THE PARTITION TRAIL
RESOURCE PACK The Grimmit Trust
Limoges Charitable Trust
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INTRODUCTION resource pack
a note on copyright
On the following pages you will find a variety of primary and secondary sources which have been included to help students learn about the Partition of India.
Please note many of these sources are still in copyright, and we have purchased licences to use them in this resource.
These can be used for your own activities, or to help support some of the activities in the Teacher’s Guide.
Those which are out of copyright should still be credited where the author is known. Sometimes we were unable to get hold of the last known copyright holder, so if you believe that this is your work, please contact us immediately and we will remove it upon request.
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POEMS Partition W.H. Auden
Independence Day Rabindranath Tagore
Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission, Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition Between two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods. ‘Time,’ they had briefed him in London, ‘is short. It’s too late For mutual reconciliation or rational debate: The only solution now lies in separation. The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter, That the less you are seen in his company the better, So we’ve arranged to provide you with other accommodation. We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu, To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.’ Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away, He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect, But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot, And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot, But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided, A continent for better or worse divided. The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not, Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.
On this Independence Day we remember the years past. We honor this very day for our flag, old glory, has last. On this Independence Day two centuries ago, we declared our independence for justice and liberty. Let us celebrate with joy and honesty Happy Independence Day!!! “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and actionInto that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
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15th August 1998 In India Dr John Celes
Denial TASLIMA NASREEN
My sleep got disturbed, thrice that day; I could not sleep tho’ a holiday; My mind was filled with thoughts unclear; I got up in the morn, much earlier; ‘Twas India’s Independence Day! Thunder, lightning filled the night’s Sky; The day much overcast did fly; The Rain was just a drizzle that day; Wetted the ground of mud and clay; ‘Twas 15th of August, a rainy day. The pea-birds howled and groaned that night; The Rain made them shiver with fright; Though ten, it looked like six in the morn; The Sun behind the clouds had gone; The Sky ground-glass remained that day. The leaky tap-waters that fell, Raised wavelets, ploppy-toned and swell; Rain-drops on cables looked like pearls; Dropped, formed again, enticing souls; It looked it would rain long that day. Rain-drops hanging beneath fir-twigs; Glittered in the scarce light like figs; The whole tree was aglow, alit; A thing of beauty, don’t miss it! The Sky looked like a barred-white board! A frail, brown-skinned, bony human, With sack on head, bent-back, he ran! The Indian was agonizing! Tho’ people keep sermonizing! Fifty years after Independence! What good was done for the common-man?
India was no discarded paper that you had to tear to bits. I want to erase the word 47 I want to wash away the inkstain of 47 With water and soap. 47 – the word pricks like a thorn in my throat I do not want to swallow it. I want to vomit it out I want to regain the undivided soil of my forefathers. I want Brahmaputra as much as I want Subarnarekha. I want Sitakunda Hills as much as Kanchenjungha. Srimangal as much as Jalpaiguri. I want the sal forests of Bihar As well as Ajanta and Ellora If Curzon Hall is mine, Fort William belongs to me too. That man who fought in 71 and won That man who thrashed away the twonation theory He can never accept defeat at the hands of 47.
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POEMS Broken Bengal TASLIMA NASREEN There was a land watered and fruitful People of that land used to swing on festive days Just as the golden paddy swung in breeze, There was a land which held happy fairs Merging the smell of soil in soil When autumn clouds held fairs in the sky. There was a land of mangoes, jackfruits Where one could get soaked to the skin Returning home in rain then faintly tremble, Or bask in the sun after the fog cleared. There was a land – yours, mine, our forefathers’? Some suddenly halved this land of love into two. They who did it wrenched the stem of the dream Which danced like the upper end of the gourd, Dream of the people. They shook violently the roots of the land And people were flung about who knows where, None kept account of who perished who survived. Residents of Bikrampur landed on Gariahata crossing Some came to Phultali from Burdwan, Some fled to Howrah from Jessore, From Netrokona to Ranaghat, From Murshidabad to Mymensingh. The outcome was inevitable, As when you release a wild bull in a flower garden. Two parts of the land stretch out their thirsty hands Towards each other. And in between the hands Stands the man made filth of religion, barbed wire.
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Freedom’s Dawn (August 1947) TRANSLATED BY V.G. KIERNAN FAIZ AHMED FAIZ This leprous daybreak, dawn night’s fangs have mangled This is not that long-looked-for break of day, Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades Set out, believing that in heaven’s wide void Somewhere must be the stars’ last halting-place, Somewhere the verge of night’s slow-washing tide, Somewhere an anchorage for the ship of heartache. When we set out, we friends, taking youth’s secret Pathways, how many hands plucked at our sleeves! From beauty’s dwellings and their panting casements Soft arms invoked us, flesh cried out to us; But dearer was the lure of dawn’s bright cheek, Closer her shimmering robe of fairy rays; Light-winged that longing, feather-light that toil. But now, word goes, the birth of day from darkness Is finished, wandering feet stand at their goal; Our leaders’ ways are altering, festive looks Are all the fashion, discontent reproved; -And yet this physic still on unslaked eye Or heart fevered by severance works no cure. Where did that fine breeze, that the wayside lamp Has not once felt, blow from - where has it fled? Night’s heaviness is unlessened still, the hour Of mind and spirit’s ransom has not struck; Let us go on, our goal is not reached yet.
