Partition survivors recall experiences at DU event
The event, anchored by DU’s Centre for Independence and Partition Studies (CIPS), saw five Partition survivors share their stories and featured a short film
New Delhi
“Find a vacant house. Settle in. Make it your own.”
Those were the only instructions 15-year-old Atma Singh Grover received after crossing the border from Pakistan’s Lahore to India during the Partition. Now 92 years old, and brimming with emotion while recollecting his memories, Grover shared his story at Delhi University’s seminar on “Partition Horror Remembrance Day”, held on Wednesday.
The event, anchored by DU’s Centre for Independence and Partition Studies (CIPS), saw five Partition survivors share their stories and featured a short film, of interviews, conducted with the participants.
Continuing his story, Grover said he was chased by some people, who were trying to kill him when he was 16 years old. “I had to run into the fields to save myself,” he said.
Born on February 20, 1932, in Lahore, Grover fled his village and was forced to go to Kasur, where he spent two to three days at the railway station. He was then escorted by the army to Firozpur in Punjab.
Kapil Kapoor, an Indian scholar of history, linguistics and literature, and former pro-vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, was also among the speakers. Now 83 years old, he shared the horrors of the Partition days when as a seven-year-old, he witnessed trains filled with corpses crossing the border. “It was a terrifying experience!” he said.
CIPS was established in 2023 to explore, collect and create an archive of the experiences of Partition survivors. From creating a library of interviews of people from the Partition era to cataloguing literature from across the country, the centre will soon make its collection available to the public.
CIPS is currently in the process of interviewing at least 100 people who can share their lived experiences. “We started about four months ago. We have interviewed seven people so far and we aim to interview at least 100. However, we are working with a very strict timeline, considering the age of the interviewees,” said Ravinder Kumar, director of CIPS.