Legacy of Partition 1947-2009

“As we flew back into India we came down low over the northernmost of the Muslim refugee convoys making its slow and painful way across the main Lyallpur-Lahore road. Their exodus brought them across the Beas River, and involved an elaborate detour to save them from passing through Amritsar. We estimated that it took us just over a quarter of an hour to fly from one end to the other of this particular column at a flying speed of about a hundred and eighty miles per hour. This column therefore must have been at least forty-five miles long...” Alan Campbell-Johnson, 21 Sept. 1947

“… the train stopped … in the darkness we could only hear the voices, we couldn’t see the faces but we could see sword in their hand and they were shouting ‘Is there any Muslim? …if there is any Muslim, don’t protect them’ … we saw some Muslims in our train … immediately they went under our seat ... but we didn’t know who he was, Muslim or Sikh … and they did drag a person [out from] under my own legs … we could hear the killing ... Mr. Kartar Singh Sandhu MBE

My wife’s father was away on business somewhere and her uncle took the whole family from Delhi because there were the worst riots in Delhi at that time in ’47 and they decided to move from Delhi to Lahore … while on the way the train was stopped and the murder was there … and 6 children were murdered in the train – 6 sisters – she and her elder sister only survived, and the mother – the rest of the family was murdered, her uncle and sisters… she was only about one-and-a-half years old so she has no memories of what happened …” Mr. Abdul Rashid Siddiqui

JB: a lady from the Red Cross came along and said would we mind very much if we could take this brother and sister into our carriage…and these two teenage children got on … she had lost her arm

JO: Yes, just below the elbow

JB: Slashed off, just there, and he had…

JO: A cut across his face and another across his chest, like sword slashes…

JB: …The train stopped at some little station, in the middle of nowhere, and the boy said ‘This is where we get off’ and they got off the train and walked off into the desert.

JO: They never said anything or made a sound.  They must have been in agony.

JB: ... Those two youngsters have stayed in my memory ever since.

Muslims were being systematically hunted down and butchered. Thousands of them were herded into camps, where the conditions defied description…. The dead lay rotting in the streets, because there was no one to collect and bury them. The hospitals were choked with dying and wounded, and in imminent danger of attack because of the presence of Muslim staff and Muslim patients. Arson and looting were widespread… Maj. Gen. H.L. Ismay on the situation in Delhi, 5 Oct. 1947.