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Fractured Identities: The Psychological Mechanisms of Sexual Violence During the 1947 Partition of India

The Partition of India in 1947 was one of the most violent periods of the twentieth century. More than fifteen million people were displaced, over a million were killed, and countless women were subjected to rape, abduction, forced conversions, and public humiliation. Yet, despite its scale and trauma, the sexual violence of the Partition has long remained buried in silence—treated as a shameful footnote rather than a defining feature of the tragedy.

Fractured Identities confronts that silence with an urgent new lens: psychology. Drawing on Albert Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement, alongside insights from genocide studies, criminology, and survivor testimony, Krishna A. Patel reveals how ordinary people became capable of extraordinary cruelty. This book argues that sexual violence during the Partition was not random chaos, but the result of psychological mechanisms—dehumanization, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility—operating in concert with situational enablers like lawlessness, mob dynamics, and political rhetoric.

Through vivid regional case studies from Punjab, Bengal, Sindh, and Kashmir, Patel shows that while the contexts differed, the cognitive architecture of violence remained strikingly consistent. Perpetrators rationalized brutality as duty, revenge, or even spiritual redemption, reframing cruelty as a righteous necessity. Survivor testimonies bring painful clarity to these processes, exposing how entire communities participated in or condoned violence, and how silence in its aftermath perpetuated cycles of moral disengagement.

More than a history of the Partition, this book is a study of how violence becomes thinkable—and how societies learn to forget it. Patel situates the Partition within a global pattern, drawing comparisons to Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Holocaust, while insisting on its cultural specificity. The result is both a work of remembrance and a warning: the psychological scripts of atrocity remain active, and without vigilance, they will write new chapters.

Fractured Identities is essential reading for historians, psychologists, policymakers, and anyone who seeks to understand not just what happened in 1947, but how communities anywhere can slide into moral collapse. It is a call to honor survivors, to reckon with uncomfortable truths, and to build frameworks that prevent violence from being reframed as virtue again.

Krishna A. Patel is a scholar of South Asia and global security whose research at Columbia University explored the psychological mechanisms of mass violence. His work integrates history, psychology, and human rights, making him uniquely positioned to examine the Partition through both scholarly rigor and moral clarity.