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This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
On 15 August 1947, Britain gave up its Indian empire, partitioning it | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
into two, newly-created independent countries, India and Pakistan. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:13 | |
The seven days leading up to the handover of power | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
were some of the most tumultuous of the 20th century. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:19 | |
One of the really dark mysteries at the heart of partition | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
is why ordinary people could turn into killers. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
By the end of the week, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:29 | |
one of the biggest migrations in human history had begun. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
This is the story of eight ordinary people, told in their own words, | 0:00:34 | 0:00:38 | |
as they took part in an epic event that changed the world forever. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:42 | |
And, somehow, all these leaders have convinced themselves | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
that this enormous, nation-breaking, continent-splitting project | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
could be managed without vast loss of life, without vast crisis | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
and, of course, they were wrong. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
By 1947, India had been ruled by Britain for almost 200 years. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:21 | |
It was known as the Jewel in the Crown, | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
supplying raw materials, a workforce, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
taxes and brave soldiers. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:29 | |
But Britain's dominion in India, the once beloved Raj, | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
was about to dramatically end. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:34 | |
Today, responsible citizens of the world, concerned with global | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
politics are watching with intense interest the land of | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
India, most difficult administrative problem of the British Empire and | 0:01:45 | 0:01:49 | |
home of one of the oldest and most complex of existing civilisations. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:53 | |
For decades, Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi had been | 0:01:57 | 0:02:00 | |
calling for independence but Britain had always resisted. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:04 | |
Now, World War II had left Britain bankrupt. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
The British are in a real rush to leave India by this week. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
There's no money any more to invest in this empire | 0:02:15 | 0:02:17 | |
and it's a waning asset. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:19 | |
It's not actually paying for itself any more as a colony. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:23 | |
In fact, it's costing the British money to keep it going. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:25 | |
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Queen's uncle, | 0:02:25 | 0:02:28 | |
was sent to Delhi as the last Viceroy. | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
Mountbatten was sent out | 0:02:30 | 0:02:32 | |
to effect a peaceful and rapid transfer of power. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
But, in reality, it wasn't like that at all because, on the ground, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:37 | |
there was already quite a lot of violence occurring | 0:02:37 | 0:02:39 | |
between the main religious communities. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:40 | |
Mountbatten was known in the Admiralty as the master of disaster | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
because he was so good at wrecking ships. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:47 | |
The fact is, they sent him to India | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
because he seemed like a man who was incredibly good at PR. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
He was very good at doing a job where Britain would look good | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
at the end of it and so his task was to get Britain out and | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
still looking as clean as possible. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:00 | |
For centuries, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had shared the country, | 0:03:00 | 0:03:05 | |
but with British rule weakening, conflict had erupted | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
between the Hindus and the Sikhs on one side and the | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
minority Muslims on the other. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:13 | |
Mountbatten tried in vain to broker a deal that would keep | 0:03:13 | 0:03:17 | |
India united but the Muslim League, a political party led | 0:03:17 | 0:03:21 | |
by British-trained barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:25 | |
demanded a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
Fearing civil war as tensions grew, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
Mountbatten reluctantly drew up a plan for partition | 0:03:31 | 0:03:34 | |
that would carve two new nations out of one. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
In just seven days, Jinnah will become leader of the world's | 0:03:38 | 0:03:41 | |
first Muslim country, Pakistan, | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
and Jawaharlal Nehru will become the first Prime Minister | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
of an independent India. | 0:03:47 | 0:03:48 | |
Imagine being an Indian the week before independence. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
You've been waiting 20 or 30 years, your whole life, | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
you've been dreaming of it, | 0:03:57 | 0:03:58 | |
fantasising about what that might mean | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
and now independence, this week, is actually going to happen. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
For people on the ground, it looks completely different. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
They are dealing with bloodshed, uncertainty, rumours, anxiety. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:11 | |
