The Partition of India

Summary

Podcast Summary: Short History Of... – The Partition of India

Host: Noiser
Episode Date: February 6, 2023

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Overview

This episode of Noiser’s “Short History Of…” explores the seismic event of the Partition of India in 1947—a moment that transformed the Indian subcontinent forever. Through narration, expert interviews, survivor testimonies, and dramatized vignettes, the podcast examines the political, personal, and cultural legacy of Partition: why and how Partition occurred, the horrific violence it unleashed, what it meant for ordinary people, and how its aftermath continues to shape the region and its diaspora.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Build-Up to Partition

• Backdrop of British Rule
  • By the mid-1940s, after nearly two centuries, British rule in India was coming to an end. Wartime exhaustion and Britain’s own economic decline made independence inevitable.
  • India was a complex mosaic of religions and ethnicities: over 350 million Hindus, nearly 100 million Muslims, alongside Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, and others. ([06:30])
• Demand for Muslim Majority Nation
  • Political friction intensified between the Indian National Congress (secular, Hindu-majority, led by Nehru and Gandhi) and the Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah), which feared Muslim marginalization in a united India.
  • Jinnah’s controversial call for a separate nation—ultimately Pakistan—sought to guarantee the Muslim community’s safety and autonomy. ([08:54])

"The trust between the two communities was really severed. I think it would have been very difficult after that moment to establish a united India in which all sides felt comfortable and safe." – Nisid Hajari, Historian (09:55)

Direct Action Day and the Descent into Violence

• Direct Action Day (August 16, 1946)
  • Escalated into four days of riots and massacres in Calcutta (Great Calcutta Killing), widely seen as sealing the fate of Partition.
  • Retaliatory violence spread across Bengal and the subcontinent, hardening the divide.

The British Role and the Hasty Drawing of Borders

• Lord Louis Mountbatten’s Arrival
  • As last Viceroy, Mountbatten accelerated plans for independence to August 1947 (from 1948), hoping a rapid British exit would minimize bloodshed. ([10:35])
• Sir Cyril Radcliffe and the Boundary Commissions
  • Radcliffe, a British lawyer unfamiliar with India, was given 36 days to draw borders separating areas by religious majorities but splitting provinces, cities, even villages.
  • The Punjab and Bengal—ethnically and religiously mixed—were the most contentious and suffered the most.

"He didn’t even go visit the areas that he was dividing. He was sitting in a bungalow on the Viceroy’s estate in Delhi, sweating profusely in the heat and trying to figure this out." – Historian (13:58)

Personal Stories and Immediate Aftermath

• Uncertainty and Chaos
  • Countless families did not believe Partition would really happen until the last minute ([11:41]), and border lines were kept secret until after independence.
  • Independence was joyfully celebrated—Pakistan on August 14th, India on August 15th—but many people did not know which country they belonged to until August 17th, after the Radcliffe Line was announced. ([25:36])

"People were independent before they knew what side of the border they were on." – Anchal Malhotra, Oral Historian (25:37)

• Forced Migrations and Violence
  • Over 15 million people were displaced in what became the largest migration in human history. Around 1 million died amid communal massacres, with countless more missing or abducted.
  • Trains and human caravans were targeted; towns and villages became battlegrounds. The violence disproportionately affected women, including mass abductions and sexual violence.

"There were so many times I heard in interviews that it was better to jump in a well or kill yourself rather than be raped or come into the hands of an abductor..." – Anchal Malhotra (32:11)

Refugee Camps and Long-Term Impact

• Mass Displacement
  • Vast refugee camps, like Kingsway Camp in Delhi, became new homes for millions—many living in tents for years.
  • The trauma, loss of homes, and shattering of communities had deep generational consequences.

"I carry soil for so many people I’ve interviewed... I don’t think anyone who has never lost their home will really, truly understand what it feels like to be completely severed from it." – Anchal Malhotra (51:45)

• Women and Recovery Programs
  • Between 1948-56, both governments attempted to recover abducted women.

Lingering Divides and Memories

• Enduring Consequences
  • The hasty partition set the stage for decades of hostility, wars, and the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan. Kashmir remains a flashpoint.
  • Partition defined identity on religious lines, often superseding language, heritage, and historical belonging.
• Reunion and Reconciliation
  • Some families only reunited decades later; initiatives like the Kartarpur Corridor allow relatives separated by the border to reconnect.