I Am Sorry Pakistan On 14th August, Independence Day Shamin Bashir Shah You gave me so much, But I gave you nothing but pain. You gave me the freedom I yearned, But in return I bind you in chains. You gave me the identity, But I took that from you. You gave me a place I could call home, But I left you scared, deserted and alone. Oh! I am so sorry Pakistan, Forgive me for burning you alive. Forgive me for letting you down, Forgive me for all the times a finger was pointed at you. Forgive me for being silent at times when I had to stand for up for you. Forgive me for giving you the recognition of a terrorist country, Forgive me for making you the charity box. There is so much to say, And so much to apologize for‌.. If you cut my veins, I bleed Pakistan, I ache when you ache, Pakistan, I am because of you, Pakistan. Happy Birthday!
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ARTWORKS
Mutineers Revolt, 1857
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James Lancaster, Commander of the First East India voyage
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PHOTOGRAPHS
A refugee train Punjab 1947 © Margaret Bourke-White
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Aftermath of Calcutta Riots © Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone
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PHOTOGRAPHS
Calcutta Riots. © Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone
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Migrants travelling. © Margaret Bourke-White
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PHOTOGRAPHS
Out of copyright. Gandhi picking grains of Salt during the Salt March.
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Gandhi and Nehru, 1942
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PHOTOGRAPHS
Gandhi and Jinnah, 1944
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Migrants on a train © Margaret Bourke-White
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PHOTOGRAPHS
Refugee Camp © Margaret Bourke-White
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© Margaret Bourke-White
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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS File: Sunandan Walia Audio START AUDIO 0:00:28 Contributor: I lived in New Delhi until the age of 4, and after that, because of my father’s job, we kept moving until the age of 16 when we came to Birmingham. Then my parents left after two years to go back to India, but I stayed because I was in the middle of my A Levels, and Birmingham has been my home ever since. I have a really warm, loving childhood, because I was the eldest first grandchild, if you like, in the family. My father’s side was a large family, he had two sisters and two brothers who were contemporary, in other words they were alive at that time when I was born, and he’d lost two brothers prior to that. 0:01:27 So I was the first born, I was really fussed over especially by my grandmother, she took charge of my early years, and she was a really warm loving person, you know. So my early memories are of feeling very much part of a large family which was always fussing around me. My parents, my father’s side were from Lahore, well they’d moved to Lahore by the time partition happened, but they were actually from [Rabu Indi 0:02:02]. They were born in what is now Pakistan. So, their childhood was in Pakistan and they, up to the age of 13 I think my father, as I recall him telling me, they had a really good life, because my grandfather was the inspector of schools in that area. 0:02:29 This was during the days when the British were still ruling India, so they had a big house and a good salary. Then my grandfather died in a road crash, so things became difficult after that, and my grandmother had to fend for herself. She singlehandedly brought the whole family up, saw them all educated, married. Then when her youngest son, who actually had to return from England because they’d sent him here to study, when he was married she kind of thought, “My job is done.” She went after that. 0:03:23 By then my father was established in a job, all my uncles were established in jobs, my aunts were all headmistresses, so they were from an academic background. On my mother’s side, the family was from Amritsar, and during partition, because there was a majority Muslim population, even in Amritsar then, when the riots broke out it started to get really nasty. So they thought it would be safer for them to move to Delhi. Even the journey from Amritsar to Delhi had its dangers. My father’s side had moved from Rabu Indi to Lahore, chacha, my Uncle was still in college then. My father had started his first job in government service, so he was actually in Shimla, he was working for the government department in Shimla.
