Through photos, art, documents and personal stories, an exhibition on Partition evokes poignant memories of 1947
We assure you with the utmost sincerity that distance has not made the slightest difference in our love and affection for you; that we remember you, and remember you very often, with the same brotherly feeling that for so long characterised our relations.”
The words are from a letter (above right) written to Amar Kapur, by his friend, Asif Khwaja on April 6, 1949, after the Kapurs left Lahore after Partition. The Kapurs lived at 7, Egerton Street in Lahore and had stayed on after Partition until they finally left their home on September 5, 1947. The pain of leaving his home is still etched in Amar’s memory, he even remembers the exact time when they left, 4.30 pm.
Many of us have heard such stories in our families or from others, of suffering and of longing. The memories were hardly chronicled, let alone documented in a Partition museum. Last year, journalist Kuldip Nayar had written about how he wanted to establish a museum on Partition soon after August 1947, but he found that the wounds were too raw.
This fear, of losing a part of our history, led to the start of the Partition Museum Project last year. The project plans to establish a museum, a ‘people’s museum’, in Amritsar, Punjab, by the year end, to commemorate the 70th year of the largest mass migration in history in 2017.
“We don’t have any documentation and we don’t know about the trauma of the people who went through Partition. It is part of our heritage,” says Kishwar Desai, chair of the trust that is helming the museum project. Desai’s parents also came from Lahore. “The stories are important. We are witnessing large scale migration even today where people go through the trauma of displacement.”
The museum will have oral histories, photographs, documents, objects that people brought with them, among other material. It’s a work in progress but they already have more than 2,000 recorded histories. An exhibition, ‘Rising From the Dust: Hidden Tales from India’s 1947 Refugee Camps’, at New Delhi’s India Habitat Centre will be showcasing selected items over the next few days.
Khwaja’s letter is also a part of the exhibition. The project’s primary objective is to document the stories of people who migrated to India. Like SP Rawal’s story, who was just seven during Partition (see box below) or the story of Leelavati Khanna’s favourite book, about a Muslim artist Abdur Rahman Chughtai, the one thing that remained with her family as a marker of their home. ‘Then how real was this division of culture into Hindu and Muslim?’, reads the placard above the box that displays the dilapidated book at the exhibition.
Oral histories will be recorded during the exhibition too. So if you have a story to share, an item that you want to share, head to the venue.
SP Rawal, 75, recounts how he walked to India with his family, amid turmoil of Partition almost 7 decades ago
We all came to the railway platform and there was no fixed timing of the train and there was no surety whether the train will come on that day or not. There were a huge number of people on the platform, I mean, countless…We also joined the crowd… My bua, father’s elder sister, said to my father, “It is fate that has brought us here. My daughter is engaged and the boy’s side is present here, why don’t we get them married right now?” And my father agreed. We looked for a pandit. We made a small, makeshift altar. And the girl was married there on the platform. After a while, the train arrived. Everyone boarded the train… There were no reservations. People sat wherever they could, inside the compartment or the roof. After we got in, my elder sister said: “Amma, main nai jawangi. (I’ll not leave)” “Kyun nai jawangi? (Why will you not leave?)” “Woh aap (her husband)
nahi aaye. (Because he hasn’t come)”
Her husband had not come from the village… My sister got down, and the moment my sister got down, my mother got down too. My father said, “If you will not go, neither will I. Let’s all get off the train.” The whole extended family, everybody came down. Unfortunately [we discovered later that] the train was completely butchered…
Then we thought, let’s go along with the caravan. We needed a cart…We bought one cart and two bullocks.
The caravan began to move. There were around 400 to 500 families in the caravan. I was seven, my younger brother was five and my younger sister was three. For them, we made arrangements to sit in the bullock cart. Everybody else, including me, walked.