"It should really tell you that people want to meet. And these are people that haven't seen each other for decades and they cannot believe the other is still alive." – Anchal Malhotra (49:30)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Vivid Opening Dramatization:
  • The morning of Direct Action Day through the eyes of a young law student, capturing fear and chaos ([01:25–06:30]).
• On Drawing Borders:
  • “Sir Cyril Radcliffe writes home to say that 80 million people will soon hold a grievance against him… He burns all his working documents and refuses to accept the fee owed to him.” ([21:36])
• Tragic Migrations:
  • “A train full of Muslim refugees from the Indian side... gangs would board the train and massacre people there and send the train... full of corpses.” ([33:55])
• Personal Tale of Loss:
  • “What she did was she took her shawl off and she soaked up all his blood. And when she got to Lahore, she buried that blood soaked shawl in a grave.” ([34:29])
• Emotional Reunions:
  • “A man who speaks with a Canadian accent and a very old woman in the fashionable salwar kameez. She looks familiar and Tilak finds that his knees are wobbly when he stands... This is Amela, the young woman he left behind at the Hindu well 75 years before.” ([46:23])
• Contemporary Legacy:
  • “The threat of a nuclear war breaking out or of a terrorist group somehow seizing a nuclear weapon... is probably greater in this part of the world than anywhere else. And that is because of the hostilities that began in Partition." – Historian (50:31)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• [01:25–06:30] Dramatic retelling of Direct Action Day in Calcutta
• [08:53–10:34] Build-up to Partition and breakdown of trust
• [10:35–13:48] Appointment of Mountbatten; process of drawing borders
• [14:25–15:29] Origins of 'Pakistan' and political bargaining
• [20:36–22:41] Lahore in turmoil and personal farewells
• [25:36–27:12] Independence celebrations and confusion over borders
• [29:50–32:03] Organized vs. spontaneous violence; gendered suffering
• [33:52–34:27] Partition trains and personal loss stories
• [38:57–39:55] Life in refugee camps; new beginnings
• [42:18–44:07] Recovery operations for abducted women
• [46:23–48:48] Modern-day returns and reunions (Tilak and Amela)
• [49:53–51:45] Enduring loss and identity

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Conclusion

The Partition of India was both a birth and a catastrophe—a celebration of sovereignty irrevocably marred by human tragedy. Its enduring legacies—familial separations, communal animosities, disputed borders—continue to shape South Asia and the world. Through survivor stories, historical analysis, and imaginative narration, this episode brings to life the personal and political stakes of one of the twentieth century’s greatest upheavals.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Storyteller]

It is 16 August 1946 in Calcutta, capital of the Indian province of Bengal. A young man rides a tram over a bridge that crosses the pale green water of the Huli River. He is a law student who arrived in the city only days ago. He's keen to explore his new home. But even though it is still morning, the tea shop wallahs are packing up stalls, shopkeepers are pulling down shutters and streets are blocked by tar drums. His fellow passengers are jittery as the tram rattles along. He overhears the conversations of other travelers. Most people are on their way to Direct Action Day, a political rally in Esplanade Park. But there are rumors that mobs of hot headed thugs, so called gundas, have been seen roaming the city. No one wants to get caught up in trouble, but they do want to hear the political speeches when they reach the stop for the Esplanade and to pile off the tram on a whim, the student follows the crowd to see what's going on. Bengal is the only Muslim led province in India. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, is due to address the rally here today. He fears that both the British colonial government and the Hindu led Indian Congress want to sideline the country's Muslim minority. Controversially, Jinnah has called for a separate Muslim nation. The future of the country is at stake, which is why so many people are making their way to his rally. Down on the crowded street, the student loses sight of the passengers from the tram. Streams of people sweep him along towards the park. Suddenly there is a bang and a cloud of smoke issuing from a side. There are screams and the crowd tightens around him. People shout Gundas. A mob is coming. He fights his way to one side and slips out of the surging crowd into an alleyway. Abandoning his idea of joining the rally, he decides to go home. But the route is dangerous. Groups of young men march in packs, swinging brickbats. He hurries on, keeping his head down as he passes. Overturned rickshaws, eviscerated shops, vehicles set ablaze everywhere. People running and crying, nursing bloody head wounds. If he spots a gang, he cowers in a doorway. Whether they are Muslim or Hindu, he keeps out of sight. By some miracle, he finds his way back to his street, his building, his room. And he locks himself inside for the rest of the day. Sounds of violence rise and fall like the winds of a storm. At one point, he cracks open his shutters, only to recoil from the sight of armed men outside. A brick smashes the glass and he barricades the window. The tempest rages all night. By dawn, the streets seem calmer. When the student creeps out for a cup of water. He freezes at the sound of a thunderous rumble, a tank rolling past his alleyway. British troops. He runs to address the soldier, asking if there is somewhere safe to go. The soldier waves a pistol and tells him to get inside if he knows what's good for him. Gunda's all over the place. The whole city has gone to hell, he says. The tank rolls away, but the sparse military presence is too little, too late. He wanders through a devastated neighborhood. The streets are lined with rubble and food strewn with once valuable but now filthy fabrics that have been looted from sari shops. He stumbles over abandoned weapons, bricks and sticks, burnt out fire torches. Rivulets of blood seep out from crumpled piles of clothing and he staggers back, realizing that these are bodies he can stand no more. He has the idea to get out of Calcutta, go home to his village. But there are no trains, no way to contact his family. Alone in a city that is tearing itself apart, the student goes back to his digs and locks himself inside. The rioting and massacre at Direct Action Day becomes known as the Great Calcutta Killing. The turmoil lasts four days and costs thousands of lives, both Muslim and Hindu. It sparks a chain reaction of reprisals and retaliations in other parts of Bengal and across the Indian subcontinent. But there is worse to come. In response to the sectarian violence and a political impasse, the British make a momentous decision. They divide the region into India and the two separate provinces that make up Pakistan. One homeland for Muslims and one for Hindus and Sikhs. Partition led to the largest human migration the world has ever seen. Some 15 million people left their homes in an attempt to flee the bloodshed. On the scale of genocide. Up to 1 million were killed, numbers so huge they couldn't be accurately recorded at the time and have never been officially confirmed. What is certain is that what should have been a time of joy, the liberation of two countries from the British Empire, instead became a tragedy. So why was the country broken up? What prompted the ferocious backlash? And how do the events of 75 years ago still haunt the region, its residents and the diaspora? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of Indian partition. When violence spirals out of control in Calcutta, the British are still in charge of India. Since the mid-1700s, they have dominated the region, first through the rule of the British East India Company and then under the control of the British Raj. But times are changing. By 1946, the sun is finally setting on the British Empire. Independence for India is inevitable. But there will be darkness before the dawn. The Indian subcontinent is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in the world. Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims live side by side, as well as Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Jains, Parsis and Zoroastrians. Hindus make up the majority, with a population of over 350 million. There are also almost 100 million Muslims. With the area roughly in the shape of a butterfly, this large minority is concentrated mainly in the wings, the northwest and northeast provinces on opposite sides of the country, a thousand miles apart. In addition, the Overall population includes 6 million Sikhs, who mostly live in Punjab, also in the northwest wing. It's a complicated geographical and political landscape, and by 1946, the British are in a hurry to rid themselves of the burden, not least because World War II left them almost bankrupt. Nisid Hajiri is a journalist and author of the book Midnight's the Deadly Legacy of India's Partition.

