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Maryum Dildar Watttoo

Partition Literature

23 June 2022

Partition through the eyes of children

Partition was and still is a traumatic experience for those who experienced and for

those who grew up listening to these stories. Sectarian violence forced millions to leave their

homes. Hindus and Sikhs were to go to India and muslims were to pakistan. Millions of people

migrated and iit is one of the biggest migrations in history. The partition survivors who were

children at that time recall it as a nightmare they still haven't woken up from. One of the partition

survivors,Kasura Bibi, says she still can’t sleep at night thinking about all the trauma. That

memory still haunts those who firsthandly experienced the partition. There were many children

who were left behind or were abandoned by their families because they were too young to be

taken across the border. They were very young and would make some noise while crossing the

border so their parents left them thinking they would come back to take them. There were also

children who got separated from their families. People did not have any idea for how long they

are going to be away from their homes. They thought that it was a temporary thing and they

would be back in no time. “We did not bring any clothes because we were told by the villagers

that we will be back at our homes and that this is a temporary thing”(Kasura Bibi, a partition

survivor). Another survivor Balwant Kaur Chadha says that “history is written with golden and

silver words but this history (partition) is written with blood. Watching all the violence with

your eyes and then living with it could be very traumatic and these people are still living with it.
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Ubaidullah (surjeet singh) was left behind while his father and uncle ran for their

lives, they were told by the others who were with them to leave him while they hid in the field

because he was so small and they were scared that he would make noise, when then sikh came

they ran from the other side of field. He was two and a half years old at that time. He was left

there for two days until a sikh migrant family who were coming from Pakistan saw him sitting

there and brought him home. That sikh name was Joginder Singh and his wife's name was Basant

Kaur. They adopted him and kept him with them. He was 6 or 7 years old when he found out

about his origin. He was treated very well there, did not feel as an outsider he recalls those times

as one the happiest years of his life. When he turned 15 someone from Pakistan his uncle went to

India to find him. He went to the old village where Ubaidullah’s family used to live before

partition and found the new address of Joginder Singh the people there told him that there was a

kid which was left behind and Joginder Singh found him and brought home, he went to their

house and found Ubaidullah (Surjeet Singh). Ubaidullah (surjeet singh) did not want to go to

Pakistan but was suggested by his then sikh father that he should go to his parents and

community so he went with his uncle to Pakistan. He says that he did not feel any love or

affection towards his real parents or siblings. When he was leaving India he was confused about

his identity of whether he is a muslim or a hindu. Who are his parents and who is he? He says

that he did not think much while leaving India because at that point he was so lost(ubaidullah a

partition survivor who was lost at the time of partition). Imagine living as someone for 15 years

of your life and then suddenly someone claims and says they are your real parents and you are

not who you think you are, the pain and the feeling of betrayal you would feel that is the exact

same feeling which ubaidullah felt at that time.

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“I still have the refugee tag, the refugee tag stays with us, the wounds

never heal”( Raj Khanna a partition survivor). Raj who was 14 at the time of partition recalls the

time when their houses were burning in Lahore and he and his friends went out to help people

and he was almost killed too. That's when his parents and he moved to India. He was just a child

at that time, just 14 and he had to see people getting killed and burned, they were forced to leave

their homes and to live as refugees. Spending days without food and other basic life necessities

and living with that trauma for the rest of their lives. Nisar Akhtar who was six at the time of

partition was a resident of Hoshiarpur Punjab when riots began and they started burning their

houses. That's when they left their home and got separated from their father, reached the refugee

camp and started their 21 days walk. They were attacked by sikhs and he saw them tossing

infants in the air with their spears, he saw his mother leaving his infant sister there. He picked his

sister and brought with them. This is what a six year old experienced. He is almost 80 now but

that memory stays with him and he will have to live with this(dawn). Rebuilding their lives after

going through something so traumatic was not easy. Both the hindus and muslims suffered

equally, both faced brutality and betrayal but what is astonishing is to see their love for each

other and their ancestral homes. When in 1954 India and Pakistan played test cricket Pakistan

opened the gates to every Indian without visas and when they came to Pakistan it was like they

never left. In Lahore the shopkeepers wouldn’t take money from the Indians and vice versa

when Pakistanis went there the behavior was the same. Even today many people visit Pakistan

and India and they feel at home the hospitality which people show is great. They have love and

respect for each other and they feel connected with each other.