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So he was getting first hand, receiving news of riots kicking off and killings taking place, so he would- don’t forget this is a time when there was no internet, even phone calls were difficult to make. So he was writing to them regularly saying, “Things are turning bad, you should come and stay with me here in Shimla.” Because Shimla was relatively peaceful, it was the seat of the summer capital of British India. I don’t think they felt immediately in danger, so they would have said, “We’re fine.” Then, because summers are hot in India, they came to visit him, Shimla is up in the Himalayas, it’s a summer vacation capital. So they came to visit him, apart from my chacha, they all came to visit him, and while they were visiting him the riots and the killings really kicked off, so they never went back. My uncle, they had I think some sort of rifle in the house, he just managed to come across, he put the rifle on his shoulder, but a blanket on it, got on a train and managed to get across to India safe and sound. Some of our other relatives, few of them, got caught up and didn’t make it. So my early memories are that both my parents, and the entire family, even though they were secure, and they had good jobs etc. Were still coming to terms with what they’d seen and heard. Just at the time- I was born in 1950, so it wasn’t a long gap between the riots and my birth. So my memories are that whenever they would mention politics or partition the atmosphere would change because of what they’d seen, what they’d heard and what they’d been through. Really they’d lost everything. So, they were coming to terms with that in terms of their own personal lives, they were rebuilding their lives, they’d lost where they lived was gone, not they had to manage in a smaller space, everybody was sharing. Their attitude towards other people, especially towards Muslims- they had been living in what was a heavily Muslim populated area, so they had Muslim friends and they would freely mix with them. Now they became more careful, they became more conservative in who they chose as their friends. As far as I recall, in my growing up days they had maybe one or two Muslim friends, all the others were wither Hindus or Sheiks, that changed in the family. Then when you would talk of Pakistan or India, you could see the tensions in their faces, you could see the tension in the way they described things. Because I think even though they didn’t personally experience persecution or rioting, they saw a lot, they saw a lot of what happened to other people. That in its own way had affected them, traumatised them and they were coming to terms with that. So, that, subconsciously, because I was a child, I picked up on, and it was years later when I recognised why my parents wouldn’t encourage me to have Muslim friends as well. My other abiding memory was that they were a close-knit family, but this whole experience made them even closer.
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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS 0:08:27
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They became very tight together in a way that has affected my outlook on relationships, in the sense that their brothers and sisters were so tight knit that they could withstand anything because they would stand together. The second thing that was my binding memory was that they weren’t ever miserable, there would always be laughter in the house, because they didn’t have much, but they entertained each other through just sheer joy of laughter and joking. My youngest uncle, my dad’s youngest brother, was a whit, and he’d come out with some cracking comments here and there. That in its turn affected the whole family, there would always be laughter, as far as I can recall, they would get together every evening, eat meals together, they would play cards. Cards was a big thing, they would play a lot of cards together, but that closeness was important, it allowed them to weather all the storms, that closeness is something that I have not seen since, I’ve not seen it in the next generation. I look at them and say, “My God, they were tight together, the way they were.” In a way I have picked up on that, and my brothers picked up on that and we’re really close, people say, “You brothers are really close.” We’re close to our cousins as well, we regard them as not cousins but brothers and sisters. So that’s come down from that experience if you like of what they went through and how they dealt with it, and I think that’s what helped them resettle in a way, resettle successfully. Both my daughters were born here in England, in Birmingham, so obviously their experiences are going to be different. I tried to keep them connected to India in the early years of their lives by going there constantly so they would meet relatives. It’s not the same, they’re very much settled here, this is where they see their future. I think what they’ve picked up on is the closeness of our family, so they see how much we insist, as a result of my brother and myself being very tight together, and how much we insist on keeping in touch with or cousins and other relatives, they’ve seen that. We’ve encouraged them to do the same, my encouragement is that amongst each other, both the sisters should have that same closeness, should feel for each other in the same way that we behave towards my parents’ generation did, that I did. So that they don’t become remote and casual that, “She’s my sister and that’s it.” It’s more than that. I think that generally they are quite close, but not in the same way that we were, there has been a shift. In the early days I went back with nostalgia, I went after many years, after I got a job and everything, so there was a big gap. I went back with nostalgia and at that time it was still the India that I’d grown up, I remembered from my childhood, even the streets, I was familiar with the streets, I could get round Delhi, I felt comfortable there. Travelling around to other cities I felt comfortable.