[Historian/Narrator]

At this point, it is clear that the British are leaving India. They are going to hand power to Indians, but are waiting for Indian political parties to agree amongst themselves. How they're going to share power. And the problem is that the largest party, the Indian National Congress Party, which is a broad based, national, secular, non sectarian party that wants to govern over a united India, is faced by its rivals in the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who insist that Muslims in the subcontinent would be at too much risk in India dominated by Hindus and that in the areas of the subcontinent where Muslims are a majority they should create their own country that they can govern themselves. Both Jinnah and Jawaharl Nehru, the leader of the Congress Party, Mahatma Gandhi, another leader of the Congress Party, they all agreed to this compromise in 1946. But then Muslims, Nehru goes in front of the press and says something to the effect of this is just something that we're signing for now to get the British out of India. So Jinnah then drops out of the compromise as well and on top of it, importantly calls for mass protests around the country. Peaceful protests in what he calls a Direct action day on August 16, 1946. But in one city in Calcutta, the the protest spiral out of control and result in riots. Something fundamentally had broke then. The trust between the two communities was really severed. I think it would have been very difficult after that moment to establish a united India in which all sides felt comfortable and safe.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

In February 1947, Lord Louis Mountbatten is sent to oversee the transition of power. A cousin of King George VI's and a great grandson of Queen Victoria, the 47 year old Mountbatten is a hero of World War II. He steps off a military aircraft into a warm Delhi afternoon. Wearing a bright white uniform. He is greeted by Pandit Nehru, the leader of the Indian Congress, and a 31 gun salute. Mountbatten moves into Viceroy House, a colonial residence with a staff of 5,000. He quickly bonds with Nehru, but doesn't find relations so easy with Jinnah, the Muslim leader. Mountbatten's instructions are to hold the Indian territories together. But he quickly concludes that the fractures run too deep. By the summer of 1947, it's inevitable that independence means partition. But even as the handover approaches, most of those involved still cannot imagine that their country will be divided. Anshal Malhotra is an oral historian and author of the book Remnants of Partition.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

The boundary commissions that partitioned the provinces of Punjab and Bengal held five members each. And these members were judges of different religions, Hindus, Muslims. And on the Punjab Commission there was someone called Dr. Bakshit Tekchand, who's a justice and his daughter. When I met her in Delhi, she told me that despite the fact that her father was always in conversations with leaders like Nehru and was on the Boundary commission and so close to the politics of that time, he did not believe that partition would happen. He could not believe that Lahore would not be a part of India.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

While people struggle to understand the coming transformation, Mountbatten decides that the best way to avoid further bloodshed, even civil war, is to bring forward the date of independence. So Britain announces that instead of parting ways in 1948 as planned, it will pull out of India on 15 August 1947. Several areas, like Punjab in the northwest and Bengal in the northeast, have large communities of both Hindus and Muslims. These are the two provinces located on opposite wings of the country without a land bridge between them. But the idea is to combine them into one nation called Pakistan. To further complicate matters, these provinces are also the homelands of the Sikh population. How is it possible to divide these territories fairly between the various communities that lay claim to them? The British come up with a simple solution for a complex problem. They will draw a line on a map subdividing Punjab and Bengal into two sides, one side for Hindus, the other for Muslims. They're not sure yet where to put the Sikhs. The decision of where to put the new boundaries goes to Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a lawyer who has never been to India in his life. He arrives in Delhi just 36 days before the date set for independence.

