Remembering India’s Partition, one act of courage at a time

As a survivor of Partition – the chaotic and violent cleaving in August 1947 of British colonial India into two independent states – Nirmal Singh might be excused or even pitied if he were bitter, or sad, or still traumatized today by events he says came close to snuffing out his young life.

But as Hindu-majority India and mostly Muslim Pakistan prepare to mark the 75th anniversary of Partition on Aug. 15, the nonagenarian retired Indian army colonel is spending time in his New Delhi home remembering – and cherishing – the moments that convinced him as a 16-year-old Sikh boy of “humanity’s goodness.”

Above them all is the memory of the Hindu woman who put her own family in great danger by hiding Mr. Singh and his siblings in her second-class compartment on a train headed from the Pakistani to the Indian side of the new border.

When Mr. Singh foolishly cracked open a compartment window in desperate pursuit of some fresh air, the mob outside the train instantly began chanting “Sikhs! Sikhs! Sikhs!” and calling for their death.

“But when some of the rioters pounded on the compartment door and demanded the Sikhs be turned over, the Hindu woman insisted she was alone with her daughters,” Mr. Singh recalls.

“It worked, and they went away,” he says. “I remember thinking it was the greatest act of bravery I’d ever seen.”

For Mr. Singh, Partition’s anniversary is an occasion to reflect on the acts of courage and compassion between neighbors, or even strangers, of another faith that he witnessed in the midst of a paroxysm of sectarian hatred.

Indeed, the partition of British India is considered to be the largest mass migration in human history, displacing some 14 million people and resulting in the deaths of more than 1 million others. Already simmering sectarian violence was exacerbated by hastily drawn borders that divided villages and abruptly pitted against each other groups that had lived together in communities for centuries. 

And although there was a time when Mr. Singh’s focus on “humanity’s goodness” in conjunction with Partition would have been an anomaly, increasingly it is a perspective not just included but celebrated in efforts to understand Partition’s legacy. Recent years have seen a notable rise in the retelling and memorializing of the more positive and edifying human qualities that were also part of a searingly traumatic time, say postcolonial historians and experts in Partition.

“These stories we are hearing more today, specifically the ones I have heard – the Muslim man who marries the Sikh woman to save her from the mobs that are parading her around and abusing her, the Muslim officer who shelters a Hindu couple for 25 days, the Muslims who preserve the treasure of the former Sikh owner of their new home in Pakistan until he returns for it decades later  – all of these stories are reminders that while the violence was one aspect of the landscape of Partition, it does not represent the entirety of it,” says Aanchal Malhotra, an Indian oral historian who writes extensively on Partition.

This year Ms. Malhotra published her second book on the subject. “In the Language of Remembering” is a collection of interviews with the survivors and their descendants, organized by chapters highlighting the emotions that Partition encompassed – from fear, loss, and regret to discovery, hope, and love.

“We should never minimize the reality of the lives lost or disregard the enduring trauma that people still feel,” she adds. “But at the same time the stories that point to human qualities like hope and compassion and goodness are also part of Partition’s legacy, and they deserve to be told.”

Remembering the good

Over recent years, museums and history centers intent on chronicling the full story of Partition have multiplied, and cross-border heritage clubs have sprung up, while universities have developed classes on Partition’s legacy.

Anecdotal evidence suggests newspapers and other media in both India and Pakistan are telling more of the inspiring stories of Partition’s legacy – such as the widespread recounting of the warm and familial reception that greeted the 90-year-old Indian Hindu woman when she returned last month to her childhood home in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

What explains this shift in focus from the trauma and loss of Partition to sharing more of the heroism and compassion and small acts of kindness that were also part of the experience?

Experts cite a number of factors, from the rise of oral history as a valid alternative to academic history in understanding particularly traumatic experiences, to the advanced ages of the remaining Partition survivors and people’s natural tendency to turn nostalgic about the past.