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The modernisation has had its impact, now there are parts of Delhi that are unrecognisable, the whole way Indians behave to each other has changed, it’s now become more of a rat race. There is a greater drive to acquire things whereas then it was just a question of, you know, even after partition, even your neighbours etc knew what the whole country had been through. So the way neighbours reacted to each other was warmly, it wasn’t about, “What do you have?” It’s about, “What friendship and support can we give each other?” That is still there but it’s diminished and it’s changed immensely now, because people are now becoming more like we’re used to in the west. Where neighbours will greet each other but that warmth and that closeness that I felt when I was a child of five or six, or even a child of two or three, that is not there now. I remember even our neighbours, when we had moved to Delhi and started to rebuild the family, our neighbours would treat me like their own son, for many, many years when I met them afterwards. That string bond was there, and they kept in touch throughout each other’s lives. That generation is now moving, and the next generation is coming in and things are changing. I go back to India and I go to Delhi frequently, at least once a year if not twice a year. I still have a close connection with Delhi, even though, as I said, it’s changed so much, and I find the traffic there infuriating. I still feel, when I get there, even though I’ve lived most of my life in Birmingham now, three quarters of my life. When I go there I just feel like connection, that this is where I was born, and this is home. It wasn’t as large as it is now, it wasn’t spread out, there were far fewer cars, having a car was a real luxury then, most people went round on bicycles, my dad used to go to work on a bicycle, the car came much later. If you had a house you were doing well, because to own your own house was a luxury, most people just rented or if they were government employees they were given a house by the government to live in. It was more trusting, in other words you could relax a lot more in the sense that crime wasn’t as rampant. I know for a fact, and I think statistics will bale me out, women were safer, they could move around the city without being molested. Everybody had a sense, and I think that’s not just for Delhi, but Delhi especially because it was the capital, had a sense that a new era had begun. That we had to work hard to make a new country, because we’d just got independence in 1947, and when I was growing up this was the 1950s. This was the era of, you know, when John F Kennedy was around, when the cold war was around, India was being a nonaligned country, wasn’t taking sides with either the west or with the communist bloc, they just wanted to be themselves.
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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS 0:16:29
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The overriding attitude towards India was, “We’re going to succeed in making a new independent country, we’re going to succeed in that.” They were not in a rush to do so, it wasn’t like, “Let’s do it tomorrow,” they knew they had to take the first steps. When you look at what India has achieved in the past 70 years, as a new independent country that had nothing to start with in 1947, and what it’s done since. In spite of all the difficulties in developing industry and getting businesses going etc. In spite of all the difficulties they’ve had they’ve achieved a hell of a lot. That is a mark of the character of the Indians I think. I would say that each side, whether they were in Pakistan or whether they ended up in India, each side had their own tragedy and their stories to tell. So, we look at them and say, “They did this to us,” and I’m sure they’re looking to us and telling their own stories and saying, “They did this to us.” So there is a lot of blame, and that is still there very much in the air. Which is why the two countries don’t really have warm relationships with each other in spite of the fact that culturally there’s a lot of common ground. I hope the day will come when we can live together, when we can put that- but at the moment I don’t see that happening. Because there’s been a lot of pain and hurt. My aunt said to me, what was shocking was the people that they knew, and completely trusted as friends and neighbours, showed a completely different side to their character in that six months or a year when all this madness was going on. That never left her and a lot of people in our family, you know, the way people changed. I think it must be the same for others, it must be the same for their experiences, so it will take time. The best thing you can do, and I’ve done this with my daughters, is, yes you keep your cultural ties and you keep your religious ties and you remember where your roots were, it’s important. I think it’s very important that we recognise, if you’re going to make your home here, you look to the future and say, “What is my life as a UK citizen, as a British citizen?” You sort of start to live that life rather than looking backwards all the time. Which means you get on with everybody, you get on with Europeans, you get on with Asians, you get on with Africans, you get on with West Indians, you have to try. Because this is becoming a multicultural country.
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File: Sanyogita Kumari Audio Contributor:
Before I came to this country, I was lecturer in Hans Raj Mahila Maha Vidyalaya in Jalandhar, of Indian classical music. For a very short time, and then I came over to this country and tried to establish myself as a singer, as a teacher, but I could not sustain full time. So, I’ve been teaching and singing, but at the same time I trained myself to be a social worker, and then I worked for the council, working for adults.
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In India, I was in Jalandhar, I was born in Jalandhar. It’s a very big family, I was part of nine children and I was the youngest. My mum and dad came from Pakistan during the partition, and I think four of my brothers and sisters were born in Pakistan, and then they came over and settled in Jalandhar, and that’s where the other five were born, and I was the youngest born There. That’s where I did my studies, and my upbringing, early years, happened there. When I was little, most of the times evening time used to be stories about the partition, because all our family were settled in Jalandhar now.
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They all had come from Pakistan before partition. My mum’s side of the family were from [Jammu side 0:02:11], and they spoke Dogri. My dad’s side of the family was from Sialkot and they were also in Jalandhar. So, most of the time people got together in the evenings, and my nana, my [chaachas], my [taayas], they would come at the weekends or in the evenings and talk about their experience in Pakistan. There were some very beautiful memories they used to share, and we used to just sit there listening to those stories. For us those were, like, evening time stories to listen to, and they were very interesting. Some were very painful, and some were very happy and funny, and they used to talk about their friends they had there. 0:03:01
Or people who worked in their factory, people who my dad had taught, because my dad was [ustadji 0:03:07]. They had a business, a sports business, where they made cricket balls, hockey balls, and people from the villages used to come and work for them. They were in the ___, you know, the city, they called it, and my dad was the ustad who used to teach them how to saw, the hand sawn, cricket balls. I used to hear that he had about 500 students, and they worked for him, and it was a huge place they had, and they were very well established there before partition. The painful memories, where they had to leave everything behind and come over to the India side of the partition, and the way they came was just a very painful experience for all of them.
