Episode 2 My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

This is the north Indian city of Amritsar

and just a few miles in that direction is the Pakistani border.

But just 70 years ago, that border didn't even exist.

In 1947, 200 years of British rule here came to an abrupt end

and this vast subcontinent was divided.

It was called partition

and it split the states of Punjab and Bengal

to create two new Muslim homelands in the east and west.

Millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled to an independent India

and millions of Muslims to east and west Pakistan.

In all, 15 million people were uprooted

in the largest forced migration ever recorded.

And over a million people died in the chaos and violence of partition,

as families, like my own, were torn apart.

Many partition survivors decided to rebuild their lives in Britain.

And now, 70 years on,

their children and their grandchildren are going back

to discover how partition dramatically changed

their family stories for ever.

And this time, I'll be joining them,

as me and my mum become the first members of our family to go back

to my grandfather's village in what is now Pakistan.

In this series, I and three other Britons

from different religious backgrounds are retracing our partition stories.

We come from all sides caught up in the violence.

Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and British colonial.

70 years on, this is our last chance to learn the truth

about partition from the people who lived through it.

I thought it was like doomsday, a very difficult time.

My partition journey started two years ago

when I explored my Sikh family history on Who Do You Think You Are?

-This is from my grandfather.

-This is from your grandad. Yes.

-This is Sant Singh's.

-Wow!

The story I uncovered about my maternal grandfather, Sant Singh,

had a huge impact on me.

In 1947, before he married my nan

and went on to have my mum and all her siblings,

my grandfather was married and, at the time of partition,

he was away with the army, and his wife, children and father died

in the horror of what took place.

Hello, Mamma.

-Hi, Anita.

-How are you doing?

My mum was very close to her dad, but he never talked to her

about what happened to his first family during partition.

I have known my father as a very loving, caring,

very lovely father

but I did not know he was hiding so much inside him.

Mum and I have decided to finish the journey into my grandfather's past

that I started two years ago.

Beautiful picture. Maybe 17, 18, or maybe younger than that.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, here we go, his first wife.

-Wow!

-Pritam Kaur.

-Beautiful.

-A handsome couple.

-That's right.

The family story is that during an attack on their village

by local Muslims, my grandfather's first wife, Pritam Kaur,

took her own life by jumping into the village well.

My great-grandfather, Dheru, and Sant's two young children,

Mahindra and Rajbal, were also killed.

-So, this is the little picture of Raj, their son.

-Yeah.

After partition, my grandfather's home village became part of Pakistan

and he was never able to return there to honour the family he lost.

No-one in my family has ever been to Pakistan

to see where my grandfather lived.

It's really important that I go with my mum and pay respects.

So, there's India...

-Mm-hm.

-Pakistan...

-Yeah.

-Punjab.

-That's it.

-And we are going to here - Sahiwal.

Are you excited?

Excited and...

-Nervous?

-A little bit.

Pakistan, here we come.

In the last episode, young British Muslim Sameer

set off from Manchester with his grandfather Asad

to retrace their family's partition story.

These are the only photographs I have left from India, you know?

He's my father.

They managed to find Asad's childhood home

in the Indian city of Ambala.

I can't help crying.

I don't belong here.

Asad was only seven when violence broke out here.

And he and his Muslim family were forced to flee

in fear of their lives.

They wanted to kill my father.

I want my grandson, Sameer,

to know the real story about my life before partition.

This time, Sameer is following the dangerous train journey

that Asad and his family took as refugees in 1947,

which started here, at Ambala station.

A lovely train.

Sameer will take the same route

across the Indian state of Punjab to Pakistan

that Asad took 70 years ago.

Due to ill-health, his grandfather has decided

not to accompany him on the journey.

I'm not well to travel and I'm glad that he's going on his own.

I won't be a burden on him. You know what I mean.

It's important someone from the family follows the path he took

when he left Ambala, during the partition,

because he went through hardship, he went through danger,

he went through mental, physical, emotional stress.

For me, going on this trip,

this is the closest I can get to experiencing what he experienced.

We had quite a few relatives who were going to Pakistan with us

and we took a special train.

But that train stopped and the railway authorities said,

"You'll have to get off here,

"your train will come tomorrow to take you to Pakistan.

"This train is not going to Pakistan."

We were there without food, without water, without anything.

After seven days, the train arrived.

I thought that it's like doomsday.

Everybody was running towards the train like mad.

