Hayley French
Global Issues in Literature
12/8/2014
Academic Response Jyotirmoyee Devi’s short story That Little Boy and Deepa Mehta’s movie Earth, is a story of a families loss of a mother due to the social attitude taken by Hindu’s and Sikh’s in regards to what should be done about a women when she has been forcibly taken by a Muslim man. The story takes place after the Partition time period in which different cultural groups, the Sikh’s, the Hindu’s and the Muslims, were trying to draw territorial lines as to where they can live and where others cannot. These clashes were very violent and caused the death and displacement of many. Everyone was affected by the chaos and yet still women were treated even worse during and in the aftermath of the event. In Devi’s short story the character Raj remembers the days of the partition riots, specifically the night that she lost her mother. She talks of her families concern for her, how they prayed so dearly that she had made it out in one of the other cars. Though we they arrive the refugee site all of the men go through the groups frantically looking for her. Finally when they’ve gone through ever person asking everyone if they had seen her and come back with nothing, they realize that she had been lost to them, and at this point they consider her to be dead. This is acceptable the Muslims were coming through with very violent intentions and it is assumed that anybody who did not manage to escape or hide themselves were killed by them. The unfortunate truth to this story though is that Raj’s mother was in fact not dead. Whether anyone else in the family ever knew this or not isn’t stated in the short story. It is alluded but not specially stated that Raj’s mother was raped by a Muslim man and impregnated by him. To be raped and impregnated against your will is already one of the most terrible thing that can happen to a women in her life, but to then also be abandoned or even to feel that you can never go back to your family because of such an event is almost worse. The social attitude towards the women who were trying to reintegrate themselves into society after being taken against their will was to ridicule, ignore, and leave them behind. Raj’s mother survived the ordeal and continued on with her life even still caring for the child that was the result and most likely a constant reminder of what can be assumed as a very traumatic event. It is