[Historian/Narrator]

So he was a British lawyer who was brought out to India, perhaps, you know, because he knew nothing about India and could claim to be independent. But someone needed to draw a border between those areas of the Punjab and Bengal that were majority Muslim and majority non Muslim. He had two Muslim and two non Muslim judges that were supposed to help him with this, but of course they, they deadlocked on key matters. And so he, it was left to him to make the final decision. And he didn't even go visit the areas that he was dividing. He was sitting in a bungalow on the Viceroy's estate in Delhi, sweating profusely in the heat and trying to figure this out.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

But this term, Pakistan, had been floating around for a while. It was at Cambridge University that this term was first coined. Of course, the word park means pure and stan is land, so it's land of the pure. But Pakistan is actually an acronym for the five northern units of India, and those are Punjab, the Afghan province, which was the Northwest Frontier Province, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. No one really knows what this partition means and where this Pakistan is going to lie.

[Historian/Narrator]

The larger problem is that nobody wanted to come out early and say this is where the border is going to go. Jinnah didn't want to say it because he was hoping to convince the Sikhs to join Pakistan so that he could take more of the Punjab. Nehru didn't want to admit it because exactly the reverse. He thought that the Sikh threats would be useful to him, that he could go to the British and say, look, you need to give India more of more of the Punjab, otherwise there's going to be violence. And the British didn't want to admit it because they wanted to have a peaceful handover of power and leave with their heads held.

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[Historian/Narrator]

hi before facing up to any of these problems

[Narrator/Storyteller]

at Viceroy House, Radcliffe is given a huge wall map on a wooden stand and a pile of census lists. He faces a puzzle the size of a subcontinent. The population of Lahore in The north is 60% Muslim and 40% Hindu and Sikh. But the minority Hindus own the majority of buildings and businesses, some 80% of the city's wealth. So should that city go to Hindus or Muslims? India or Pakistan? As Radcliffe ponders his map, wielding a pen like a scalpel, the people of Lahore wait to learn what their national identity will be a month from now. It is late July 1947 in Lahore. A teenager named Tilak is hurrying on foot to his mahala, or neighborhood. The city is the capital of Punjab and it is a cosmopolitan place full of Muslim mosques, Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras. It's also a center of education, medicine and filmmaking. Talaq would like to work in the burgeoning fashion industry. Today he's wearing tight fitting churida trousers under a long kurta or shirt in the Punjabi fashion. Normally, he likes to check out the street styles, but today he has other matters on his mind. He reaches home. Neighborhood dogs bark as he sneaks around the back of his parents house to the area where his family shares a well with other Hindu households. The air is filled with cooking smells and children lug buckets of water back to their kitchens. As Tulaq passes the first well, he exchanges a friendly greeting with the Muslim mother from next door. But he hurries on to the second Hindu well. The two faiths live peacefully together in this street, even though they are segregated in small ways like the wells. Impatiently, Tilak checks his watch. Soon a girl named Amila arrives. While she fills a metal bucket, Talaq delivers the message that has been weighing him down. His family are leaving Lahore tonight. His father's fabric shop was looted by a mob, and they've been warned by a Muslim friend that more attacks are planned. It is too dangerous for Hindus to stay. So his father found a place to go in Delhi. Tilak urges Amila to persuade her father to come too, but she shakes her head. Her father will not leave. He was born in Lahore, he built a business in Lahore, and he will die in Lahore. Talaq sighs, fearing this last may come sooner than anticipated. Though he had been hoping to propose to Emila one day. Instead, he finds himself saying goodbye. He hands her a one rupee coin, which he polished with vinegar to a silvery shine. It will bring luck and prosperity. Then he turns away, leaving her by the Hindu well.