You know? Carrying their luggage, carrying their children,

carrying their wives.

People were going crazy.

One of my uncles pushed me into the compartment, through the windows.

Asad and his family were among almost 4 million Muslim,

Sikh and Hindu refugees who, after the line of partition was announced

in August 1947, crammed onto India's vast rail network

to try to escape the growing violence

erupting across India and Pakistan.

I'm sat on a train now and I'm thinking,

trying to imagine this whole train absolutely full

with boxes, with luggage, bags and people.

I can just imagine a scared little kid in the corner

really cramped up tight.

It must have been so horrible for a kid to go through that.

There was no room at all.

So, for hours and hours, I was just sitting in that position.

I couldn't move my legs. I was just crouching, you know?

I couldn't complain. We were just children.

We stayed quietly and didn't make a noise.

While Sameer follows Asad and his Muslim family's journey west

across Punjab to Pakistan, Binita Kane is exploring

her Hindu family's partition story in Bangladesh.

Last time, Binita agreed to return to her father,

Bim Bhowmick's, childhood home,

the first person in her family to do so since partition.

I'll be fine. I'll do a good job for you.

Now an eminent doctor, Professor Bim Bhowmick was only a child

when his family fled their village in the remote region of Noakhali,

after one of the first outbreaks of partition violence.

Mum came to our room and said "Ssh, just run!"

They escaped at night, hidden on a local riverboat.

The minute they got onto this boat, they became refugees.

Now Binita is retracing her father's perilous journey across Bengal.

She's come to Chowmuhani station

where six-year-old Bim and his family arrived as refugees

70 years ago, hoping to get a train to safety.

When he entered the station,

my brother-in-law made us sit in one corner and then said,

"Keep your head down."

He said he wants to go to see the station master.

The station master advised that we don't take the passenger train...

..because there had been atrocities in the compartments.

Binita's come to meet one of the current station managers,

Mr Jaman, whose father worked here during the partition period.

So nice to meet you.

-How are you?

-I am OK.

My family fled from this station, I think in October 1946.

Mr Jaman has a contemporary account

of the attack on Chowmuhani station.

Oh, wow! So, it's October 21st, 1946.

The headline is refugees attacked at Chowmuhani, some killed.

"According to reports received here,

"mobs attacked refugees at Chowmuhani on Friday,

"killing and stabbing some persons, with the result

"that the railway staff in the area were forced to flee.

"Railway tracks are lined with hundreds of refugees,

"fleeing from disturbed sections."

Oh. Wow!

It's really shocking.

I think the date on here's really significant.

The massacre at this station happened

just a few days after my dad passed through.

And, actually, if they'd been at this station three days later,

they would have been killed.

And that's a very sobering thought.

By the end of October 1946,

up to 5,000 Hindus had been murdered in this area

and a further 200,000 forced out of their ancestral homes.

The station master advised that we go in goods train.

And, fortunately, there will be a goods train

in about 45 minutes' time.

My father and my eldest brother-in-law lifted us

into the goods train.

Inside, it's absolutely dirty and smelly.

And when the door was shut, it was deep darkness.

You could hardly see each other, but we huddled together again,

holding each other's hands.

Try and imagine how they must have been feeling at this point

because they could have been stopped at any time.

If they'd been discovered, they'd have been killed.

They were leaving behind everything they knew and loved

and they were leaving behind their ancestral home,

so there must have been so much uncertainty

at what was going to happen. It must have been so hard.

After about eight or ten hours of train journey, the door opened wide

and my elder brother-in-law said, "Here we are now, safe, sound

"and you'll all be OK."

We thought we escaped from terror.

In the winter of 1946, Bim and his family arrived safely

in predominantly Hindu West Bengal.

Ten months after they fled, the line of partition divided the state

and their village, Mandari, became part of the new Muslim homeland

of East Pakistan.

1,500 miles to the west, partition also split

my Sikh family's home state of Punjab down the middle.

Me and Mum have become the first members of our family to set foot

on the Pakistani side of the border in 70 years.

It feels like we've stepped back in time.

I wonder if Nanaji walked down this street.

We're on the trail of my Sikh grandfather, Sant Singh,

and we've started our journey in Lahore,

the former capital of Punjab,

a city he and his family often travelled through.

I can't believe that we're finally in Lahore.

I've wanted to come here for... I don't even know how long.

My grandfather, he was here, my father was here,

I am walking where they walked, in the streets they walked.

