbulent times in her candid, no-holds-barred memoir of the more than five years that she spent in Pakistan and on the recovery mission; of how women were exchanged like oranges and apples; of the heartbreaking stories she heard and the lives she saved. Compassionate in its humanitarianism, this book is also of rare archival value, restoring women to a central place in the history of India s Partition.