[Historian/Narrator]

In Lahore, in particular, the capital of Punjab. That summer you started to see a degree of violence that was almost surreptitious. Hindus dominated the commercial community there. There were a lot of the merchants in the city, so owned a lot of the property. And Muslim gangs started conducting arson attacks, setting these businesses on fire in an effort to drive their owners out of the city and across into what would end up being India. And so the Hindu community in Lahore, you know, many started to leave, many started to pack up their valuables. And it was this kind of shadow war in June, July and early August of 1947, specifically because it wasn't clear where the Punjab would be divided.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

They thought they were just going for a couple of weeks, couple of months at best. So they would carry maybe their summer clothes, they would carry the collection of books they loved the most.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Sir Cyril Radcliffe writes home to say that 80 million people will soon hold a grievance against him. On August 9, with only days to spare, he hands over the map to Mountbatten and leaves the country, never to return. He burns all his working documents and refuses to accept the fee owed to him by the British government. He'll later admit that I had no alternative. The time at my disposal was so short that I could not do a better job. Mountbatten keeps the details of the map and its new dividing lines a secret until the British have handed over responsibility to the new leaders. Across the region, hundreds of millions of people prepare to welcome independence. Pakistan goes first, celebrating its liberation one day before India. The reasons for this are contested. Some say it is to coincide with Muslim Ramadan celebrations. Others say it was because Mountbatten wanted to be present at both handover ceremonies.

[Historian/Narrator]

The Pakistan independence celebrations were held on August 14th and Mountbatten went to Karachi, which was, you know, quite far from the border and was not at that particular moment affected by the violence that was already starting to take place. The tensions weren't as great. And then the next day, Mountbatten flew over the Punjab, where he could see smoke from fires rising up from villages across the Punjab, flew back to Delhi, which again, relatively distant from the border, where huge celebrations had been planned and where there was really unmitigated joy at independence. These crowds that greeted Nehru and Mountbatten were ecstatic. And this is part of the reason Mountbatten had delayed the release of the maps showing the new border, because he didn't want anything to affect this moment. This image of the British leaving on good terms, handing over power as a responsible state and maintaining this friendship with both Pakistan and India.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

As dawn breaks on the two new nations, the world watches with bated breath.

[News Announcer]

August 15, 1947. Independence Day for India. A subcontinent larger than the whole of Europe becomes two self governing dominions within the British Commonwealth of Nations. Pandit Nehru, Congress leader, is India's Prime Minister.

[Historical Speech Voice (Nehru/Jinnah)]

At the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

[News Announcer]

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Muslim Chief, becomes Pakistan's Governor General.

[Historical Speech Voice (Nehru/Jinnah)]

The creation of the new state has placed a tremendous responsibility on the citizens of Pakistan. It gives them an opportunity demonstrate to the world how a nation containing many elements can live in peace.

[News Announcer]

Mahatma Gandhi, the 78 year old mystic stands inscrutable and aloof. Today, the fate of 400 million Indians is in the hands of these leaders.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Independence is celebrated across the subcontinent. But the people living on either side of Radcliffe's hastily drawn lines through the Punjab and Bengal remain in the dark about which nation they actually belong to.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

There are so many bizarre things about that time, but I don't think anything is more bizarre than independence granted for Pakistan on August 14, independence granted for India on August 15, 1947 and then the partition line being announced two days later on August 17. So in fact people were independent before they knew what side of the border they were on. There are cases recorded of cities or people in those cities thinking they are part of one country raising the flag of that country for three days and and then changing the flag three days later when the border is eventually announced.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

In the northwestern city of Karachi, a green and white flag is hoisted. In the capital of the new Pakistan, 1500 miles away, the same flag flies over Dhaka, the main city of Pakistan's eastern province. Partition means 100 million Muslims are citizens of two separate Pakistani provinces with a vast nation of India lying in between them. In India, the new flag is a tricolor in saffron white and green. In its center stands the blue ashoka chakra or wheel of time. It's apt because millions of people are in a race against time now trying to reach a place of safety. Minority Hindus and Sikhs migrate inwards from the wings towards India. Minority Muslims migrate outwards towards the two outlying provinces of Pakistan. People determined to stay in their homes find themselves in the crosshairs of sectarian tensions.

[Historian/Narrator]

Some people decided to move on their own because they saw what was happening. I think within a few days it became clear that it was going to be impossible to stay if you were in one of these areas that were being racked by violence. Initially, Nehru and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liakat Ali Khan, went to the Punjab and tried to tamp down the violence in hopes that people would be able to stay where they were. This started in Lahore and Amritsar, these two cities that are very close to each other but on different sides of the border where the killings really first took hold and minority populations from both cities emptied out and crossed the border to the other side. As somebody put it, the violence only stopped when there was no one left to kill.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

On August 17, details of the so called Radcliffe Line are finally made public. It is confirmed that Lahore is now part of Pakistan. Only 30 miles away, Amritsar is now part of India. As many Hindus and Muslims find themselves on the wrong side of the line, the Sikhs are equally shocked. For them, Lahore is the sacred birthplace of Guru Nanak, the founder of their faith. And it's not just the cities that are volatile. Before standing down, Mountbatten established the Punjab Boundary Force to keep the peace in rural areas. But with a vast area to cover, its 50,000 men are the equivalent of just one soldier per square mile.

