I’m assuming most of our grandparents/ great grandparents/ other family members moved during the partition.
Did anyone’s family members ever go back to reconnect with their past? Or did they share any stories about their lives before the partition?
Do you have anyone in your family that you could ask to share stories?
I saw this clip on YouTube last night that made me tear up.
Here’s a link to the same video on Vimeo for the Pak users: http://vimeo.com/792867
Re: Post Partition
My Daddi Ammi used to tell us about how she remembered it. She lived somewhere in India, she told me where, but I don’t remember 
She said she was very young and didn’t remember a lot, but she remembered being notified that they had to move to Pakistan. They didn’t pack much with them since they would be traveling by foot.
When they got to Pakistan, they were invited into a house that was owned by a nice Sikh family. The family welcomed them in and said “This is your house. If we can come back, we’ll come back for our stuff. Other wise, you owe us nothing.” And they left. They left them gold jewelry (because the women did not want to travel with anything valuable), money, furniture, clothes… Pretty much everything that was in the house!
They never came back to collect their things 
Re: Post Partition
My Nanna Abu lived in Pakistan. His neighbor was Hindu and left to travel to India. They left their house and everything in it to my Nanna Abu’s family. They locked the main gate and gave the keys to my great grandfather.
Similar to my Daddi Ammi’s story, a Muslim family came over with nothing. They asked my great grandfather for shelter. He unlocked the house and explained to them that the house and everything in it belonged to his dear friend, who promised to return for his things one day. They understood and vowed to protect the belongings until the owners returned.
After a while, the new family stopped waiting. They sold what they didn’t want or need and used the money to set up the house how they wanted.
From what I’ve heard, the same family is still living in that house today!
Re: Post Partition
Wow that’s awesome. That era must have been incredibly tumultuous for the average person. My mom’s family was always in Pakistan but my great grandfather did move after the partition. I think my grandfather was born in India. Don’t know much beyond that since my dad and his siblings never really thought to ask my dada abu more about their family and he passed away a few years ago.
Wish there was a desi ancestry.com
Re: Post Partition
^ Same!!
My dad and his sibs didn’t ask my grandparents anything. I was doing a project in high school when I got around to asking my daddi ammi and dadda abu.
Even then, my dad didn’t understand why I’d be so interested in knowing.
I wish I could find someone now who went through the whole partition and could tell me their story in detail. But most of those people were probably too young then, or are too old to remember now :hinna:
My grandparents from both sides moved to Pakistan. Parents were very young then. Really had to start from scratch, tons of family was left behind, some were lost along the way.
None of my grandparents ever made it back, even though they had immediate relatives there. My eldest uncles went and their kids. Some ppl from India came to visit. We met some of our Indian relatives in Middle East and UK.
My parents don’t really want to go back. They have a curiosity but were fairly young so the ties were not as strong.
I want to go and see, a lot of family is there, they are in touch now. After retiring my dad set up a family community site where many of the extended family is in touch.
Re: Post Partition
My parents moved at a very young age from India. My mom tells me more stories about india and her dadi and nani and how much jewelry they owned and buried underground when indira ghandi decided to confiscate everything in the seventies. My dad has more partition stories like he remembers bloodied rivers and how a jawan of the baloch regiment put his rifle to the driver’s head to not stop the train for the waiting mob which happened a lot in the mayhem of partition.
I still have some family as my dad has been in contact sometimes some years back, but I really don’t have any desire to go to India. The stories the OP mentioned are noteworthy as my dad has told me of looting that happened in punjab where kammis become patwaris and chaudhries over night. It is ironic as I mention it because there was and is a perception that migrants came and took over everything in Pakistan.
Re: Post Partition
i have no such stories to share because none of my immediate family members ever moved to Pakistan and no one i met ever who came from Pakistan to live in India. my extended relatives went to Pakistan in 60’s and 70’s. i don’t know anyone who moved to Pakistan after the 70’s.
i’ve a large number of relatives in Pakistan but none from immediate family. i visited Pakistan 1.5 times and i really loved it there. i haven’t gone back for a revisit in a long time. i might go very soon though.
i think most people who migrated to Paksitan at the time of partition were from the adjoining states to Pakistan like Punjab, Rajasthan and to a lesser extent from Muslim estates like Hyderabad. not many people migrated from Uttar Pradesh at that time.
Re: Post Partition
I think it was more the upper and middle class that moved. I call them the people with means but mostly the will to try something new unlike the muslims that stayed behind especially if they were poor. Immigrants get flaked in Pakistan by some for taking over the country while many indian muslims accuse them of abandoning them to india.
Double whammy! 
Re: Post Partition
^ not necessarily upper and middle class Muslims…it all depended on the safety of Muslims where they were at the time of partition…we were in UP and UP was quite a safe place from the effects of partition so nobody felt the need to migrate. some did due to their own personal reasons. there was no mass exodus from safer places.
