Partition

The 1947 Partition victims share stories of heartbreak and hope

Interviews of victims of the Partition of 1947 won’t be possible forever, since any survivors alive are in their eighties and nineties. The partition of the Indian subcontinent sliced the country into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. A border was drawn in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal by the British who were leaving India after colonizing her for 300 years. Immediately, there began one of the greatest exoduses of human history.

Millions of Muslims began their journey to West and East Pakistan (now, Bangladesh) and Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction. More than 15 million people were uprooted, and more than one million people were killed.

Seventy-five years later, the live window into this chapter of history is about to be closed. 

In Natasha Javed’s documentary Home and the Border, two women share the harrowing journey of the eve of Partition when their families and communities were uprooted from their homes, villages and cities to an unknown destination across a newly drawn border while violence and bloodshed had erupted on the streets. Partition thus changed their lives and the subcontinent that we knew of, forever. 

Amidst harrowing news of rape bloodshed and looting, families moved but with the idea of returning to their homes once the dust settled. In speaking to Maqbool Bibi and Reena Verma, one knows that the dust never settled. The impossible had happened. The border was not only drawn but was growing more and more rigid and unyielding. Finally, it became one of the most hostile and militarized dividers separating the people from their families, friends, homes, towns, cities and their communities forever. Most partition survivors have passed away longing to be united with their families and friends, to be able to visit their homes and cities, just once. 

This is a story of migration; of brutality and loss as well as the tender nostalgia and childhood memories that people have carried for more than seventy-five years.

The documentary is expected to be completed by September 2024.