“As we approached the Ravi we had our first aerial vision of the scale of this desperate exodus. We are looking down on one of the greatest movements of population in recorded history, and then only on a small segment of it. We flew, in fact, for over fifty miles against this stream of refugees without reaching its source.

Today we saw for ourselves something of the stupendous scale of the Punjab upheaval. Even our brief bird’s-eye view must have revealed nearly half a million refugees on the roads. At one

point during our flight Sikh and Muslim refugees were moving almost side by side in opposite directions. There was no sign of clash. As though impelled by some deeper instinct, they pushed forward obsessed only with the objective beyond the boundary. Alan Campbell-Johnson, 21 Sept. 1947

A peasant woman who did not recognize Nehru said to him: ‘if you wanted to partition the country, why did you not first arrange for exchange of population? See what misery has come on us all.’ Pandit Nehru did not answer…

SIR REGINALD COUPLAND ON THE PUNJAB (1943)

The two principal cities of the Punjab – Lahore, the administrative capital, and Amritsar, the commercial capital and sacred city of the Sikhs – are both situated in the middle of the Province between the rivers Ravi and Beas and only thirty-five miles distant from each other… Between the two cities there is no natural dividing line of any kind. Any boundary set between them would be wholly artificial…

Map of religious divisions of the Punjab based on the 1941 Census

“...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…“ Councillor Culdipp Singh Bhatti

Boundary Award, Punjabi Division. The red line gives the final demarcation of the boundary commission (above the red line = Pakistan). Amritsar (but not Lahore) is awarded to India.

… thousands, hundreds of thousands [were in the caravan] … we stayed in [a] gurdwara for a few days – I think it was about 10 days – and then they started moving. Every day we walked about 18 to 20 miles. Mrs. Gurdev Kaur Saini

Additional commentary to the Exhibition - Panel 4 & 5

Page Last Updated: 19 March 2009