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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS 0:04:07
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They all came separately. My dad came separate, my mum came separate with the women and the rest of the family, because my dad was the head of the, sort of, business side of things, somehow they decided two weeks before, when they’d heard that everything was going to go that way and there was going to be partition and all the people who are non-Muslims will have to go to the India side, they decided that he will leave early. He took about nine boys from the family, all the boys, and decided to leave before everybody else. So, they thought he’ll be safe, and all the boys will be safe, and the others will go when the government say, or other arrangements will be made. Then they will go, and he took my cousins and my brothers. They used to have a tonga, you know, the horse cart, of their own, and the driver was a Muslim guy, who said he’d help in case there were any problems on the way. So, they hid in the bull cart, and they just went from home. On the way, they got stopped on many places, and he tried to save them and hide that it was Muslim people, because they were stopped with Muslim groups of people with machetes, with hockey sticks, and a lot of things they were using to just beat people up or kill people. I think they went through two, three villages just like that, and then they got stopped. Where a group of very aggressive people stopped them, they got hold of the horse, and they said, “We want to see who’s inside.”
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The guy did say that, “It’s my ustadji, and he’s Muslim, and we’re just going to some place,” he just made an excuse, but they said, “No, we want to see exactly.” When they pulled the curtain, they saw my dad. My dad used to wear gold rings, and somehow they thought he was a Hindu [Lalla 0:06:25]. So, they said that, “We know he’s not Muslim, and you’re hiding, and get them down,” and somehow, I don’t know what came to his head, the guy just got hold of the horse and just ran. Those guys just left behind and he just fled, and this is how they got rid of them, but then he was really scared and they didn’t know how to get to the next place. Whoever came on the way, they just didn’t stop.
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Somehow, it took them two weeks to get to the other side of India, but in the meantime the rest of the family, when the government announced that everybody had to go, and just get whatever you have, just pick up your stuff and go. My dadi, my grandma, told all the daughters-in-law that, they all used to get jewellery and stuff equal every year, so she said, “Everybody have your own and look after your own stuff, and just make one pillow, or a cushion, with all your belongings, and just take that, and don’t take anything else. Just the kids and that pillow with all your jewellery in it.”
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My mum tells us that she had, sort of, a pillow, quite a lot of stuff in that, and when the bus came to take all the people and they were guiding people into the bus and telling them, “Don’t carry too much stuff. You need to go now, everybody just sit down.”
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In that hustle, bustle, she forgot the pillow, of all her gold in there. When she was sitting in the bus, she said she realised that she’d left everything. Whatever she was supposed to take with her, she hadn’t taken that. So, but at the same time one of my dad’s students, who was a Muslim guy, was also wandering around, and he saw them sitting in that bus and he came and said, “Is everything okay?” My mum just told him that, “We are leaving, but there is something in the house, that sort of pillow, this colour and everything, you go and take whatever is in that. I’ve left it now, so don’t worry, but at least I’d rather you take it than somebody else.” So, she told him.
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I think the bus was going to Amritsar, there was a camp, and that’s where all the people were taken by the government. So, somehow they reached there, she said, “I was wondering, we left everything there, and dad’s gone. We don’t know where he is, all the kids have gone.” She had three kids with her, and then my maasi, there were other people, my chaachi, and they were all in one group, and she said they met Mahatma Gandhi there as well, and Nehru came to the camp. One day she said she was just sitting and an announcement came, said somebody has left something behind, come and recognise if it’s yours and take it. It was just a very, very vague message, and she said, somehow, she thought, “It was mine.” Whatever she’s left, somebody’s brought it back, and she said, “But I was hesitant. I thought nobody’s going to bring that back, who’s going to bring it to me?”
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They announced it again, and then she said, “I’ve got nothing to lose, go and see what it is.” So she went, and she said, “I have left something behind as well, so I don’t know if what you are saying is mine,” and they said, “[Non-English speech 0:10:16]. Tell us whatever you’ve left in there,” and she started telling them, “I’ve got all my jewellery, and it’s got this sort of [kantar], it’s got this sort of [kungun], and these sort of rings.” He took one of them out, and he said, “Is that yours?” She said, “I just nearly died.” She said, “How come? Who’s brought it here?” Somehow that guy who she had said, “Take it,” he came all the way to return it, and he managed to actually give it to the authorities, with the name and everything. To say it belongs to them, and it reached her.
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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS 0:11:03
That was a very pleasant memory for her, and she used to tell us with a lot of love for the people who helped, but she also talked about some of the things they saw on the way. People were murdered, there were dead people on the roadsides. The trains were all blood everywhere, because a lot of people were killed in the trains. I also heard one of my maasi, my mum’s sister, she was heavily pregnant, and she gave birth to one of my cousins in the train, when they were coming in the train. She came from a different place, and in that train, it was going through Lahore, I think, his name is Lahori. They named him Lahori.