It's overwhelming for me. It's amazing.

The Lahore that my family often came through

was then known as the Paris of the East,

a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city, in which Muslims,

Sikhs and Hindus had lived side-by-side for generations.

Don't you think, Mum, it really feels like the capital of Punjab,

-doesn't it?

-Yeah, I feel like this is it, this is real Punjab

but which is in the part of Pakistan now.

The culture is same, food is same,

people are speaking same language.

Only the thing is we don't see a lot of Sikhs here.

I thought we'd feel more alien. It feels weirdly like home.

We've come to a suburb of Lahore to meet 90-year-old Muslim

Abdul Raif Malik, who lived here throughout partition.

-How are you?

-Salam alaikum.

-Lovely to see you.

-And how are you?

Wonderful. Thank you so much.

It is very pleasant to see you here in Pakistan, in Lahore.

In early 1947, Mr Malik was a 20-year-old student

with many Sikh and Hindu friends.

The decision to partition Punjab

sparked ferocious religious violence in Lahore

and he watched as whole districts of the city went up in flames.

Before partition, what was happening?

What was the sense in Lahore?

I'm just trying to understand how that then becomes a city

of just Muslims. What did you see happen? How did that happen?

Somebody stabbed a Sikh? And you saw that?

This is from June 23rd, 1947.

"Lahore a blazing inferno, life completely paralysed.

"Hundreds of houses and shops destroyed in big fires.

"The biggest conflagration being inside Shahalmi Gate."

-Shahalmi Gate.

-That's the Hindu area?

-Hindu area.

"Huge tongues of red fires which have lit up the whole city

"and the suburbs can be seen from several miles away."

It's giving me goose pimples and shivers...

-It's horrific, isn't it?

-..just to imagine

how horrific a situation that was.

The violence in Lahore was amongst the worst seen anywhere

during partition, with both sides committing atrocities.

By the end of 1947,

the entire Sikh and Hindu population of the city had been forced out.

To meet a 90-year-old man who experienced the horror and violence

of partition is utterly incredible.

I'm not surprised he can't talk about it

without bursting into tears.

These are wounds that will never heal.

Across the border in Indian Punjab,

Sameer is following the train journey to Pakistan

that his Muslim grandfather, Asad, made as a child during partition.

For me, it's really important to trace that journey

because this is the history of my family

and of many, many other families.

Because they all made that journey

whether they started on the Pakistan side or the India side.

The lucky ones managed it, made it.

Many of them lost their lives.

As millions of refugees crammed onto India's railways to escape violence

in their home towns and villages,

they were often heading into even greater danger.

On both sides of the new border,

these slow-moving trains were regularly ambushed

and many arrived at their destinations

with every passenger on board slaughtered.

Asad and his family's train journey across the Indian Punjab

took them through several Sikh areas,

one of the most dangerous routes for Muslim refugees.

The first station where the train stopped, that was Amritsar,

which is a Sikh city.

Although the windows were closed, we could see through the little holes.

The Sikhs were walking up and down the platform with their open daggers

to kill Muslims.

We were so scared that they would jump into the train

and kill all of us.

The children were really scared about what is going to happen

and the men were reading the holy Quran.

We were lucky to have a Muslim army regiment with us on that train

because they wanted to move from India to Pakistan.

That's how God saved us, otherwise, you know,

we would have been killed by the Sikhs

because they would have killed everybody on that train.

Sameer has arrived in Amritsar where, 70 years ago,

his grandfather's refugee train narrowly escaped an attack.

It is a really weird experience

because obviously there's Sikh everywhere as well.

This is Amritsar. I'm seeing people with turbans everywhere.

I feel fine seeing them, but back then,

just seeing the turban would have put so much terror into him.

Over the course of partition,

nearly 2 million Muslims took the perilous journey

by train into Pakistan.

An equal number of Hindus and Sikhs came the other way,

heading for India.

Hundreds of thousands on both sides never made it.

Sameer has come to meet an 82-year-old Hindu

who was travelling in the opposite direction

to his Muslim grandfather, Asad.

Ghand Chand Nagpaul was on a train with several thousand refugees

making their way out of Pakistan

when they were stopped near the town of Pakpattan.

They basically just cleaned out the back three carriages.

They killed everybody?

-Last three.

-The last three compartments.

-Were there any other injuries to your family?

-No.

-No, OK.

And you managed to escape.

And then... So what happened next?

