My full name is Culdipp Singh Bhatti and I was 12 years old at the time of partition.

I belong to the Sikh community and it was a Sikh village. There were Sikh villages and Muslim villages but there used to be families from other religions. There were six Muslim families that were basically artisans, three Brahmin families who were running shops to meet the day to day needs of the villagers.

This was a new settlement from the 1880s when the British tried to settle the area by providing new irrigation facilities. Five canals were taken into that area for the settlement. We were 6 or 7 miles from the main town called Toba Tek Singh. That name is still there in Pakistan at the moment.

We lived very closely and there were children from the Muslim families in my school. We had a government primary school in my village. Children from the other two villages also came and participated in the education in that area. There was no such thing as anything against the way of life or the religion between the communities. Everything seemed to be quite peaceful and other Muslim villagers from as far as four or five miles and relationships were very good. No problem with respecting each other’s way of life. Law and order was very good as I see it.

Oh yes. There was no problem, no restriction whatsoever.

Oh yes. We were sat together, educated together. Yes. No animosities. Yes.

There was no such thing in my area. We were lucky in that way. We used to keep buying a newspaper daily and the radio was there, which was battery operated. They used to sit in the evening or the noon time after finishing their work listening to what was happening in the world. They were quite well aware of what was going on and before partition something happened. One of the Muslim villages about four or five miles from us – slaughtered a cow – so that antagonized the Sikhs who were living peacefully. Why do this thing? To retaliate, my villages brought a pig. It was looked after, it was slaughtered publicly, to offend those people [i.e. the Muslims] as well. So that sort of thing started, building up actually.

Yes, that’s right.

Yes, that’s it. But not in my area. We were very lucky. The worst area was Hazara in the North-West Frontier [Province], where the Muslim population were 95 per cent. And this is where ethnic cleansing was going on. Either you stay [and] you convert to that [faith] or you leave… or get killed.

Oh yes, and the big cities. Then the people started retaliating – Calcutta, Bombay, Ahmedabad, it spread over all the big cities. Whenever these people came with their stories from that part of India, the people started retaliating. And at Delhi, and other cities as well against the Muslims.

They were quite aware of what had happened and they started building fortifications – they made a fifteen-feet high wall around the village, about one metre wide, with only four entrances, which at night time were guarded. In fact most people had weapons – illegal ones, not legal ones. The worst thing that could happen. My family – my father was in Patiala in the part that was going to be India; grandfather decided that we should join my father. So my mother, brother and sister, myself and my cousin we left on the 9^th of August to join him. He met us at Lahore station on the morning of the 10^th and it was a terrible journey – very slow train, packed completely like sardines and stopped two or three stations before Lahore because anything could have happened but we were lucky and the train for India did not arrive until 8 or 9 in the morning into Lahore. There was no protection as such. A train arrived. We got into it. People were hanging outside, sitting on the roof and when we got to the Indian Amritsar border, just 35 miles from Lahore so then I saw for the first time the army patrolling the railway stations.

No, not at all. This was the big question mark. Why the British government did not provide that protection in those areas. They did, later on. But not to start with. Even the police had completely disappeared for the safety of their own lives. So we joined our father, we arrived at Patiala at night time at 10 pm so it took us more than twenty-four hours to get there, a 300-mile journey. Subsequently the villagers when we left them behind decided themselves between two or three options. Either stay put, fight it out; or convert to Islam, to save your life; or leave when it is convenient. The people started packing up and the villagers started moving and the carts and caravans built up. They started joining with each other. They left everything behind. Animals untied. Everything like that. Put the provisions on their carts and started the journey towards India. It took them three months to get to the border. They were not attacked on the way. Quite a big cart caravan in fact…

Oh yes.

Oh yes.

No, we were the original villagers who had migrated from that part of India and we migrated from that part of India. So we had villages there, small holdings, and houses. So we went to inspect our own houses, not to the camps. The camps people [came] from the city areas.

One or two other incidents [had] happened there before they left [i.e. before departing for India]. In the afternoon there used to be singers and magicians who used to come to entertain the villagers and one chap who was in a frenzied sort of trance with the music, drinking a lot of water and bringing it out – the villagers got suspicious of him. The first thing is that they hadn’t seen him before. Who is he? Then they asked the Muslim families: is he one of your relatives? They said no. The police were sent for. The police gave him a good beating publicly. He admitted that he was sent by other organizations to set fire to Muslim homes, so that they would blame the Sikh villagers that we had set fire to Muslim homes. So that didn’t work. Was that lucky?

Oh yes.

Yes.

Yes.

We left everything behind except what we needed: clothes, provisions, nothing else. Maybe jewellery or cash.

Grandfather brought us to Patiala and then [intended to go] back to join the family; but he couldn’t go back, because there were no trains going back at all. So he had to stay in this part of India. It was 10 August. On 14^th Pakistan got independence. On 15^th India got it. Everything was completely finished, everything came to a standstill. So nothing was brought as such as we said.

