Partition: Tales of love, longing, and loss
India’s march as a free country began on a tragic note in 1947 as the horrors of Partition tore families. Sadia Akhtar talks to three such families
India’s march as a free country began on a tragic note in 1947 as the horrors of Partition tore families and communities asunder. The violence unleashed by the creation of India and Pakistan left millions homeless, their families shattered, their kin murdered or mutilated. 76 years on, Sadia Akhtar talks to three families to chronicle their extraordinary journeys across the frontier to build a life for themselves in India, and the fading memories of a land they once called home
The house is yours
In the summer of 1947, Urmil Luthra’s world turned upside down. Then a 12-year-old, Urmil was in Jhelum (in present-day Pakistan) when the Partition was announced. A native of Sargodha (also in Pakistan), she was at her uncle’s house in the army cantonment in July to spend the summer vacations.
“We were staying with our maternal uncle at the army cantonment in Jhelum. Although it was a safe space, I was immensely distressed. The city was up in flames and we could see the fires from the cantonment. There was a lot of arson and since my family was in Sargodha, I was extremely worried,” said Urmil. As tensions spread, the family left the cantonment in an army truck and eventually reached Lahore from where they boarded a train for Amritsar in Punjab while her father stayed back in Sargodha.
The train journey from Lahore was unlike any she had ever undertaken. A pervasive fear was hanging in the air and the train’s departure was delayed; it stood at the station for an entire night as men from the army guarded it. “Although we were in an army train, they stopped the train at the Lahore station. For an entire night, the train stood at the station. Although army soldiers surrounded the train with rifles to prevent against any attack, we were issued strict instructions to not utter a word. They said ask mothers to muffle the cries of their children,” recalled Urmil.
The train arrived in Amritsar the next day, where another train heading towards Pakistan was held hostage.
“When our train entered Amritsar, we were perplexed to hear religious chants. It had been decided that if our train arrived in India safely, the train heading towards Pakistan would be spared or else, the occupants would meet the same fate as us. Since our train arrived safely, those heading towards Pakistan let out cries of relief,” she said, adding that the situation in those days was not good. In India, her family stayed in Palwal till 1953 and eventually moved to Delhi. A new city marked the beginning of a new phase of life but the memories of Sargodha persisted.
Now a resident of Pitampura, Urmil, harboured a desire of visiting her home in Pakistan for years. She wanted to revive her childhood memories and renew her ties to the place where she grew up. Her long-cherished dream of visiting her ancestral home in Sargodha materialised in August 2006, when she and her younger brother Deepak Luthra were granted visas. Although nearly 60 years had passed since she left, Urmil was able to identify her neighbourhood and her house without much difficulty. It was almost as if no time had elapsed, she said.
“Sargodha had not changed much. Everything was the same as it was when I left the city in the summer of 1947. When I reached the street that led to our house, I was immediately able to identify our house,” said Urmil, now 88, her eyes welling up with tears. Since the current occupants of the house were not available, the siblings returned to the hotel soon after. On reaching the hotel, however, they received an unanticipated phone call.
“We got a call on the hotel landline. I was surprised because no one knew us in Sargodha and we had not shared any number either. The call was from the current inhabitants of our house who said that they were coming to pick us up. ‘The house is yours and you must stay with us’, they told us,” recalled Deepak Luthra, 72. Born in India, Deepak got the chance to see the house he’s heard spoken of. The visit, the siblings said, was an attempt to connect with the family’s roots and revisit the places that formed a part of the family’s personal stories.
“The interiors of the house had seen only one change. The part of the house where we used to keep our cattle had been turned into a parking lot. To create the parking space, they had removed a wooden stair. They showed me the wooden stair too,” said Urmil. She also visited her school where she received a rousing welcome and was introduced to the students. As word spread that the Luthras from India were visiting, families with Partition survivors reached out to the siblings with invites.
“A student at the school invited us to her house. A native of Ambala, her uncle shared how much he missed his city. We exchanged our stories. ‘There’s nothing here (in Sargodha). We left our world behind in Ambala’, he said. We told him how our father always mentioned that the best malta (orange) was found in Sargodha and he could never find them in India. During the entire exchange, while we were listing out all that our family had left behind in Sargodha, he spoke highly of Ambala and everything that he now missed,” said Deepak Luthra
Luthra said that his visit reinforced the fact that although a geographic border now stood between India and Pakistan, people across the divide harboured similar sentiments.
“We were showered with a lot of love and had a good time. On learning that we were from India, they did not even allow us to pay for food. People in both countries fondly remember what they left behind. Culturally, we are the same ,” said Luthra.
Jhelum Se Jamna Tak
Darshan Lal Khosla, 88, distinctly remembers how communal riots roiled his home town Kohala near Muzaffarabad in the summer of 1947. Situated on the Jhelum river, the town was already seeing incidents of pillaging in June-July. As the intensity and frequency of these increased, Khosla’a family decided that time had come to leave Kohala.