So there's a real disconnect between what's happening in Delhi | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
and what people are actually experiencing. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:16 | |
In just one week's time, everything will come to a head. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
As ever, the powerful stand to profit but ordinary people | 0:04:26 | 0:04:30 | |
will find their lives thrown into turmoil... | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
..as millions will have to choose | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
which country they want to call home. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
With just seven days to go until partition, the British still | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
haven't announced where the border will be drawn | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
but it's clear that Punjab, | 0:04:57 | 0:04:58 | |
a region in India's north where Muslim, Sikhs and Hindus live | 0:04:58 | 0:05:02 | |
alongside each other will be divided between the two new countries. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
Riaz Khan, a young Muslim schoolboy, knows nothing about the power games | 0:05:06 | 0:05:11 | |
being played out hundreds of miles to the south in Delhi. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:15 | |
I was a young boy. Early one morning, my parents' voices echoed | 0:05:15 | 0:05:21 | |
through our home. "Get out quickly, move." | 0:05:21 | 0:05:25 | |
Something of great significance seemed to be happening, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
though I did not understand what. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
I was told we were going to what would be Pakistan. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:37 | |
I didn't know what this meant or why we had to go. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:40 | |
The Punjab is a very large region. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:42 | |
The United Punjab was slightly larger than the United Kingdom | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
and Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs | 0:05:45 | 0:05:47 | |
were really peppered all the way through it. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
They weren't split into specific communities, | 0:05:49 | 0:05:51 | |
so the idea of carving it up, | 0:05:51 | 0:05:52 | |
even between those interests, is extremely difficult. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
Riaz Khan's family are Muslims. | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
They have heard a rumour that the area around their home may be in | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
India rather than the new Pakistan. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
Ordinary people had no clue as to what was going on. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
Imagine being in the village, where your access to news is so limited. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
What would come to you would be by word-of-mouth, hearsay, rumour. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:17 | |
And there were so many decisions to make. | 0:06:17 | 0:06:20 | |
Would they stay where they are, would they be travelling? | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
Where would they be travelling to? | 0:06:22 | 0:06:24 | |
Riaz Khan's parents have heard rumours | 0:06:26 | 0:06:28 | |
about a tax on Muslims in nearby villages. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
They don't want to leave their home but are afraid for their lives. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:35 | |
My grandfather refused to leave. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
He owned the land and felt comfortable there. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
I mean, it's really hard to imagine now | 0:06:42 | 0:06:44 | |
what it must be like to say to somebody, | 0:06:44 | 0:06:46 | |
"You've got to go and leave everything, leave your house, | 0:06:46 | 0:06:49 | |
"your property, your friends, your community, everything. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:52 | |
Older people, especially, are quite often digging their heels in | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
and they say, "Well, I've been here all my life, why should I leave? | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
"My ancestors are buried here. This is the land that I have tilled. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:02 | |
"I'm not going to move." | 0:07:02 | 0:07:03 | |
But others are leaving, because of anticipation of violence | 0:07:03 | 0:07:07 | |
and because of sheer uncertainty | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
about what's happening and what's going on. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
It's heartbreaking for people to be making these decisions. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
They had to leave property behind, they had to leave families behind | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
and just embark on an unknown journey. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
It must have been absolutely traumatic. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
My grandfather, he believed he would see us all in a couple of days, | 0:07:24 | 0:07:29 | |
because everything would return to normal and we would return home. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
Many people imagined they would come back, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
so they left their keys with their neighbours, | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
buried things in their courtyards and they said, | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
"Right, I will come back. I'm just going temporarily, for safety." | 0:07:41 | 0:07:45 | |
But, of course, they didn't. They never came back. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
I never saw my grandfather again. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
Riaz and his family have distant relatives | 0:07:55 | 0:07:57 | |
in a Muslim area about 120 miles north-west. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:00 | |
They have decided to head in that direction. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:03 | |
I remember seeing a stream of people moving out of the village. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:09 | |
We joined them and started walking. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
-NEWSREEL: -Millions of natives left their homes | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
to move to an area where their religion was honoured. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
