As Indians mark their 77th Independence Day on August 15, many families still find it hard to forget the terror of what they experienced during the Indian Partition in 1947.
The partition caused large-scale rioting; a million were reportedly killed and 15 million others were displaced. Most of those left with the scars of those harrowing months experienced them as children.
Horrors of Partition
Inder Jeet Sharma of Delhi was barely eight when British Barrister Cyril Radcliffe, a man with precious little prior knowledge of British India, was tasked with dividing the country of millions into two sovereign states, India and Pakistan.
Amid communal tension, a month after the Partition, one day about 30-40 Hindu families from Derawalan Village were shifted to 'Dharamshala', an inn far away. It was an expansive inn with both a Sikh Gurdwara and a Hindu temple in it.
“We had barely spent a few hours settling ourselves when some of our elders got the whiff of the place being surrounded by a Muslim mob. It was desperate to get inside to snatch away our women while killing the rest,” Inder told Sputnik India.
"The women included my mother and her sisters," he said.
After learning about the mayhem which could spark off any moment, the "women quickly decided they'd rather be killed by their own men than taken away by a mob".
In this Sept, 27, 1947 file photo, Muslim refugees crowd onto a train bound for Pakistan, as it leaves the New Delhi, India area.
© AP Photo
According to Inder, the moment the decision started being executed, it shook every child and young one out there listening to the screams.
“As per the plan, all the women lied on the floor of a big room, adjoining a room especially meant for keeping Shri Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book of Sikhs),” he narrated.
“On listening to the shrieks, all the kids began crying bitterly. We wished to just get in and be with our mothers...But we were shooed away by (the men), who even threatened to kill us,” Inder said.
All that was being done “to save the women from getting caught by the mob and preventing their modesty from being outraged.”
At the same time, many younger women plunged or were pushed into a well, located in that inn. Only two of them, whose turn came last luckily survived, because of the heap floating inside it.
"These incidents occurred in front of us." But even after years I find it hard to properly put across those horrible scenes through the right frame of words, Inder rued.
The Saviors
Days later, all the kids were taken out of that inn to a nearby village by a Muslim good Samaritan. "Mohammed Baksh used to be our agricultural worker. Soon, the news reached a Muslim Nawab, a big landlord and a bitter rival of our landlord father."
He vowed to shelter us despite outraging members of his local community. "Nawab Sahib treated us as his own kids, and eventually helped us reach a refugee camp," shared Inder.
Following an official announcement, the kids and many of their other relatives reunited at the camp were put into a freight train to reach Attari, 3 km from India-Pakistan border, in the Amritsar district of Indian Punjab.
After being stranded for hours in the open train at Attari, we finally reached India, he concluded.
Months Before and After Partition – What Made It ‘Bad Dream’
Subhash Chhibber was in third grade when his family left Peshawar city, now in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Their was a Hindu community in the Nanakpura area. But their trouble started in April, months before the partition.
“It felt scary when they would start sloganeering before our houses. And it terrified everyone, forcing the residents to close their doors and stay inside.”
Siblings Reunite at Kartarpur Corridor After Indian Partition 75 Years Ago
© Photo : Twitter/ video screenshot
Subash’s family soon left for Patiala in Punjab in May.
“In Patiala, my Nanaji (maternal grandfather) would regularly visit railway station for months to check if any relative had come,” he told Sputnik India.
His family later moved to the Solan area of Himachal Pradesh state.
Asked after 76 years how he remembers those days while today living in the millennium city of Gurugram, he replied: “It was a bad dream.”