Re: Share your Relative's 1947 Migration to Pakistan Stories
My naani's family didn't exactly migrate in 1947...but they have a pretty dramatic story too.
My naani's father was a prominent figure in the anti-Maharaja movement, and an outspoken advocate for Kashmir's right to self determination, both before and after India took over. His actions naturally brought him in conflict with the Indian government, and their representative in Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah.
After the first India-Pakistan War ended, Sheikh Abdullah decided to consolidate his power over Kashmir by eliminating all of his political opponents from the state. So, early one morning in January, 1949...several Indian soldiers came to my naani's family home looking for her parents. They were ordered at gunpoint to get in the back of a big truck...the soldiers refused to tell them where they were being taken. They weren't even given the chance to pack a change of clothes. My great grandmother, not knowing what was going to happen, and fearing that she and her husband we're going to be taken into the mountains and executed, made the split second decision to leave her children behind...begging the servants to hide them and take them to a relative's house after the soldiers had left. My naani didn't even know if her parents were alive or dead for a long time afterwards...
It turns out that the soldiers drove through Srinagar that day, stopping at the houses of various Kashmiri political dissidents & freedom activists to pick them up along the way. No one was told what was going to happen to them...they were driven for hours till they reached the LoC. At that point, a Red Cross official informed them that the Indian Government had declared all of them 'Pakistani POWs' and was exchanging them for Indian prisoners. They were literally forced across the border into permanent exile at gun point...never to be allowed to set foot in Kashmir again.