Re: Post Partition
My grandparents were all from Pakistan though they knew local Indians, my grandfather told me they used to get beaten up in school by fellow Sikhs whenever they used to nara Muslim League 
Re: Post Partition
That is probably depend on what part of UP. Many of people migrated from UP to Pakistan. And secondly, my dada migrated from UP..he used to tell me how bad it was during the time of partition. And how his hindu neighbors killed muslims in his area in numbers…so they all had to move out of there. And my nana moved from Delhi. And he doesn’t have good stories either.
Re: Post Partition
Delhi suffered communal riots. remember Gandhi fasting in protest. mostly UP was the political hub, especially Allahabad and it was quite safe. i dunno where your grandparents came from but areas adjoining Delhi saw some communal rioting.
Re: Post Partition
Ya man..messed up stuff. My dada said..that humanity was lost. When your own neighbors who are living side by side for number of years become your enemies. I think toward your Indian side..there are stories..where Hindus and Sikhs suffered as well. In our family friend circle..there is some old uncle…he is around 90 something..but man he does have stories. It is pretty fun to talk to him. He is still jawan by heart!. May Allah preserve him.
Re: Post Partition
My mom and dad moved from India (from gurdaspur which was supposed to be in Pakistan being Muslim majority but was handed over to India at the last moment). In case of Punjab complete transfer of population took place, therefore no relatives left in India and no desire to visit the country.
Re: Post Partition
Yes, both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family moved from India. They don’t have stories of fighting or struggle, they moved a bit after the partition. Their experiences and stories I hear:
-Grandmother didn’t care at all about India.
-Grandfather missed it. He was living the life over there as a young man in his 30s. He wasn’t rich or anything, but you know how you love a place where all your friends are, regardless of what is going on? Yeah, kind of like that.
-Dad pretends to not care one bit going back to visit, but follows Indian politics. Which means he secretly misses it.
-There are still a good number of family members over there. However, as the older generation is passing away, connections are breaking off. I can’t name a single relative’s full name, only know them by their first names.
-We have met some of those Indian relatives when we lived in the mideast, and when we moved here to the US.
-Their stories of back “home” are no different than stories of someone living in Lahore. Things weren’t integrated in India back then as they are now. Muslims lived in their areas, and Hindus in theirs. Mixed marriages was something people read in novels, or heard really rich people doing. Muslims spoke Urdu as their primary language in Hyderabad, and very few knew the local language (Telgu). They started learning it after the partition as part of the school curriculum.
-Some relatives have gone back to visit, although not recently. Lots of visa issues now. They all say how crowded it is now, and how industry there is booming.
Re: Post Partition
It was a very sad yet full of zeal event .. I shudder at times thinking of what families at both ends went through. My dada used to write a diary .. much after his death , my father planned to get it published but the rest of the family members didnt agree with it ..
There was alot of blood shed, death, hope, life and a mix of negative and positive feelings amongst people .. my dada travelled first in a bid to see if he made it alive he would get his family to come over .. he said in his diary, people looked possessed , as if they had no more humanity left in them .. all they did was killed .. he saw a train after train come to the station with hundreds of dead bodies of innocent men , women and children .. in one such train he got on the buggy to see if there was anyone alive and he heard a little baby who was trapped beneath two bodies .. he picked him up and handed him over to the aid workers at the camps .. and shed a few tears coz he knew baby had been orphaned ..
when my grandmother and the rest of the family were travelling , they got divided on the way , some of the family members reached lahore , killed mercilessly .. my grandmother and my few months old father at that time, were missing and dada thought they had been killed , only months later he found out that one of his friends had shielded them from harm’s way and he had managed to bring them into Pakistan .. and the reunion happened ..
I asked a family friend recently, also from Jalander , India , if they could tell me what happened to our family home .. they checked and said , it had been converted into a medical center 
.. my dada never wanted to go back coz he said it brought too many hurting memories to him ..
nonetheless , Pakistan was achieved after alot of blood shed and both sides did suffer alot of loss and pain.
Re: Post Partition
CB, indeed, it was a very painful event for your dada and his family and it’s again as painful for the descendants to think about it, let alone to talk about it.
your post has brought tears to my eyes. i’m sorry that this all happened to yuor ancestors. i pray that they will get their due rewards for what they went through. aameen
i can fully understand why you are pained so much when you see things happening in Pakistan. we all must pray that normalcy and peace returns to your homeland which came into existence after such a bloodshed and sacrifice…aameen
Re: Post Partition
KKF, Ameen to the dua .. you know , there was this line in my dada’s diary , that i cant seem to forget and it read something like : every drop of blood that was shed was innocent blood , of those who merely wished to be close to their loved ones ..Many People were killing without knowing why they were doing so , many got killed for only being on the wrong part of the border ..
Re: Post Partition
summa aameen.
exactly, this is what is one of the signs of qayaamat. the perpetrator and the victim will NOT know why they killed and why they got killed. blood shed with no just cause, all in the name of hatred. Khoon e naa_Haq kabhii raigaaN nahiiN jaataa…unjust blood-shedding will never go in vein and those people who were responsible for this act will be punished in the hereafter and the victims will be rewarded with handsomely by Allah on the Day of Judgement, iA.