Muslims poured into Pakistan and Hindus caught within the borders | 0:08:16 | 0:08:21 | |
of the new Muslim nation migrated to the new India. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
For many, the move meant uprooting their lives. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
But no sacrifice was too great to make for their religious freedom. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
Nobody had a clue that there would be this exodus. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
Somebody said, "Well, | 0:08:36 | 0:08:37 | |
"there'll be a few thousands moving here and there." | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
Mountbatten said some of the educated might leave. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
But the scale of the movement was absolutely unforeseen | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
by everyone involved in the partition. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:48 | |
There are 12 to 15 million people on the move. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:52 | |
It's one of the biggest refugee migrations of the 20th century. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
More and more families joined that caravan. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
Riaz and his family can only hope there will be safety in numbers. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:08 | |
We believe men were lying in wait to attack us. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:13 | |
Any noise frightened me. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
Imagine what it's like to be one of these refugees. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
They're trudging miles and miles | 0:09:21 | 0:09:23 | |
along those hard, dusty roads. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
There are rumours that the wells have been poisoned, | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
so it's hard to get water. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:30 | |
People are giving birth along the road, | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
people are dying along the road | 0:09:32 | 0:09:33 | |
and, constantly, over everything, is this fear | 0:09:33 | 0:09:35 | |
that the other side are going to swoop down and attack | 0:09:35 | 0:09:39 | |
while you're passing through their territory. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:41 | |
Mountbatten had promised the Indian leaders that he would provide | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
security on the ground in the run-up to independence. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
But the Punjab Boundary Force, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:50 | |
the British-led contingent dispatched to maintain law and order | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
for a population of over 12 million, consists of just 15,000 men. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:59 | |
The boundary force goes out and it does try and stem and quell | 0:10:04 | 0:10:08 | |
violence where it occurs and when it shows up, it is effective in | 0:10:08 | 0:10:11 | |
stemming the violence, but it's just too little, too late. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:15 | |
At the same time, there are thousands of soldiers in India | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
kept behind barracks and the reason is the British fear | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
that if they put too many troops into this situation, they won't be | 0:10:23 | 0:10:27 | |
able to get them back out again. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:28 | |
The British are not saying anything. They're not interested. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
They're ready to get on to their boats and planes | 0:10:31 | 0:10:33 | |
and be back in Britain. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
There is absolutely no instruction, | 0:10:35 | 0:10:39 | |
no orders, no directions coming down from the British. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:41 | |
They have washed their hands of India. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
I saw the body of a dead man. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:48 | |
It was the first thing like that I ever saw. I couldn't stop looking. | 0:10:50 | 0:10:54 | |
Some people are moving literally | 0:10:57 | 0:10:58 | |
because they're running for their lives. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:00 | |
Their friends have been attacked, so they're really on the run. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:03 | |
But others are far more moving along ideological lines. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:07 | |
People are thinking, "Do I believe in this new state enough to go | 0:11:07 | 0:11:11 | |
"and risk moving there? Am I really going to have a better job there? | 0:11:11 | 0:11:14 | |
"Are things really going to be as bright | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
"as the propaganda is suggesting?" | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
Riaz Khan and his family walk all day. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:27 | |
As night approaches, they reach a riverside, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
hoping to catch a boat to what would soon be Pakistan. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:34 | |
By the time a boat arrived for us, it was quite dark. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:39 | |
There were dozens of people shoving and pushing. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:42 | |
I was almost thrown in. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
Suddenly, the boat started to move. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:48 | |
My family could not get in. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
I was alone. I started crying. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
I thought it was my fault that I had lost them. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
Who would have thought that independence, which is such | 0:12:01 | 0:12:05 | |
a positive thing that people were waiting for, would have come | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
along with this kind of experience? | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
The political solution was what they were pushing for but they | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
had not, absolutely not, anticipated the human costs that were to follow. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
With six days to go before independence, | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
refugees are still trying to get to the country they want to belong to. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:43 | |
