It has been 75 years since Britain announced the division of what was known as (British India) into its colonial empire, resulting in two independent states:
Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. But the joy of independence was overshadowed by the carnage of partition. The days after the birth of the two nations were characterized by unprecedented chaos as hatred broke out between religious groups, millions of Muslims headed for Pakistan, while Hindus and Sikhs left in the opposite direction. Along the way, many endured horrific atrocities that prevented them from ever reaching their destination.
Pritam Khan, a Muslim living in Ludhiana, India, barely survived when a mob invaded his village, but he lost the rest of his family. “I was playing near the house at the moment when a group of rioters broke into it,” Khan, 86, said in an interview with the German news agency (dpa).
His father and older brothers managed to escape, while he hid in the cornfields, while his mother hid in a well. Later, when he went looking for her, she did not come out of the well. As with Pritam Khan’s mother, at least a million people died in the riots and massacres caused by the 1947 partition. About 15 million people were forced to flee or were forced to flee.
Citizens were losing property due to moving from one place to another, which further fueled the unrest. The upheavals of that time remain in the collective memory today, influencing policy-making and intensifying the bitter rivalry between the two countries.
Pritam Khan doesn’t know exactly what happened after his mother’s death. “He wrinkled his face,” he said, “and eventually settled with other villagers until the violence subsided.”
Pritam grew up in an Indian village near his home and worked for a farmer, never attending school. After about seven years of partition, his family in Pakistan discovered that Pritam was still alive after a man with a distant connection to the family traveled to India in search of his missing son.
In 1983 Shahbaz Khan, his nephew, started writing letters to him and they keep in touch to this day. As the Khan and other families count down 75 years after the tragedy that separated them, the two countries celebrate their independence as a victory: Pakistan on August 14, India the next day.
Khan will not celebrate. He said: “He will sit outdoors on his wicker bed, a traditional bed for sleeping in a region called sharpi, and think about his missing family, as he often does these days.”
“The events that took place during partition are as painful today as they were,” Shahbaz Khan, 54, Pritam Khan’s nephew, told the German news agency DPA, sitting under a Pakistani flag, the only thing adorning the wall of his reception room in Faisalabad. 75 years ago.
Inequality is one of the consequences of the partition of the region in 1947, which is one of the most densely populated regions in the world, with over 1.3 billion people in India and about 220 million people in Pakistan.
India is a stable country that has emerged from the status of a developing country. On the other hand, Pakistan is a country with a faltering economy, weak democratic structures and complicated security problems caused by extremist armed groups. However, Pritam Khan’s biggest wish is to return to Pakistan to be with his family. But he can’t because of strained relations between the two countries that make it difficult to get a visa, he says. He added that he had always longed to join his family, but that longing only intensified after he visited Pakistan in 2005 as a pilgrim, like the thousands of Sikhs who cross the border every year. He spent two days with his now deceased older brother and his sons. His nephew recalls this visit and says, “We’d better not let him go back to India.”
Pritam Khan’s Indian neighbors, who allow him to use their phones to make phone calls, cook for him and bring him medicine, want him to be reunited with his family as they see that he feels lonely. Although Pritam and Shahbaz do not discuss politics when they talk together, they talk about being victims of a cold in relations between the two countries. “Unfortunately, people could not even meet or visit their close relatives or express condolences in the event of the death of a family member,” Shahbaz said. He added, “The way Pakistan-India relations are deteriorating, I don’t think they will improve in the near future and I think the rulers don’t want to solve problems otherwise any problem can be solved”, noting that Family Reunification is the duty of the government.
