Harbans Kaur Thiaray, maiden name Samra, born c.1950 in Sarhali, Punjab

My mother and father used to tell us about the final journey from their village to newly fixed border lines.  Sudden departure at night, fear of being slaughtered … no time to take any personal belongings, just some ‘go carts’ and some bare necessities …  

My father, nearly 6 feet tall and the body of a sportsman, was chosen to be at the front of the long line of ‘go carts’.  They walked day and night until they arrived in Jaramala [?], Islamabad now … Military was around … so majority of them decided to take a short break … because they thought they’re safe.  But it was Muslim side’s military …  They decided to relax and to buy something, to look for the milk and food for children.  My mother stayed behind with young children – one was 9 months, the other 2 – they would not stop crying … my grandma was helping my mum but in vain, they wouldn’t stop crying.  My 2 great uncles were also sitting at short distance … in a flash some noise started and firing began from all directions … People were being shot like inhuman animals falling on each other.  My grandma stood to shield my mother and her 2 grandsons and my brothers were in my mother’s lap crying … and before my grandma could bend down to cover them she was shot in chest and just fell on my mother and my brothers.  When most of the crowd was dead or hidden under dead bodies, the firing stopped.  My father and some other young men who went to look for food came … and without looking … said to my mother ‘pick the brothers’ … and ran before another firing started.  My father said at that time they walked on foot until reaching Lahore with nothing, and 2 uncles and grandma and some friends they were lost forever … and were dead without final respect and remembrance.

Arriving in new free India … they were even more discriminated, stayed in camps for months humiliated, called refugees …

My father used to say when he was in England ‘what was the point of all this? I have left Punjab in Pakistan, I have left Punjab in India, now Im in England, amongst the British, happy and working in a factory, making my living and what was the point of all this?’

He was a farmer, and they used to cultivate cotton, sugar cane, wheat  …

When he came to India [after Partition] … the first 2 or 3 years he was struggling, he was broken … then he was made lord mayor of that [village] because of his quality of understanding … but he gave that up because his pain inside was too much  … he said it was like a big castle … place he was allocated because you see when they left their houses [in Pakistan] they were given houses in the places here … when he was given the keys … there was blood on the walls, there was dead horses inside because they were rich people.  He couldn’t stand that.  He said ‘I don’t want to be the lord mayor of dead bodies’ … I want to make a different life.

Where you grew up, was this a Sikh community, or Sikh and Hindu mixed?

We only had a few Hindu in our village, majority was Sikh who came from Pakistan … my father worked very hard to put things back to normal and I don’t remember any poverty …

They wouldn’t say Pakistan – it was always East and West Punjab – ‘our country’ they used to say …  She (my mother) didn’t like politics but she didn’t pass that hate to us.  She would say, ‘what has happened is past’ …  She would emphasise, and my father as well, to integrate with everybody …

My father had very good Muslim friends, but the ones who entered their village, they were not from their village.  My father’s best friends in Pakistan, two of them, they were very very close to my father and they used to write letters to my father for many years, and one my elder brother’s name was given to him by my father’s Muslim friend.  My brother’s name was Gulu [?], his nickname, he had another Sikh name as well but his ‘Gulu’ name was given to him by my father’s Muslim friend, and that means some sort of flower.  So my father, he never hated Muslim but he did hate those yobbos who came into the village, he said, with flashing swords, very cruel people, and he never forgot that ... they were not the village people – they were outsiders … Always my father would say ‘never argue on religion’ …

He used to say … the childhood we had has been taken away by all this 1947 …

Oh yes.  The house which my father built in 1950s … at that time it was the best house in the village, and I went back in ’91 … now it was like the worst house … there was no one to repair our house … I didn’t like it have you told your children about your father’s stories?

Yes, but they say ‘it’s a long time ago’ … they say ‘Mum, it happens in every country where the British rule was’ … my children didn’t see my parents’ suffering … I saw the expression on their faces when they used to talk about war …

He [her father] did not blame British.  He said that when British were there the situation was much better … when he used to come to Lahore when he was small, he did not encounter any problem with British rule  …