That’s right.

He couldn’t get back. I’ve got three uncles (my father was one of four brothers) [who remained behind].

We were away from that area. The boundary was Lahore and Amritsar, about 30 miles from Lahore. [Patiala was] about fifty or seventy miles from Amritsar: that was the boundary area. So the people of the Lahore district and the Amritsar district were more affected than us. We were about 200 miles away…

Towards the South, Karachi.

There was the Wagah, I heard them saying. They travelled along the canals and there was a big dam there, the Wagah dam at that time. This was the entry point, near the Ferozepur side, into India.

At Amritsar, yes. I saw them, machine guns hanging over their shoulders. Not before then. Nothing was in Lahore at all. The station was bustling with the refugees to get the trains. The trains should have been there in the morning at 3 or 4 o’clock, but they didn’t arrive until 8 or 9.

Oh they bring with them, they carry food with them when they travel. Sometimes they carry water as well. But water is available on the stations, even though there is demarcation there: there is Hindu water, there is Muslim water… [laughs]. You may laugh at it, but at time it was the way of life.

No I haven’t witnessed anything, but I heard about it quite a lot when we were at Patiala in the Maharaja’s state. There was a curfew. No killing had taken place. The army was out on the streets. May be one two people had been killed but he had taken control completely. But I heard about it [i.e. killings] quite a lot. The trains going from India to Pakistan had been stopped on the rivers and canals where everybody was slaughtered completely and the same thing coming the other way as well. Tremendous atrocities were committed, unnecessary atrocities. The question is, was it the price for independence? And whose independence? [Laughs]

No because you have your own luggage. We were a family of four. And there’s another family from the village of three, you see. But no such thing [as helping each other]. Father met us at Lahore station, you see, to help us to get on the train with the luggage.

He came out of the army and had rented accommodation where we went.

I don’t think he had a job at that time. I don’t think he was in employment at that stage. This was August 1947…

It’s a joint family system. He joined the army… because of the war he couldn’t take the family.

It was a room quite the size of this one. There was a family from whom we rented that was living there as well. Everything was shared. I would say it was comfortable, not bad. We [made the best of it]. It was a roof over your head. You can cook and eat and sleep. Safety was there. The city was divided: there was a Muslim area, a Hindu area, a Sikh area. So the area where most of the Hindus and Sikhs were living, we were in there. The Muslim area was about 50 metres away from us. From the next street south was all the Muslim area.

No, not at all.

Yes. It was fine. I can tell you, there was a [Muslim] tailoring business family. The men folk used to stitch the clothes for men in the main shopping areas and their wives stayed at home and [worked] for the ladies. Now one of their widow daughters became a friend of my mother and she had a 12-year old son. We became very good friends. He was a very good cyclist at that age. He used to take me all around the city showing me [the sights]. We used to meet them and they would invite us on Eid and all these things and subsequently they decided that they had to leave – voluntarily, not forced. Options were given. They decided to leave. All the people gathered in one place and were transported by road and rail in safety – no problem. The night before they left we invited her for dinner. Father can’t go into the Muslim area, it’s too dangerous. She came to the border between the areas. Father met her, brought her home. We had the dinner for two or three hours. She stayed with us. Then he took her back to the boundary and she went into her area.

Oh yes. So if that sort of relationship existed at that common level, then why this madness? [i.e. the violence at the time of Partition].

It makes you wonder.

Yes.

Let me calculate the mileage… About 170 miles.

Oh yes. People are coming from other parts [of former British India] and Muslim families are leaving everything behind. There are no Muslims left in [Indian] Punjab except one city … you will find Muslims there, but you won’t find Muslims anywhere else in the [Indian] Punjab. In that state, they all migrated to Pakistan. But you do find Muslims in the rest of the Indian states, but not in Punjab.

The houses that were vacated were filled by people coming from other parts. First they were in camps and then the allocation was made of these [vacant] properties by the municipal corporation. We occupied the house left by those [who had left].

Yes and which was subsequently allocated to us... by the municipality of Patiala.

It was a good property. There were four rooms downstairs, four big rooms on the top, on the back there was an open yard where you could sit on the roof. It was open. Quite big accommodation I would say.

No, no. In the village my grandfather became an orphan at the age of 12, so he owned about 90 acres of land. We were quite a well off family in the village, I would say. And he was married twice and there was only one surviving daughter from the first marriage so he had four sons from the second. Now, where we used to live our main residence had about one acre of land; and then we got other properties within the village, three other properties, that were quite big. The people like cobblers, sweepers, etc. used to live there; we never charged them any rent at all. So that was the done thing in those days there. So that this was substantially quite a big property.

Completely.

We never regained.

No, not the lost ground.

Your grandfather, I would imagine, must have been very badly affected by this?

He was. The first thing was partition. The second thing was to get back. So in his lifetime he went there [as a settler] and came back after sixty or seventy years with nothing.