People were dying just from being trampled?

How do you...? Looking back and thinking about it now,

how does all of that make you feel?

That entire generation, they went through so much.

You know, listening to all the horrible things

that people went through,

I feel so sorry for them because they're still living through it.

I think it's so important that they tell their stories

because if anything like this happens again...

We can't let it happen again.

It was the end of the world for so many people.

It was the end of the world.

We can't let it happen again.

Over the border in Pakistan,

Mum and I are heading out of Lahore to the villages of Punjab.

Before partition, this was Indian's richest

and most agriculturally fertile state.

We're trying to find out what happened to my Sikh grandfather

Sant Singh's first family during the summer of 1947.

By that time, the riots in Lahore had spread to this area,

then known as Montgomery District and now called Sahiwal.

No-one from our family has returned here since partition.

Are you feeling anxious, or...?

I am, little butterflies in my stomach and...

you know, what I'm going to see.

I'm excited as well to see where my dad used to live.

In 1947, my grandfather, Sant, who I call Nanaji,

was stationed in south India with the British Army

away from his family. His father, Dheru Ram,

and his two small children, Rajbal and Mahindra,

didn't make it out of this area alive.

And the family story is that Sant's first wife, Pritam,

took her own life by jumping down a well to escape attackers.

For me, it's so important that we are here

to try and find out the truth as far as we can know it.

I want to know if there are people there

who might know something about Nanaji.

I want to know if anybody knows anything about Pritam Kaur.

She's my... You know, she's the vision in the forefront of my mind.

I think we're here.

-Good Lord.

-Yes.

-My God!

70 years ago, this was a predominantly Sikh village.

These days, it's entirely Muslim,

and visitors like me and Mum are a rare sight.

This village was one of thousands built by the British

in the 19th century to serve a huge canal system

which still irrigates this area.

Each village, or chak, was given a number

and this one is still known as Chak 44.

There are still people here who remember partition

and one of them is 90-year-old Haji Peer Hakim Ali.

Thank you. Thank you, ji.

So did you know my grandfather?

Wow!

He had a shop.

Mr Ali has offered to show us Dheru and Sant's old house.

I cannot believe somebody went to school with my dad.

Oh, I'm holding hand of my dad, I feel that.

During partition, Sant's wife, Pritam, and his two children

were living here with Dheru while he was away serving in the army.

Today, the house belongs to a Muslim family

who've kindly agreed to let us look inside.

Salam alaikum.

-Wow!

-Oh, my God.

-It's really basic.

-Yeah, it is.

-And this is where they lived.

-Yeah. Where my dad spent his childhood.

Amazing.

My happiness is that it is not empty.

Somebody is living here and making good use of this land, this place.

It's not ruins.

There is a life here.

Bless this house.

Bless this land.

Mr Ali was here when partition violence broke out in this area

and I want to know if he remembers what happened

to my great grandfather Dheru Ram

and my grandfather's wife and children.

I'm going to show you a photograph.

-Sant Singh.

-Sant Singh.

-Your friend.

This is Sant Singh's wife, Pritam Kaur.

Do you know her?

He's obviously finding it very difficult to talk about it.

We should know what happened.

In 1947, my grandfather wasn't here.

I need to know what happened at that time.

So, when the violence started, he left.

He went to Chak 47.

And...what happened then?

Bapaji, I'm trying to understand as well.

How did this happen?

I'm trying to understand.

Well...

Thank you.

Thank you...

I'm so grateful for your honesty.

I always though my great-grandfather died somewhere in this village.

He didn't. He died in a neighbouring village...

where he went for refuge with all the other Hindu and Sikh families.

I'm really grateful that he talked to me about it, he didn't have to.

He could have just done what people have done

for the last 70 years and said nothing.

CALL TO PRAYER

I have to go to Chak 47,

I have to go to the place where all the Hindus and Sikhs

of this area were slaughtered.

And I still need to find out what happened to Pritam Kaur.

As Punjabi villages, like my grandfather's,

descended into horrific religious violence,

over 1,000 miles to the east, partition had split

the state of Bengal to create the new Muslim homeland

of East Pakistan.

Hundreds of thousands of Hindu refugees began

to pour across the new border, desperate for food and shelter.

Binita has come to the Indian town of Chandannagar, near Calcutta,

where her father, Bim, and his family, arrived in early 1947.

I'd heard the story of how the family had had to escape

but I don't think I really understood

that they arrived here as refugees.