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[Historian/Narrator]

The violence of partition wasn't spontaneous in the sense that people didn't just suddenly wake up the day after independence and decide that they needed to kill their neighbor and grab a pitchfork or a sword and go across and do that. What happened was that there were these militias, ethnic gangs essentially, that had organized, had been training with weapons, had been planning to commit violence in their minds, you know, in self defense. And they would sort of go from village to village and gather much bigger groups of people. So you might have a gang of 50 people, but they would, it would swell to a mob of 500 or 5,000. Suddenly this mob mentality takes over and people, you know, respond with brutality and egg each other on. And interviews you hear with people who took part in the violence. A lot of them say that they don't know what came over them. It was. It was just like they were in some kind of daze, you know, just a bloodlust, essentially. And refugees who did escape and make it across the border would have these tales of this incredible violence, and that would inspire, you know, incredibly vicious acts of revenge. Right. It fueled a fury among people

[Narrator/Storyteller]

within days. Newspapers around the world are describing atrocities in rural areas. Troops respond to reports of violence, but often arrive too late, finding remote villages burnt to the ground, entire populations massacred. Three quarters of all Partition deaths occur in the countryside. Even Veteran World War II soldiers say the barbarity they witnessed during Partition is unprecedented. The cycle of violence claims the lives of many women. Old women, pregnant women, young women. Rival communities invent new atrocities, each going one step further to terrorize the other into submission. On top of the killing and mutilation, gangs kidnap thousands of women, carrying them away to become forced wives or slaves.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

Partition was a gendered event, of that there is no doubt. Women definitely bore the brunt of it in many different ways. The manner in which the violence ensued, the amount of violence, the amount of abduction, rape, is horrifying. There were so many times I heard in interviews that it was better to jump in a well or kill yourself rather than be raped or come into the hands of an abductor, you know, or besmirching your honor. There are so many stories of women taking cyanide pills. Women's honor was a really important part of their lives and their families in those days. So anything was better than, you know, marring it.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Amid the violence, many villages choose instead of to stand their ground together. Mixed committees of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims are formed of men who served in the British army in the recent World War. They established training camps and sent patrols to guard the whole village, including minority religion residents against raiders. Innumerable stories emerge of neighbors helping one another. Some Muslim families shelter, seek friends. Some Hindu families adopt orphaned Muslim children. Elsewhere, Sikh warriors shed blood to prevent girls of any faith being abducted. But despite these efforts, more and more families realize that the best option is to leave. Many believe it will blow over in a few weeks when they will be able to come back. They ask neighbors to look after their livestock, lock up their homes, bury valuables in the garden or under floorboards, and they leave with whatever they can carry.

[Historian/Narrator]

Some people left by road, by foot, by bullock cart. You know, those who had the resources started to leave by train. But, you know, the trains were attacked along the way. Oftentimes, like when they pulled into a station, you Know, so a train full of Muslim refugees from the Indian side of the border would have to pass through Amritsar on its way to Lahore. And as it pulled into the station, oftentimes gangs would board the train and massacre people there and then send the train across the border, you know, full of corpses and, you know, blood running onto the tracks. So this is a very vivid image of Partition.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

I heard this story in Karachi of a woman traveling with her husband from Delhi to Lahore. And on the way her husband got murdered on the train and she couldn't bury him anywhere, so she had to leave his body on the side in some unknown village. And what she did was she took her shawl off and she soaked up all his blood. And when she got to Lahore, she buried that blood soaked shawl in a grave. And she was pregnant at the time and she gave birth to a boy. And she would bring the boy to the graveyard to introduce him to his father. There was another story I heard of a woman who had given birth on a train and they were passing a particularly dangerous area where everyone thought the baby may yell or shriek and give them away, and she killed the child.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Throughout August and September, the military send refugees on long journeys in human caravans. The columns stretch for 50 miles. Some families can afford carts. Others walk, carrying children, old people or the sick. There are no services, no sanitation, no medical care. The caravan moves only 15 miles per day, so a journey of 200 miles or more may last weeks. But with very few troops to secure the route, out in the open, there's no defense against marauding gangs.

[Historian/Narrator]

They were incredibly vulnerable and would be attacked by gangs on horseback as they're passing through desolate areas. And there are photographs of shallow graves all along these routes with, like, arms sticking out of the ground where, you know, dogs have been digging away at the earth to get at these corpses and so on. Canals full of bodies. After an attack, so many, many, many more people were probably killed on the road than in the trains.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Women die in childbirth on the road. Sick people succumb to illnesses. People starve to death with no food or water. And in desperation, some exhausted parents put down babies and toddlers by the side of the road and simply walk on. Other migrants report rescuing or walking past abandoned infants. With resources so scarce, people drink water from paddy fields and rely on the occasional airdrop of food.

