A nation can go through Post-traumatic stress disorder of a scale that will continue to reverberate through its many generations. It will haunt and determine the futures of thousands of families and forever alter their course. Its people will imagine it to be temporary, its pain short-lived; their hope for things to get back to normal will be high. Time will prove them wrong.

They will realise they have lost everything and that they will have to start anew, afresh, their spirits down and energy low. They will soldier on because they can do nothing else. For the longest time, it will simply seem like a word to the families who don’t face it but as more information about the horrible events come to light, they too as members of an extended family feel its tremors. This was especially true of India’s partition into India and Pakistan in 1947.

India had only just freed herself of her British colonisers who found it perfectly reasonable to plunder and loot her systematically and to forever make her citizens forget their true selves. They would leave them groping to understand their authentic selves but not before dealing the final, cruellest blow to her newfound independence. Pre-empting violence between India’s dominant religious groups Hindus and Muslims, the British decided to partition India. They did not leave her to decide what she would do with her polarised people. A line of approximation was drawn and India’s people were forever divided. Their religious difference was highlighted but not their similarity in geography, culture, language and food.

What followed can only be called one of the worst carnages in human history. Depending on which side of the line they were, people scrambled, children and grandmothers in tow to get to the other side. Violence did break out and previously secure communities fled their homes with a few belongings hoping to escape with their lives and not much else. Everything familiar and homely started to recede into the past.

14.5 (between 1947 and 1951) million people (source: The Big March: Migratory Flows after the Partition of India) are believed to have migrated to either side of the border that was drawn by an official from an island in Europe.

This vast number is filled with stories of individuals and their families.

The Indian Memory Project, traces the history of the Indian sub-continent through images from personal archives. This is a portion of the letter by Amita Bajaj, now residing in Mumbai.

In June of 1947, murmurs of communal troubles were in the air. My father was then a third year MBBS student of Balakram Medical College which was established by Sir Gangaram in Lahore. (It was re-established as Fatima Jinnah Medical College after it was abandoned during partition).
Hearing of riots around the area, the eldest of the two older brothers, who was also studying medicine in Amritsar, tried to convince my grandmother to sell her savings, which were in form of silver bricks and the basement of their haveli (mansion) was stacked with them. Partition was imminent, yet my devout Sikh grandmother rebuked her sons, saying that should they sell the silver: “Loki kahangey ke nayaraan da divalaya nikal paya“! (“People will say that we are bankrupt!”).

I was born in the 1960s, and had heard horror stories about Partition from my paternal grandmother, ‘bhabiji’. On August 14, 1947, the family was eating their brunch and actually saw the Sialkot police running away from the rioters and that is when the family then knew it was time to leave. After collecting their valuables, my grandfather first hid with his wife and three sons in the house of a dear friend Ghulam Qadir who owned a departmental store, then later in the Sialkot Jail where the Superintendent Arjun Dass was a patient of his.

To read the full note, visit here.

In another memory, Waqar Ul Mulk Naqvi, Punjab Province, Pakistan, recounts his grandfather’s journey from Beed in India to Pakistan.

When the Partition of India and Pakistan was announced, my grandfather was still very optimistic that Hyderabad will be declared an independent state. The Nizam of Hyderabad was very adamant about that. But the Indian Government did not comply and the Nizam had to surrender in 1948.

With a lot of sorrow, and seeing no other option in a very precarious India, my grandparents along with their children were finally forced to join thousands of others and leave India in 1955. All of our assets, a house at Muhalla Qila as well as the cultivated agricultural land were left behind, abandoned.

They migrated to Karachi via Bombay on a ship. With our roots, and legacies all left behind, my family had to go through a lot of hurt, disillusionment and suffering. Consequences of which can be felt till today. In my family’s words “we were simply plucked and sent into a dark and dangerous journey to Pakistan with no home, no job or even land to call our own.” Many people along with them, never made it to the shores of Pakistan and many were killed right after they landed.

To read the full note, visit here.

The deep displacement, pain and trauma on both sides are evident in these chronicles.

Sadat Hasan Manto’s stories about the partition sear the mind even in its English translation. He doesn’t cushion his stories in any way. His visceral short stories leave a deep impression on our minds and hearts.

His Toba Tek Singh aptly captures the plight of the central character Bishen Singh who refuses to return to his town Toba Tek Singh when he is told it is now a part of the newly formed Pakistan. He finds himself in no man’s land, neither Pakistan nor India. He cries loudly. Manto observes, "There, behind barbed wire, was Hindustan. Here, behind the same kind of barbed wire, was Pakistan. In between, on that piece of ground that had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh."

Be it Thanda Ghost (Cold meat) or Kali Salwar (Black pants), Manto exposes the bestiality and desperation of people that was unleashed during the partition.

To buy this book click here.

Tamas (Darkness) by Bisham Sahani captures the painful journey of Hindus and Sikhs as they are forced to migrate to India. This book was made into a miniseries by Govind Nihalani in 1987. I watched it as a young girl in Bangalore, far from the time and place that saw Partition and Marlowe’s Heart of Darkness came to mind. The horrors of partition came alive on the little tv screen as we watched in disbelief the fire that was unleashed by Partition with citizens turning on each other, with no regard for life.

To buy Tamas, click here.

Chachaji’s Cup is a picture book by Uma Krishnaswami that captures the fracturing of the idea of a united India through a teacup. This beautiful story will touch a chord with young readers.

Chachaji’s Cup

The short film Mukund and Riaz is the story of love and the parting of two childhood friends. In the film, by Nina Sabnani, Mukund and Riaz are fast friends, spending several happy moments together. The partition forces Mukund to leave, but not without a parting gift.

Mukund and Riaz

Google Arts and Culture have photographs, stories of people and objects on its page. Take some time to browse through their 1947 Partition archive for pictures and stories by survivors. Click here to visit the page.

Eventually, the displaced citizens who suddenly became refugees, worked very hard to set up new lives in their new homes. They forged new paths for themselves despite great odds. They made the best of terrible circumstances that tore their nation.

Younger citizens of the world got to revisit the Partition through the Ms . Marvel series. Incorporating the Partition through the star of the series, Ms Marvel talks about the Partition to a whole new audience. In one scene we are transported to the railway station during Partition. All around we see thousands upon thousands of people waiting on the rooftop of trains and overflowing bogies, desperate to cross over the border.

Ms Marvel on Disney+

Even as India and Pakistan celebrated their freedom, millions of their citizens were trying to find their footing. Artists, writers, actors and storytellers continue to remember and recount the Partition so that we may never forget what happened in 1947 in India