Some oral historians note that their craft gives more voice to women and their insights into an event than does traditional historical research, and they say this makes for the richer and more nuanced picture of Partition emerging over recent years.

Even the rise of Hindu nationalism in India over the past decade has played a role, experts say. Interfaith leaders and initiatives promoting cross-border understanding have sought to counterbalance the intensifying marginalization of Indian Muslims and accompanying anti-Muslim fervor, they say, with examples of intercommunity harmony, including during and after Partition.

So when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared last year that Aug. 14 should henceforth be observed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, for example, some Partition heritage clubs and remembrance organizations stepped up efforts to communicate the full array of experiences and memories of Partition.  

Yet another factor some cite is the growing interest in the legacy of Partition among young people in both India and Pakistan – especially those who have grandparents who lived through it. In interviews, opinion articles, and classroom projects, they report seeing qualities like resilience and determination in how their grandparents persevered despite uprooted lives and often tremendous loss.

“Young people today haven’t grown up with their parents talking about Partition, so they go to their grandparents – and in many cases they hear stories that paint a picture of a socially broad experience that was mostly good,” says Furrukh Khan, an associate professor of postcolonial history at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan.

“So often the students are amazed to hear from their grandparents or others of that generation the stories of lives lived across religious and cultural lines, of the neighborhoods they shared and the friendships they had,” says Dr. Khan, who has been teaching a course on Partition for two decades.

Pull of a homeland

Dr. Khan acknowledges that Partition was a different experience for Pakistan than for India, a difference that may explain why some in the two countries remember the event and interpret its legacy differently.

“For Pakistan, it’s independence, a new nation,” he says. “For India, it’s breakup – of the mythic Mother India.”

What Partition did not destroy for millions of Indians and Pakistanis alike (and for some Bangladeshis, whose new nation was formed in 1971 from what was East Pakistan post-Partition) is a sense of a common homeland, some experts say.

This is particularly true for those whose family roots are in Punjab, the most populous region divided by Partition, where Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs lived together for centuries.

“Anytime Punjabis meet anywhere in the world, there is an instant rapport, and always the first question is, ‘What village are you from?’ meaning of course your family’s village before Partition,” says Ms. Malhotra, whose paternal grandparents met in a refugee camp in Delhi after their families were uprooted from the part of Punjab that became Pakistan at Partition.

“We realize we eat the same foods, share a common culture, even speak the same language, which is Punjabi,” she says.

Dr. Khan – who spends his weekends growing rice and mangoes on a small farm in Punjab just a couple of miles from the Indian border – acknowledges this sense of a “homeland” shared by Punjabis. But he says it may be strongest for Sikhs, whose highest religious sites are located in Pakistani Punjab and have been difficult for Indian Sikhs to visit despite some recent loosening of restrictions.

Mr. Singh, the retired Indian army colonel, confirms with a story how Partition has been no match for an undimmed sense of a homeland.

In 2004 he was able to visit Pakistan for the first time, and, while there, he asked his hosts to take him to his old neighborhood in Rawalpindi where his extended family once lived.

“When we entered the area, I thought it seemed right, but at the junction where my uncle had had a clinic, there was a fish market and a chicken market, so I wasn’t sure,” Mr. Singh says.

It was then that “the miracle happened,” he says.

From out of the large crowd of curious onlookers around him came a voice that said, “Are you looking for Dr. Pritam Singh’s clinic?” And when an amazed Mr. Singh responded that he was, and that Dr. Singh was his uncle, the man said, “Yes, this is the place.”

Mr. Singh says he fell to the ground, touching it “with a sense that this was home, and I thanked God for bringing me back to this place.”

When he got back up, he asked the people gathered around what had become of the man. “They said, ‘No, no man was here,’” Mr. Singh recalls. “He had just disappeared.”

Editor’s note: The map in this story has been updated to correctly show the location of Karachi, Pakistan. The story has also been updated to clarify Dr. Khan's title.