[Historian/Narrator]

People didn't know what the future held. They just, you know, were trying to escape with their lives and get across the border and then, you know, hope that they could re establish themselves on the other side. And the governments, particularly the Pakistani government, were strained to the utmost trying to deal with this flood. Right? I mean, they, you know, they had barely been established. It took several weeks before the militaries on both sides could really, you know, get this organized and get people funneled to the right places. Delhi is an interesting case because so many refugees made it there pretty early on, you know, within the last half of August. And, you know, Delhi is not just any Indian city. This was the seat of government and the government lost control of the city for several days. Nehru himself felt like he had lost control of the levers of government that, you know, his own police wouldn't listen to him. And there was a real moment at which it seemed possible that the governments in both sides of the border could collapse, you know, within weeks of partition,

[Narrator/Storyteller]

some half a million Hindus and Sikhs find their way to Delhi, 250 miles southeast of the border of Pakistan. Only weeks earlier, these refugees owned property and businesses. They tended homes and farms. Now they have a tent on wasteland in a strange city where people speak a different language. In the north of the city centre, a vast tract of land comprising fruit farms and swampy areas has been set aside for a new Viceroy's house. The stream of incomers is channeled here. It becomes known as Kingsway Camp, the largest refugee settlement in Delhi.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

In some cases, things were a bit more structured. For instance, when my paternal grandfather's family came to India, they first stopped at Amritsar. They went to a camp there, but they didn't know anybody and they had also been separated from their family members. Over the next few days, they got news of some family in Delhi. So my grandfather's family goes from Malakwal to Mandi Bahautin to Amritsar to Delhi and arrives in this sprawling field where there are just tents, tents, tents, tents, and it was called Kingsway Camp. At the beginning, they lived in a tent with another family and over time got a concrete structure called a barrack and stayed there for many, many years. And that's where my grandparents met, in a refugee camp. And they fell in love

[Narrator/Storyteller]

amid all the hardship and upheaval. Life goes on. Politics also goes on. Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian Congress leader, is assassinated only six months after independence. His colleague Pandit Nehru is Prime minister until his own death in office in 1964. Over in Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah serves only a year as prime minister. He succumbs to tuberculosis in September 1948, after a lifelong struggle with the disease. Mountbatten later comments that had he known about Jinnah's precarious health, he might have delayed independence and tried to avoid partition instead of rushing it through. As last Viceroy of India, Mountbatten leaves the country in June 1948 and returns to the British Navy. But he will suffer his own violent end when he is murdered by the terrorist organization the ira, who blow up his boat off the Irish coast in 1979. Soon after partition, in 1947, millions of migrants discover that they will never go home, though some who survived the journey thrive in a new society that offers new opportunities. Over 40,000 refugees, including the grandparents of our historian Anchal Malhotra, will spend a decade living at Kingsway Camp. In 1951, a census carried out in India shows that over 7 million displaced persons, mainly Hindus and Sikhs, arrived from Pakistan. Pakistan counts almost the same number of Muslim migrants from India. There's a similar story in the now divided Punjab, where around a quarter of the population from either side of the border flees their homes. But the official figures reveal another shocking fact. An anomaly in the number of migrants versus immigrants. By comparing the inflow and outflow, the Census shows that 3.4 million of those forced to move during Partition never arrived. They went missing. Around a million people die during Partition, either due to violence or the terrible conditions during migration. The exact figure can never be known. It is also believed that up to 100,000 women and girls are abducted during the chaos.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

Several years ago, I spoke to a woman in a city called Jammu in India and she had been abducted with her one year old son and they had been carried deep into Pakistan on horses and kept for nearly a year until she was retrieved. There was a retrieval program for women in India and Pakistan and there was so much fear in her voice when she was telling the story. And she grasps my arm. I didn't think that she had so much strength in her, but she grasped my arm tightly and she said there was a letter. In the years after I was returned after Partition, there was a letter that came with my name on it and I was so terrified because I thought it was my abductor. And it could have just been like a bank letter, it could have been anything. But she was so afraid that someone had found her that she said, I tore it up and threw it away. And I can feel her grasp. It was fearful. Imagine carrying that much fear, palpable fear. Decades later. I think that that is what it did to the emotional psyche of women. And of course, every story is different. There are stories of women who were retrieved that didn't want to go back, who had made families now in either India or Pakistan, who had had children. There were stories of women who left

[Narrator/Storyteller]

children behind and went back only three weeks after independence. Representatives from India and Pakistan first meet to discuss the importance of recovering abducted women.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

Between the years 1948-56, a recovery operation was carried out by the governments of India and Pakistan, which sought to recover those women who had been abducted and forcibly converted during the upheaval of partition and restore them to their respective families and countries where they rightfully belonged according to their religion. And then, in 1949, India passed the Abducted Persons Recovery and Restoration act, and during the course of those operations, some 30,000 women were recovered, both Hindu women and Muslim women.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Relatives of lost girls place adverts in newspapers, hoping to track them down. In rural areas, police act almost like bounty hunters, harassing communities to give up women from minority religions. In other cases, the damage is already done. Some families refuse to accept the return of daughters who have been violated because they are no longer considered to be honorable. And with so many millions caught up in the chaos, it is inevitable that families get separated. Some must wait decades to be reunited with lost friends, as well as migrating all over India or Pakistan. Others move overseas, putting more distance between families. In the case of people wanting to travel between India and Pakistan, there are also physical barriers in the form of barbed wire fences and visas for visitors. For a long time, the curious descendants of those who live through partition find that their elders live behind a veil of silence, unwilling to discuss traumatic or shameful events. But with time, many people open up.