0:12:01
Somehow, the people helped in that coach to deliver the baby and everything. So, there were some very helpful people, because everybody was going through trauma, and they were all trying to help each other as well. Somehow, in Jalandhar, she got her pillow, and they all went to Jalandhar, trying to find a place where they all can live together, and they went to that [hakim’s 0:12:27] house. It was only a small house, apparently, and there were 20-odd people, just went into the same house, started to live there.
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File: Ranjit Sondhi Interviewer:
It’s Thursday 3rd August. My name is Harpreet Kaur and I’m here to conduct an interview for the project ‘The Partition Trail’. If you could confirm your name for me, please.
Ranjit Sondhi: Yes, my name is Ranjit Sondhi I came to this country in 1966 to study in a public school, after which I went to university in Birmingham before I started working in the community. So I’ve been here in the UK for more than 50 years. This is now my first home, but I always look back to India as my other home because it was my home when I was a young boy growing up in my formative teenage years, and I’ve got a huge sentimental connection with it. Interviewer:
Excellent. What do you know about your family history in relation to the partition that happened in India?
Ranjit Sondhi: Like very many other people in England at the moment from the Indian subcontinent, we are deeply rooted in the history of the Punjab. Now, the Punjab is an area that cuts right across India and Pakistan, as you know, and it goes back more than 2,000 years. Just as an example, it was a place where Alexander the Great came to with his Greek army, and it was the periphery of his empire. It was in the Punjab that he tired of conquering and pillaging and whatever they used to do in those days, and went back, leaving his general in charge of the Punjab. Now, in those days of course, many places in the Punjab had Greek associations, there were names of rivers and towns that were very much Greek in some respects, or had Greek names as well. Jalandhar, of course, which you know of as a big city in the Punjab was called [Jalandhara 0:02:41] and the Greek king [Menandez] actually converted into Buddhism at the time. So you can see that the Punjabis here in England have a very long tradition, a very long history rooted in the Punjab which goes back thousands of years. Somehow, we need to capture that because it makes our lives richer. Interviewer:
That’s really interesting. I can connect with that because my family is actually from Jalandhar too in the Punjab.
Ranjit Sondhi: Yes. Interviewer:
So is that where you grew up in Jalandhar? Or was it…?
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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTS Ranjit Sondhi: Indeed, indeed. The Sondhi family comes from a small area of the city of Jalandhar called Kot Kishan Chand, what you call your ancestral home. Lots of families here have got ancestral homes in and around that part of the Punjab which is called the Doab, the Doab means ‘the land between two rivers’. As you know, the Punjab has got five rivers. This particular piece of land is one of the most fertile areas in the world. It can produce some up to four or five crops in the course of a single year. So you can imagine, there was an intense amount of cultivation, of settlement, of civilisation in this particular part of the world. That’s what the Punjabis are. They are, if you like, the carriers of a very long tradition of working on the soil and building civilisations based upon that. Interviewer:
Your family pre-partition, what sort of work were they doing in India? Were they involved with the land? What were they doing at the time? I’m interested in knowing how during partition and post-partition, how did that affect their livelihood? What happened?
Ranjit Sondhi: I’m 65 plus, so I was born about a few years after the partition. The partition took place in 1947, the war had just ended in Europe. India and Pakistan were looking for independence, or at least, India was looking for independence, and the ultimate solution, of course, was that two nations were formed. So I am 65. My parents, of course, from a previous generation were part of the undivided India long before anybody had any idea that there will be two countries formed out of one. Subsequently, three countries after Bangladesh was formed out of Pakistan. So we are talking here about my grandparents who were born before 1900, in the middle of the Victorian period in England. They were very much part of the empire’s colonies, if you like. They were colonial subjects. They didn’t have British passports in their pockets. They had no passports, in fact. They were called British subjects and that’s how they moved among in the Commonwealth from one part of it to the other. Of course, there were people who did move in the Boer War, in the First World War, in the war that took place in China, the Opium Wars. Indian soldiers worked within the British Empire and were taken right across the world long before I was born, in the Middle East, in China, in Afghanistan and, of course, in Europe. So they had seen action, they had been right around. So my father’s father, my paternal grandfather, was born in a town called Lyallpur. Lyallpur is named after an Englishman, General Lyall. Of course, the name has now changed, Lyallpur is now, I believe, Faisalabad in post-independence times. But at the time he was born it was Lyallpur, and he had set up his family in Lyallpur. My grandmother was also born in one of the villages in Lyallpur and that’s where they settled.