“The situation had become tense even before Partition. Incidents of looting and killing were increasing and we decided to move to Hattian Duppatta in Muzaffarbad. I still remember how my aunt led the group of Hindus and Sikhs with a sword in her hand as we fled Kohala,” said Khosla, who was eight years old then. Hattian Duppatta was located on one end of the Jhelum and a wooden pedestrian bridge connected it to Kashmir. Khosla and his family stayed at Hattian Duppatta for a short duration on rent until the calm was broken again and news spread that Muzaffarabad had been attacked by raiders. “Everyone started running helter-skelter, with the bare minimum. Our family took refuge in a temple where we waited it out till dark and then eventually, we hitched tongas and reached Baramulla,” said Khosla, whose family somehow managed to reach Srinagar. From Srinagar, he and his family along with other migrants were airlifted to Delhi by the Indian Air Force in a Dakota aircraft.
In October 1947, the family landed at the Safdarjung airport in Delhi. A few temporary camps had been set up in a portion of the airport where Khosla and family were given refreshments. From the airport, people were sent to refugee camps at Kingsway in trucks. “We were given a camp at Edward Line. In the early days, we received cooked meals but as the days passed, we were given coupons through which we could get dry ration,” said Khosla.
Life in the camps was tough. There was no source of income or work opportunities. Desperate, Darshan and others took up odd jobs and activities that could fetch money. “We started chopping down the trees that lined the Mukherjee Nagar area. The wood was sold to fetch money. One day, there was a police crackdown on the refugees who were chopping the trees. Although I was present at the spot, police let me go since I did not have an axe,” recalled Khosla. After several trials and tribulations, Khosla and family moved to Rajendra Nagar where they were allotted a house by the government.
Khosla was among the millions whose lives were altered by Partition. The octogenarian recalls events from the past eight decades, almost as if they happened yesterday. However, he fears that his memories will fade with time. With age catching up, he decided to pen down his experiences of navigating life before and after the Partition in a book in June this year. “I want my family and friends to know about my life story and understand how survivors built a new life from the scratch. Death is inevitable but I want to leave behind my stories and accounts,” said Khosla. His book, Jhelum Se Jamna Tak - A Refugee Remembers, outlines vignettes of his life before and after the Partition.
A shawl from Kashmir, a Singer sewing machine, a rumala
oming from a family of Partition survivors, Mitthat Hora grew up listening stories about her home town Peshawar in present-day Pakistan. These stories often left her in a liminal space between the past and present. She found her family’s history oscillating between two countries: the one where they now lived, and another with which they had a deep sense of belonging. Sometime in 2019-2020, Hora started digging into her family’s history.
“As kids, we grew up hearing stories of Peshawar. The family history was clearly divided into life in Peshawar, and life now. But it was all said in a matter-of-fact manner; we never quite heard the word Partition. As children, we were simply fascinated by the opulence of our family in those days. Stories of trauma, violence, and pain were seldom spoken about,” said Hora.
As a young adult, Hora’s inquisitiveness for her family’s history grew as she started digging up details for history projects and other assignments. She realised that her grandmother, a Partition survivor, carried many bittersweet memories in addition to personal memorabilia across the border -- and that these needed to be recorded, preserved, and remembered. The objects that were carried across the border were intertwined with the personal stories of her family.
“My grandmother is our last link to the place we come from. Through her accounts, we are attempting to make sense of our family history that spans different countries and cities in the country. We now understand that the documents, everyday objects, from pre-Partition times that our family has are valuable resources that embody so much of our grandparents’ history,” said Hora, 25.
In the past few years, she and her sister have created a family tree and are constantly striving to piece together objects, documents, and other heirlooms for the purpose of posterity. The family even attempted to get in touch with the occupants of the family’s native house in Peshawar. “I got in touch with an American photographer who had shared the image of the house on the web. Later, we learnt that the house had been demolished to make way for a commercial complex,” said Hora.
The family was in Mussoorie during the summer of 1947 when Partition was announced. As part of the annual ritual, they had travelled in a caravan carrying items such as carpets, sewing machines, and utensils, among other necessities that they felt were required to live comfortably. A silver tea set that was part of the grandmother’s wedding trousseau, a shawl from Kashmir, a Singer sewing machine, a Rumala, are among the pre-Partition items now left with the family. The family has also donated an India-Pakistan passport to the Partition Musuem in Delhi.
“The partition was not as traumatic for us from the perspective of violence, since we did not have to face the hardships that many others did. It, however, came with a sense of loss since the family left behind an entire world. My daughters are now trying to preserve the memories of our family,” said wing commander (rtd) Jaideep hora, Mithat’s father.