I'd like to understand more about that time

and what that was like for them.

My father did manage to bring about 8,000 rupees,

in those days, I think, plenty of money,

but he put the money in the local bank.

And then they ran away with the money.

The bank is failed and closed.

I looked at my father, a darkness descended on him.

He went pale.

He'd just lost everything.

With five, six mouths to feed.

He was absolutely devastated.

And we started to starve.

The huge influx of refugees into West Bengal

overwhelmed the authorities,

who struggled to provide food, shelter and clothing,

as over 12,000 people a day continued to flood into the region.

Binita has arranged to meet her father's older brother.

It's the first time she's seen him in 15 years.

I've come to see my Uncle Shamal, he's the only surviving member

of the family from that generation that's still here in Chandannagar.

How are you?

Binita came here often as a child

to visit her grandmother, Ashalata,

though she never met her grandfather, Jawani Bhomwick,

who led his family to safety during partition.

As destitute refugees, Jawani, Ashalata, and their children

were offered a room in a deserted colonial mansion

in the centre of town.

It's such a grand building,

I don't think I was really expecting it to look so grand and beautiful.

And how many families used to live here?

-35.

-35 families?

Families.

As refugee camps across West Bengal overflowed,

empty buildings like this were taken over by desperate migrants,

who often lacked even the basic means of survival.

Where are we going? In here?

We were very fortunate in a sense,

they gave us the largest room available, of that mansion.

We are all obviously sleeping on the floor

and at least we had somewhere to stay, that was a relief.

So, there were seven brothers.

Seven brothers.

-And your sister.

-Ah.

-And her family.

-Sister.

-One sister.

-One sister.

-And your mum and dad.

-Yes.

-And you were all living in this room.

-Round here?

-Yeah.

All in a row.

We had a good neighbour, so he saw that we hadn't eaten

and he would give us a kilo of rice.

But my father wouldn't eat.

He was a rich man only a few weeks ago.

Now, he is a pauper.

Can't feed his own children, his wife.

He started to lose weight.

He became very, very weak, day by day.

I was always his companion.

Can you show me where Dadu used to lie

and where my dad used to look after him? Whereabouts was that?

In that corner.

Corner.

He would just hold my hand, wouldn't say anything.

He was so weak he could hardly move.

So, he used to lie here with his head here and legs over there.

And my dad used to sit here and study and look after him.

And he was quite small.

Unable to pay for medical help,

Jawani's family were forced to watch as his health deteriorated.

I sat with him and he suddenly held my hand tight,

and he said...

.."Be a good doctor one day."

And he passed away.

Looking relieved, in one way, in my mind.

I think he was praying for it...

that he'd die.

And still today...

..I feel...

..that God was very cruel to us.

As far as Father is concerned.

It's just something a child should never have to go through. And...

It just really brings it home,

sitting here in this room where it happened...

..and what they went through.

After his father, Jawani's death,

Bim's siblings went to work to ensure he could go to school.

Honouring his father's final wish,

he went on to study medicine in Calcutta

before moving to Britain in 1969 to work as a doctor.

He went on to become a renowned consultant

in the care of the elderly.

My grandad would have been really proud of him.

And I think...

..he worked his whole life to fulfil my grandad's dream,

that he would become a doctor.

And he spent the rest of his life caring for people

and curing people in the way that he couldn't do for his own dad

and it kind of makes sense now.

Sameer has arrived on the Indian side

of the Wagah Attari border crossing between India and Pakistan,

where every evening the flags of these two nations

are ceremoniously lowered and the border gates are closed.

His grandfather, Asad, arrived here with his family 70 years ago

on a packed refugee train,

when the border post had just come into existence.

All those people sitting on the roof of the train,

they thought we had reached Pakistan.

They didn't realise we are still inside India,

so they started slogans, "Pakistan Zindabad",

that means "Long live Pakistan!"

The Indian Army, they didn't like that,

that they were shouting all those slogans, so they started firing.

And I could feel the zing,

the sound of that bullet pass near my ear, God saved me.

Otherwise, you know...

So, both me and my grandfather

have been to the Wagah border crossing now, but 70 years apart.

When I was sat there and I looked at the people

who were sat on the Pakistani side and I looked at the people

who were sat on the India side, and it made me think...

..that this wall is separating family.

People who would have grown up together, people who lived together,

people who had strong, long-lasting relationships,

were all of a sudden separated by a wall.