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My father’s father, my grandfather, was actually a very prominent lawyer. He rose in the ranks to become the director of public prosecutions during the time of the British. He was [fated 0:07:34] by a lot of dignitaries at the time and he was given the rank of Rai Bahadur, a bit like one of the titles that you get if you are in England if you have done good work. So Rai Bahadur the title was given by the British to prominent Indians. He had a practice in the middle of Lyallpur. He lived on a road which was one of the most prominent roads in Lyallpur in what I would say was like a palace. It was a magnificent mansion with four turrets on each side which he had built for his four surviving sons and that’s where the family lived. He was probably, I suspect, one of the richer men in that area. He had, for instance, a horse and buggy to take the family around. Each son of his as they got married had a part of the household, so there he is in a large house bedecked with marble in the middle of the very prosperous town called Lyallpur doing his practice. My other grandfather who was in medicine, had been to England and rather my other grandfather had done his public health medicine in London, and had returned to take up a post in what is now called the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan. He was born in and around that area, rather like my grandmother, and my mother was actually born in Dera Ghazi Khan. Now, Dera Ghazi Khan is in the middle of the North-West Frontier Province. So you have my family from both sides well established in what is now Pakistan. After marriage, my mother, of course, came to live with my father in our grandfather’s house in Lyallpur from where… Sorry, they didn’t come to Lyallpur. After marriage, my mother had joined my father who had just been decommissioned from the army to join the civil service. They built their home in a place called Montgomery, again, named after an English general, as you know. Montgomery was a little town not so far away from Lyallpur and it is now called Sahiwal, I think. That’s where my father started his civil service and probably one of his first jobs was a sub-divisional magistrate, or something like that. So he was, kind of, a low ranking civil servant in Montgomery when partition happened. There was obviously a lot of talk around 1947 as to what’s going to happen when the British left. Now, Muslims in India, as you know, felt nervous about being in a country with a Hindu majority and wanted to have a place where they felt more secure. The Indian Congress Party, which was the motivating force for independence could not plicate that nervousness, they could not deal with that nervousness and ultimately the split took place, much against some of the best efforts of the leaders of the time. People like Gandhi and Nehru and Jinnah and so on, they were trying to look for a solution, it didn’t happen, and the split became inevitable. On the one side, there was the Muslim League, on the other side there was the [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 0:11:29] and these were the people working on the
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Interviewer:
ground full of very narrow, sectarian interests who did not want to live in the way that Indians had lived for thousands of years together. Let’s not forget that India was a receiving place. Punjab was a receptacle, as it were, of different kinds of religions, different faiths, different cultures, different languages, different nationalities, of course, there were not nations at the time, people from different principalities, people from Persia, people from Iran, people from Europe, Russians, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, they were all established in many ways in India, moving in and out, around in society. So an intensely multicultural, multi-faith environment. Akbar, one of the great Mughal kings had actually married a Hindu princess, yes, a Muslim marrying a Hindu princess right at the top end of society. There were many such examples where Muslim and Hindu people lived together. [Oronsay 0:12:49] had a very close relationship with an Indian woman before he married his own wife and so on. There were all sorts of other examples you can see in history where Muslims were employed in Hindu courts, and Hindus were employed in Muslim courts, and very high ranks. So all of that was taking place. But then somehow, with the unsettling that took place with the partition, people tended to suffer from what I call a historical amnesia, forgetting their past and focussing on some very, very narrow communal interests. That ultimately led to a partition that nobody could really prevent. That resulted in the Punjab, this great land with a tremendous history being split into two, on the one side of the continent. And on the other side, Bengal, yet another great area for culture, civilisation and all of that, again being split into East Bengal and West Bengal. East Bengal, as you know, going into Pakistan, and subsequently to become Bangladesh. So that’s the kind of background we are from. We are Punjabis who go back thousands of years for whom partition is just a kind of a flash in the pan against the whole background of our history. Who knows that in another hundred years’ time, perhaps Punjab will be reunited, as it were, and become one again, and assume its prominent position in the history of the world? So partition is like that, it’s a political device, as it were, to create nations out of what was a united and a culturally uniform continuous land on which people had settled from various different parts of the country to create that extraordinary dynamic that is so typical of the Punjabis. Thank you, Ranjit, that was an excellent summary. I’m getting a really positive view, actually, of what things were like in Punjab and India pre-1947. It looked like a very thriving, peaceful, multi-faith, multicultural, international hub of, you know, everyone is getting on, everyone is working together well. Just to clarify, so your grandparents, both sets of grandparents were in what is now called Pakistan.
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Ranjit Sondhi: That’s right. Interviewer:
And one grandparent was doing medicine, one was a lawyer, they were all very successful, everybody was happy.
Ranjit Sondhi: Yes. Interviewer:
So once the partition actually happened, did your families have to relocate? What happened with that? Were they uprooted? What happened to them?
