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Lost in Partition riots, siblings meet in silence, tears after 75 years
Bridging generations, social media activists are helping trace members of families parted from them in the mayhem of Partition as people fled their homes to cross borders in 1947
For Gurmukh Singh, 73, the younger brother of Mumtaz Bibi of Sheikhupura in Pakistan, the meeting with their sister lost to the fleeing Sikh family at the Kartarpur Corridor was one of silence and tears. “Only after we had wept our hearts out did we get talking about what had happened in our families over the long years of separation or contact of any kind.”
He adds, “All of us were born after 1947 and the family believed that my older sister Gurmail (Gejo) and her mother Pyar Kaur were killed when the mobs attacked them some distance away from their native village.” Subsequently, their father Sardar Pala Singh was married to his late wife’s younger sister Prasin Kaur and raised a family.
Gurmukh adds, “This reunion with our lost sister may not have happened if my nephew had not traced our lost village of Sekhma in Pakistan on his Android phone to show us the pictures. At random, he copied a Sekhma shop phone number and through the shopkeeper made contact with a village elder. The old man told us that our sister, just 18 months in 1947, had survived and was found weeping by her mother’s corpse near Ranjit Kot village. The head of the village, Chaudhri Mubarak Ali, a wealthy and kind man, adopted her as his daughter, brought her up and married her to a youngster of the nearby Galodhian village.”
Telling this story, Gurmukh pauses to add with a smile, “We older people would grumble about the young spending so much time on their phones but now we are thankful that these phones have led to hundreds of people tracing their lost kin.”
Though the contact was made two years ago, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they could meet only this January on the Kartarpur Corridor. “Some 25 members of our family went and 15 from their side came, carrying gifts for one another,” he says. Gejo, now Mumtaz Bibi, told them, “Chaudhri Mubarak Ali was a caring father and I heard only from outsiders that my parents were no more and that I was a Sikh.”
Gurmukh and his younger brother, Baldev Singh, are planning to visit their sister in Sheikhupura this winter. The return visit from Mumtaz Bibi and her clan to their village in the Patiala district will follow.
Long wait for brother in Jassowal
At Jassowal Sudan in Ludhiana district, an ailing Gurmail Singh Grewal, 79, lives in dire straits with his wife, Raghubir Kaur, but that doesn’t stop him from raising his hand in bhangra pose as he sits on the wheelchair at the prospect of meeting his younger sister, Sakina Bibi, 67, living in Noorpur in Pakistan. This connection was made possible by Nasir Dhillon of Punjabi Lehar followed by journalists and YouTubers in India. When journalist YouTuber Gurdarshan Singh Sandhu of Khabaraab confirmed the story to the villagers, there was general jubilation that the brother would meet his sister with “sindharha (festive gifts of clothes and sweets)”.
However, a visit to his home revealed the only earnings that come the family’s way are from selling scarves at the nearby gurdwara. Gurmail is frail after an operation and can hardly walk yet his eyes twinkle at the thought of meeting his sibling. The story is complex as his mother, a beautiful Gujjar woman, was found by the police and taken away to be rehabilitated with her first husband. The sister is Muslim and the bother a Jat Sikh. Villagers, however, are hopeful that they will facilitate his visit to Kartarpur once the passport comes.
There have been many such instances of connecting people torn apart by the Great Divide of 1947. Dhillon of Punjabi Lehar, which started on Facebook six years ago and subsequently moved to YouTube, said: “Earlier, we contacted people but now people reach out to us. I started this work after hearing the warm ties across religions in the lost composite culture of Punjab. YouTube is an effective medium and Sakina Bibi’s brother Gurmail Singh Grewal was traced in just four days.”
Connected courtesy social media
More than 200 people have connected thus, including two brothers who were separated, one was left behind in Pakistan while the other crossed over to India. Mohammad Siddiq, 80, was in Faisalabad, while his younger brother, Mohammad Habib, accompanied his mother to visit India, and Partition happened. It was a poignant moment when the younger brother said amid tears, “We have lived to meet!”