Asad was eight years old

by the time he finally made it across the new border.

70 years on, Sameer has also arrived in Pakistan

to retrace the final leg of his grandfather's epic train journey.

Asad and his family joined more than 7 million Muslim refugees

who arrived in Pakistan during partition.

Like many of them, they disembarked at a station

on the outskirts of Lahore in early 1948.

When we arrived, we were so tired, you see, we were so hungry,

we were so cold, but we had some water at least,

from the Moghalpura Station, that was our first night in Pakistan.

-Welcome to Moghalpura station.

-Thank you very much.

Sameer has come to Moghalpura to meet Doctor Anusha Malik,

an expert on the experience of partition refugees.

If you look around now,

it wouldn't have looked anything like this 70 years ago.

The amount of people on this platform would have meant

that you could barely move. If you think about the numbers,

between August 1947 and March 1948,

1.7 million people came from India to Pakistan by train.

A significant portion of them would have stopped

-at this train station.

-Wow.

-Yeah, the numbers are actually staggering.

Where would they actually stay?

They did spend nights and sometimes weeks on the platform.

I've got some photos here of refugees arriving,

if you want to take a look at them as well.

-Wow.

-So you can see the level of overcrowding here.

Gosh, there must be thousands and thousands of people on the train.

And since there were 50,000 coming in,

literally every day by this point,

there would have been trains that were even more crowded than this.

See, people have just stopped and put their clothes and belongings

-on the platform.

-Yeah.

-Because they don't know what to do with them.

Everybody just building a shelter anywhere and everywhere they can.

The Government was overwhelmed just because of the sheer numbers.

They were completely unplanned for.

It was night-time when we reached Moghalpura.

Father had no job, he had no clinic, nothing.

And we were short of money.

We had no home to go to, so we stayed that night on that platform.

Your family was one of millions who came into Lahore

at that point in time and then had to struggle to figure out

what it meant to be Pakistani.

They had a strong sense of patriotism,

a strong sense of belonging

and really, it was those refugees then that laid the groundwork

as citizens of a new state. So, in that sense,

it is possible to say that perhaps if there were no refugees,

there may have been no Pakistan.

It was open platform.

We just made up our beds on the platform.

We were so tired after all that journey, we went to sleep.

But something tragic happened in the morning.

My youngest sister died.

She was sleeping with my mother and she was in my mother's arms.

Her name was Mehmuna.

She was the youngest child.

We slept on that platform in cold weather, that's how she died.

That was the first sacrifice we gave for Pakistan.

People like my grandad, people who survived the partition,

they need commending for what they went through, I really believe that.

Because it was so... They went through so much.

Despite the amount of loss they suffered, they survived.

They lost everything and they built it from the ground up again.

Asad and his family made a new and successful life for themselves

in Pakistan.

His father, Hameed, restarted his doctor's practice

and Asad graduated from Sindh University

before resettling in Britain in 1965.

I think, overall, the sacrifice that that generation made was huge.

And it shouldn't be forgotten.

Sameer's journey is over, and 100 miles away,

I'm on the last leg of my family's partition story.

I've left Mum behind, as I'm worried

that things might get too upsetting for her.

This is the rural district of Sahiwal, in Pakistani Punjab,

which, in 1947, was known as Montgomery District.

70 years ago, after the British announced the line of partition

which split the state in half, these roads would have been full

of Sikh and Hindu caravans trying to escape

the escalating religious violence.

My family fled their own village, Chak 44,

to seek refuge in this nearby village, Chak 47.

Pippa Virdee is a British Punjabi historian

who's been researching what happened in this area during partition.

-Hi, Pippa.

-Hello, Anita.

-Lovely to meet you.

-You too, how are you?

I'm really well, I'm hoping you'll be able to shed some light

on what happened to my family here.

Yes, I think I should be able to help you, come with me.

Thank you.

Pippa's brought me to a roof of a former fortified Haveli

or mansion, in the centre of Chak 47,

that was owned by a powerful local Sikh.

My great-grandfather and Pritam Kaur, my grandfather's wife,

and his kids, would they have been here?

We know about six, seven villages,

the Sikhs and Hindus from those villages,

actually fled for sanctuary in this area.

So, they all came here to this Haveli?

To this Haveli. 1,000 to 1,500 people,

including your great-grandfather and his family.

They came over here to seek sanctuary against a mob

that were trying to attack them.