Where there were people killing each other there were also many

people who were saving lives and helping out the refugees. The Khaksar group which was
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created in Rawalpindi for the people by the people had people from all religions there were

sikhs, hindus and muslims and they were helping people move towards their destination. Many

khaksar were killed while saving the people. Survivors recall a sikh man giving shelter to

hundred of muslims and saving their lives. Ambernath a young kid was killed by mob because he

went to get insulin for a muslim man. He was sikh but the mob did not spare him(better india).

At that time there was hatred and they just wanted to take revenge. If a train comes with dead

bodies then they also have to send a train full of dead bodies. If 10 women are raped then they

have to rape 15. This was the mindset of mobs at that time. Biljit Dhillon Vikram Singh recalls as

a little girl seeing dead bodies on her way to Amritsar with her family and even after moving to

America and having children she still hasn't forgotten those times when dead bodies were lying

like flies. Taj Begum who was almost ten at the time of partition remembers the times as the

most horrific time of her life. She used to live on court road in Delhi with her family and they

were well off but when the violence erupted they had to take refuge in an old fort but the

condition there was miserable so they booked train tickets and traveled by train. She says that her

baby cousin’s mouth was stuffed with cloth so that he doesn’t make noise. She says her late

husband has made sixteen trips to Delhi but she couldn’t go back to that place because she still

has fear and that fear is going to stay with her. Mr. Sur was four when partition happened, he

used to live in Bataitala now Bangladesh with his family. He recalls that everyday before Puja

his relatives would come crying and empty handed that they were attacked. He went to his

uncle’s house with his family in Noakhali. His family then settled in Calcutta India(stanford

1947 archives). The time goes by and people move on but the trauma stays with them. They still

remember the smallest details about the events although many children were between the age of

4 to 10 but what they went through still shakes them up.

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When you live somewhere you get attached to that place and in

the times when you are away from that place you long to go back. We call this state

homesickness. Many people after almost 75 years of leaving their homes are still homesick. They

want to visit their ancestral homes and be there even for a few hours. Krishna Kumar Khanna

visited his ancestral home in Pakistan after 70 years. He was 92 at that time and remembers each

and every detail of his house and his neighborhood. The place stays in their minds, many people

who visited their homes remember all the small details because mentally they never moved out

and they were still there somewhere. A man living near the sonheri masjid in Rawalpindi recalls

his house with jamun trees and the smell of tarimanda; he says he still remembers the smell. His

house was located in firozpur. Hameed Ali says that we were told by our neighbors to move to

Pakistan in order to save our lives “Pakistan, a name we only heard in slogans”. He was almost

10 and his sister was killed in front of his eyes, out of nine members only two survived. The

value that ancestral homes hold in their lives can be measured by Hamid Ali’s statement “ beta

purkhon ki haveli chorny se behtr hai banda mar jye”. It means that dying is better than leaving

your ancestral homes. Many people stayed behind just for the sake of their homes and

belongings. They said that why would they leave their houses and businesses. Kuranjwit Singh

who hails from Rawalpindi settled in Delhi after partition felt proud of being called the pindi

wala. Anand, a young man who was born after partition visited his fathers ancestral home twice

and would kiss the doors and said that the house was in the same condition as his family left it.

Partition was a nightmare and it is a never ending nightmare for

those who experienced it firsthand. The survivors who were children at the time of partition still

recall the times and they still get teary eyed upon remembering the violence. People had to leave

their lives, their homes, their memories, their moments of joy and sadness, their friends and
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family and start a new life at a place they never visited before. This is a never ending nightmare

and people don't seem to recover from it. Their pain is never ending. Many people lost their

identities and many girls lost their families. They were abducted and upon returning to their

families they were not accepted, what would their life be like? How would they have survived

till now? We call all the people partition survivors but the real survivors are those who lost their

identities as kids and then got them back as adults, those girls who were taken away from their

families and then were reunited with them after years. Those are the real survivors.
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Work Cited

https://www.dawn.com/news/1351529

https://www.thebetterindia.com/67924/unsung-heroes-partition-india-pakista

n/

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/1947-partition/catalog/wb507sk3243

https://www.dawn.com/news/1351352

https://youtu.be/k3k79O-HRYI

https://youtu.be/2jvNsTLwYXk