Key Points
- Seventy-five years ago, the division of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan resulted in mass migration, famine and deaths
- Some 10-15 million people were displaced and up to two million people died in the ensuing violence
- Pakistani and Indian Australians share their memories of the period
The Indian subcontinent's partition in August 1947 led to one of the largest forced migrations in world history, with an estimated 10-15 million people fleeing across the newly-demarcated Radcliffe Line.
Half a million to two million people died in the violence that ensued as Muslims migrated to Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs headed for India.
For millions, partition meant leaving behind family homes and lives that had been built across generations.
SBS Urdu spoke to a number of Australians born in India and Pakistan who lived through this tumultuous period. Their stories show partition’s diverse and complex legacy.
The partition of India led to the mass migration of millions of people as seen in this picture from October 1947. Credit: The LIFE Picture Collection
Friendship across borders
Maqsood Ahmad Sheikh was 15 years old in 1947.
The 90-year-old Pakistani-Australian, who has lived in Sydney for two decades, recalls it as a “testing time”.
But his lingering memory from the time is of an act of friendship that transcended faith.
Mr Sheikh tells SBS Urdu he was born into a well-off family in Lyallpur, the city now known as Faisalabad in modern-day Pakistan. But by 1947, he was living in Amritsar, in modern-day India.
His father owned a steel mill and several flour mills across Punjab, the region that would be split down the middle by partition.
While Mr Sheikh and his family chose to migrate to Faisalabad in Pakistan, the Hindu manager at one of their flour mills was preparing to migrate to India.
“Before leaving, he asked my father if he needed any help in India,” Mr Sheikh recalls.
“My father told the manager about some money he’d left behind in Amritsar, told him where to find it and asked him if he could look after it,” he recalls.
Six months after partition, the manager returned.
“He was such a nice person that he came all the way to Pakistan to return the money.
"And it was not a small sum of money. It was 75,000 rupees [around $500,000 today], and we bought a flour mill in Faisalabad with it. You can imagine how huge the sum was,” Mr Sheikh says.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, on the country’s first day as a nation. Lord Louis Mountbatten, oversaw the partition of the subcontinent. Source: AP
Acts of solidarity
Born in 1941 in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province, Sarwar Khan recalls having just started school at the time of partition.
Mr Khan says he can still hear his teacher telling them to hide inside their classroom as violence broke out in the city.
“I still remember walking back to our village; we were so afraid of being attacked,” he recalls.
Mr Khan, who now lives in Melbourne, says that in his Muslim-majority village, people of other faiths became targets of attack.
“There was a brick kiln in the village and a Sikh man named Sukha Singh used to work there.
“When the miscreants attacked our village searching for non-Muslims, the villagers hid Sukha in the local mosque. I still remember his face.
“My uncle was one of those who saved Sukha and later we helped him cross the border to India," he tells SBS Urdu.
Another Melbourne resident, Tehseen Raees, has similar memories of community solidarity.
She was born in Kanpur in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
“We migrated [to Pakistan] but left everything behind, including our home," she says.
Ms Raees says the violence was indiscriminate.
“Our neighbourhood was a mix of Hindus and Muslims. One day, there came a truckful of miscreants, armed with heavy sticks.
“But at that moment, all the members of our village, irrespective of religion, came out and chased them away," Ms Raees narrates.
When asked by members of the younger generation about lessons learned from the past, Ms Raees has a simple message.
"Live with harmony and never perform any act which will harm others, irrespective of their faith," she advises.
Mahatma Gandhi addresses a public gathering in India in 1931. Source: AP / James A. Mills/AP/AAP Image
Importance of the vote
For Kaneez Fatima, a resident of Sydney for 40 years, partition instilled in her the importance of the democratic process.
As a nine-year-old living in Muradabad district of Uttar Pradesh in India, she remembers the provincial elections of 1945-46 in which the Muslim League appealed to voters for support of Pakistan.
“Party workers used to take voters by horse carriage. I knew at that time that if we got more votes, then we would get a big country,” she says.
“As I had a younger brother who needed to be looked after, my mother was not planning to go and cast her vote. But I insisted and told her that I would babysit my brother," Ms Fatima adds.
Ms Fatima later migrated to Karachi in Pakistan, leaving her home behind, before eventually starting a new life in Australia.