And what's extraordinary here is that we've managed to find

an account of what happened here in Chak 47,

which tells us what might have actually happened

-to your grandfather and his family.

-Unbelievable.

It's by a High Court judge,

it was a survey of events leading up to and following partition.

So, if you have a look at...

"The Sikh villages were subjected to ruthless attacks.

"Men, women and children were brutally slaughtered

"and their homes were reduced to ashes."

Have a look at this part here at the bottom.

Chak number 44, amazing.

"Chak number 44 was attacked by a Muslim mob on August 22

"and the non-Muslims escaped to Chak number 47.

"On August 28, Chak 47 was attacked by a large mob,

"assisted by some police officials and Muslim soldiers.

"The non-Muslims resisted the attack for a time,

"but nearly 1,000 of them perished. Many young women were kidnapped."

Bloomin' heck. We don't know what happened to Pritam Kaur,

my grandfather's first wife.

The only account I've heard and, you know, nobody knows for sure,

but people have said she may have jumped in a well

and taken her own life.

For some reason, that is seen as more of an honourable death.

-Yeah.

-So, you know, rather than admitting that the girl

might have been abducted or she might have been raped,

or God knows what else might have happened to her,

but it's better that she died an honourable death and killed herself

-and threw herself in a well rather than...

-Be kidnapped.

-Be dishonoured.

-And that happened on both sides.

There are some horrific accounts of these things happening,

both by, you know, Muslim attacks on Hindus and Sikhs

and equally we have accounts of Hindus and Sikhs attacking Muslims.

If there was a group of girls

or if they saw pretty, particularly young, pretty girls,

they would be put aside and taken.

So, rape and violence towards women was just another weapon of war?

-It's another weapon of war.

-It's just...

You can't... It makes your blood boil.

Pippa has managed to find a local Muslim,

who witnessed the attack on Chak 47.

He's agreed to meet me in the ruined living quarters of the Haveli.

This is where the Sikh and Hindus,

including my great-grandfather, Dheru,

and Pritam Kaur and her two children,

took refuge, as the mob gathered.

Abdul Hamid was among several young boys who watched

as the fighting began.

So, please could you tell me what you know, what did you see?

Where did they come from?

They were in their thousands.

And then what happened?

So, people were killing each other.

When the attack happened, where they are members of your family involved?

Your brother.

He... Your own brother came.

Obviously, older brother.

What happened to the women?

Did you see any women take their own lives?

So, there is a well.

I want to show you a photograph

because you're talking about the women, and I want to show you

the woman that I'm on a quest to find out about.

Do you recognise this face?

She was here.

Look at that face, she died here.

They killed her as well.

I know, of course, of course, we can only just put it onto God.

Yeah, of course I want to... It makes me sad, it makes me sad.

Yeah, it's all right.

It's OK.

Every partition story is full of horror, but this one, obviously,

has a deep impact because it's my family.

They were slaughtered right here, where I'm standing...

..in the most brutal, horrific, tragic way.

I'm just trying to pay my respects, I don't even know what to do.

Over 1,000 people died here.

And it's just a rubbish dump.

And I feel so sad.

I don't know what to do, I just want to walk around and try and...

I'm trying to think of all the souls, you know?

I keep thinking about Pritam Kaur

because I'll never know for sure how she died.

The fact that my family say she jumped into a well,

that's because it's the easiest one to deal with

and I think that tells me something deeply profound about partition

and why nobody talks about it.

On some level, trying to understand that about humanity

and that we all have the capacity to be that violent and vicious

is really difficult to accept.

By the end of 1948, over a million people had died

on both sides of the border

and 15 million more had been uprooted from their homes

in one of the most catastrophic events of the 20th century.

Relations between India and Pakistan have never recovered.

But occasionally, there's a glimmer of hope.

Nankana Sahib is one of the holiest shrines of the Sikh religion.

Since 1947, it's been on the Pakistani side of the border.

But over the last few years, Sikh pilgrims from India and beyond

have been allowed to come and worship.

Mum and I have come to say a prayer for my grandfather Sant Singh,

and the family he lost during partition.

Dheru, Pritam, Rajbal, and Mahindra.

This has been an extraordinary experience

for me, Sameer and Binita.

What happened to our families during partition

was unimaginably horrendous,

as it was for millions of others,

and it's been so important to bear witness to what happened here,

to honour those who lived through it and to remember that, for us,

a generation born in Britain,

partition is still very much part of who we are.