Ranjit Sondhi: Sure. The reason for that historical interlude was to try and establish how people who regard themselves as Punjabis first before anything else were to be located in all parts of northern India as far up north of North-West Frontier Province, and as to this side as, say, Delhi and Aliabad and so on. Punjabis all of them, my grandparents would probably fall into that category as well, yes. Now, when the partition happens, a discussion starts as to what’s going to happen to people. The reason for partition was so that people could feel safe in particular areas. So it was inevitable that when Pakistan was formed for the safeguarding of the Muslim interests, not necessarily as a Muslim nation, but where Muslims could feel safe, then it was inevitable then that Muslims living in India would think seriously about relocating themselves into that area, and the opposite as well. The Hindus and the Sikhs and the Christians living in Pakistan might feel that they might have to move towards the other side because they might then become a minority with a Muslim majority and begin to feel the kind of discrimination that the Muslims had claimed in India. So you see how the whole thing happens. You plant an idea into people’s minds that the majority will be tyrannical, that it will exact its toll on the minorities, and the minorities will have to somehow regroup so that they can resist this tyranny of the majority. That’s why people started to move. Once the movement started across the border, it became a rush, it became a torrent fuelled by stories of what was happening to people as they moved across. Because when the unsettling takes place of a nation, it can very quickly get out of hand. There is a, kind of, mass hysteria that grips the nation. The only way that one can resolve that is by relocation. That’s what happened. My grandfather, for all his contacts and all his intricate networks in Lyallpur decided that it was no longer safe to be there, and therefore sent the word around to his children that if you’re not already on the Indian side of that line, you might wish to relocate. That’s what happened to my parents, and that’s where the story starts about why and how my mother and father left everything behind in Montgomery
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Interviewer:
and came, literally within a day, across the border. We can go into that in a minute. But you can see how on both sides people began to move. First slowly, and then rapidly, and by the time that movement was complete, it had left behind a largescale tragedy where lots of people had been killed along that journey. So it’s interesting the way you’ve described it and how you’re saying the seed was planted and it created fear. Would you describe it as it was enforced by – I don’t know – the state or the leadership? Because it almost sounds on the one hand it was, kind of, voluntary. So where would you draw the line? People had to move? Or it was inevitable that you would do that for your own safety? Or it erupted, like, that wasn’t the original plan, but that’s why it ended up happening? How would you describe it?
Ranjit Sondhi: Okay. It’s interesting to study who moved and who didn’t move after partition. There were pockets of Muslims who were left behind in India. In fact, there were so many Muslims in India that the number of Muslims in India is greater than the number of Muslims in Pakistan. So it’s obvious that not all the Muslims moved. Clearly, those who were living in Hyderabad, for instance, and that was a pocket of Islam, if you like, a highly cultured city which had developed over many, many years with Persian and Iranian input, in the middle of India, but that was a thousand miles away from the border. So you couldn’t imagine a vast exodus of people moving hundreds of miles to get to the border. The people who were able to get across the border did so, and that was in the Punjab, the line ran through the Punjab. Hindus on one side wanted to go to India, and the Muslims on the other side wanted to go to Pakistan. So that’s how it happened. Clearly, the Muslims who didn’t move devised other methods of surviving in an independent India. Similarly, there were Christians and Hindus who are still left behind, who are still in Pakistan who are doing okay, they are fine. They are actually part of the society there. So not everybody chose to move, but the people living close to the border, the people affected by what I call that panic and that hysteria that was generated largely for political reasons, I believe. Or for narrow political interests, which was this hysteria that was fanned by what might happen to minorities in a majority state. Interviewer:
Okay. Let’s talk about your parents and your grandparents, then. So you’re saying that they made the decision for their safety to leave, and you said that they left everything behind.
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Ranjit Sondhi: Yes. Interviewer:
Can you tell us a bit more about that? Where did they go? How did they get there? What happened? How did they continue with their careers and livelihoods?
Ranjit Sondhi: So many stories, so many stories. You know, when we were growing up in India, I was born in India, of course, because my mother had by that time – and my father – had resettled in a town called Firozpur. But we were very curious as we were growing up through the ‘50s and ‘60s of what had happened to our parents. That memory was fresh in their minds. They had just come across, literally a few years before then, before our births, and tried to re-establish their lives and their livelihoods. So we were always curious and we learned from them. People of that generation with those kinds of terrible experiences don’t often talk very much, but we managed to get these stories out of them. Then we realised what extraordinary things had happened, tales that spoke of on the one side cruelty and terrible killings. On the other side great stories of courage, of togetherness, of brotherhood, and of a great love and affection between people of different faiths. And it all mixed together in a sense.
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THE PARTITION TRAIL
credits & acknowledgements Written by Katy Wade Produced by Sampad Cover Photo by Jas Sansi Photography Designed by Dave Walsh Creative
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