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[Narrator/Storyteller]

It is August 2022, in Lahore. An old man stands under the shade of a tree beside a busy street. His name is Tilak, and He is almost 90 years old. His granddaughter takes him by the arm and they walk together into a cafe. The place feels familiar, even though the menu offers sushi and burgers, two things he'd never even heard of when he lived here 75 years ago. Although the city has changed, its soul remains the same. It is the first time Tulaq has been back to Lahore since his family left in the middle of the night in 1947. But his granddaughter is interested in Partition. So he agreed to come on this pilgrimage to his old home. She says she has a surprise for him, something she found on the Internet. Tilak likes the Internet because he can buy clothes and watch the cricket. But he prefers not to delve into the past. He has lived a whole life since Partition. He only hopes that the people he left behind got to live a good life too. Suddenly, his granddaughter stands up to greet some newcomers. A man who speaks with a Canadian accent and a very old woman in the fashionable salwa kameez. She looks familiar and Tilak finds that his knees are wobbly when he stands. But she smiles and holds out a coin. A very shiny 1 rupee coin. Tilak takes it and closes his fist around it. This is Amela, the young woman he left behind at the Hindu well 75 years before. He sees that his granddaughter is crying. The man who must be Amelia's grandson is crying. Even the waitress he's never even met before is crying. But Tilak and Amila are smiling. He pulls out a chair so his old friend can sit. He doesn't want to waste time on tears. They have a lifetime to catch up on. Though the characters of Tilak and Amela are imagined, their story echoes hundreds of real life testimonies told by survivors who waited decades to be reunited. Even today, families work tirelessly to find lost loved ones. One benefit of social media is the power to reconnect people separated by time and a line that was hastily drawn on a map.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

A few years ago, something called the Kartarpur corridor opened, which for the first time in history allowed Indians to go to Pakistan without a visa. So it's a non visa trip and basically it was for Sikhs because Pratapur is a religious pilgrimage site and it was for pilgrimage purposes that they opened it. But it was open to all people from anywhere. What happened was people who had been separated for decades began to meet in one place physically. Family members. There have been reunions of mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, friends, and these videos that come out of Karpur of hugging and laughing and singing and crying. It should really tell you that people want to meet. And these are people that haven't seen each other for decades and they cannot believe the other is still alive.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

In addition to family and friends, migrants lost something that could never be replaced, a part of their identity. Partition defined people by religion alone, putting faith over and above other factors. Like language, land and heritage. When people left their homelands, they left grave sites, farms, ancestral roots, the very soil on which their people had given birth, lived and died. Today, after 75 years, the repercussions of partition mean that many people are still in conflict over disputed lands.

[Historian/Narrator]

The roots of the divide between India and Pakistan go back to partition. And that divide, that border, is arguably one of the most dangerous places in the world today. So this hostility between them has led to several wars. Continuing conflict in Kashmir. It has spurred the development of two of the fastest growing nuclear arsenals in the world. It has encouraged the Pakistani military over many years to support militant groups that they have used to essentially to bleed the Indians in Kashmir, which have also developed their own ties to groups like Al Qaeda. It led Pakistan to support the Taliban in Afghanistan, again as a hedge against Indian influence there. So the threat of a nuclear war breaking out or of a terrorist group somehow seizing a nuclear weapon while small, are probably greater in this part of the world than anywhere else. And that is because of the hostilities that began in Partition. You know, the sort of chaos and blood and violence and hate that spread over a few weeks and months in 1947 are still having repercussions today.

[Oral Historian/Interviewee]

I carry soil for so many people I've interviewed when I come from India. People are like, if you go to this village, please bring me some soil. I don't think anyone who has never lost their home will really, truly understand what it feels like to be completely severed from it. You know, A woman I interviewed in Pakistan remembered her village in Samana in Punjab, Indian Punjab. And she said, that's my home. And her granddaughter said, how is that possible? You've lived in Pakistan for 70 years. You've lived in India only for 10. Obviously, Pakistan is your home. And she says, home is home, soil is soil.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

Next time on Short History off, we'll bring you a short history of the Mona Lisa.

[Art Historian]

Every single event is as if some kind of film director or a PR agency said, how do we make this painting the best known in the world? So someone says, well, let's have intellectual talking about it. Well, let's have someone steal it. Well, let's have Picasso steal it. Let's have. And on and on and on. And in fact, all these things happen more or less coincidentally.

[Narrator/Storyteller]

That's next time on Short historyof.

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