The man responsible for drawing the boundary | 0:12:45 | 0:12:47 | |
has only been in India for a month. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:49 | |
Cyril Radcliffe, a wealthy British establishment lawyer, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
is running out of time. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
Sir Cyril Radcliffe was actually a barrister who had no previous | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
knowledge of India and no previous knowledge of drawing | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
boundaries or borders in any context whatsoever. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
And, in his own words, he spent almost his entire time | 0:13:05 | 0:13:09 | |
sweating it out in India, not enjoying the Indian food, but having | 0:13:09 | 0:13:13 | |
to decide one of the most important, | 0:13:13 | 0:13:15 | |
momentous boundaries in world history. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
Cyril Radcliffe is given this huge responsibility | 0:13:19 | 0:13:24 | |
and actually has no experience of India. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:27 | |
But, interestingly, this is precisely why he is chosen, because | 0:13:27 | 0:13:31 | |
he doesn't know anything about India and therefore is seen to be neutral. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:36 | |
One of his first jobs is to actually get on a plane and see the country | 0:13:36 | 0:13:40 | |
that he is actually going to divide | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
and say, "Well, this is where the line should go down." | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
But of course, is not as simple as that. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the man who had spent 40 days in Delhi | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
drawing up this petition, knew there was a problem. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
He wrote, a few days before independence, | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
"There will be roughly 80 million people with a grievance | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
"looking for me. I do not intend them to find me." | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
And, a couple of days after partition, he was on a plane | 0:14:01 | 0:14:03 | |
back to England and he was never seen in India again. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
Today, Lahore, ancient capital of Punjab, is almost exclusively | 0:14:05 | 0:14:10 | |
Muslim and one of Pakistan's wealthiest cities. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
Back in 1947, the city was one of the most contentious | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
decisions facing Cyril Radcliffe. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
When he divided Punjab, who would get Lahore? | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
Lahore was the Paris of the East. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
It was a beautiful, culturally mixed and impressive city that has | 0:14:28 | 0:14:31 | |
been celebrated by poets for generations, but the whole | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
place has Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs threaded throughout it, everywhere. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:39 | |
Often, they describe each other as brothers and people can't | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
even imagine how you might take apart this mixed, | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
hybrid population and segregate it out on religious lines. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
The uncertainty over the boundary is setting different religions | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
against each other in Lahore. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:56 | |
Watching the chaos unfold in the city he's always loved | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
is the Hindu writer, Fikr Taunsvi. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:02 | |
Last evening, a bomb exploded in a cinema house. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
Crimson red flames and flying sparks helped to illuminate the darkness. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:15 | |
All the dead, 50 people, were Muslim so, indisputably, | 0:15:18 | 0:15:23 | |
the man who threw that bomb must have been a Hindu. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
Lahore is in a state of civil war. It's absolutely ravaged. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:35 | |
There are random stabbings happening in the streets, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
so people would just be knifed in the back unexpectedly. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:39 | |
And people are losing, not only their property | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
and their livelihoods, but they're also losing a whole way of life. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
The fear and tension of the past days still infected the atmosphere. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:53 | |
The air was full of suspicion and terror that made you think | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
that everyone had a dagger or a bomb hidden on their person. | 0:15:56 | 0:16:00 | |
At one point, I saw a man lying in the corner with his eyes open. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:07 | |
The policeman was muttering, "These people have been warned | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
"so many times not to go through the localities where there is danger, | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
"but they don't listen." | 0:16:14 | 0:16:16 | |
There had been very little preparation for the amount | 0:16:18 | 0:16:20 | |
of trouble there would be in Lahore. | 0:16:20 | 0:16:22 | |
It's actually very close to where the border was going to be, | 0:16:22 | 0:16:24 | |
not that anyone knew precisely where the border was going to be, so, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:27 | |
as you came up to independence, there became a situation where you | 0:16:27 | 0:16:30 | |
had 100,000 people trapped in the old city of Lahore and the | 0:16:30 | 0:16:33 | |
only people to defend them were a group of around 200 Gurkhas, | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
with one British captain in charge of them who was 20 years old. | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
So the rioting began in that city | 0:16:40 | 0:16:42 | |
and really nobody could do anything to contain it. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
Punjab has a highly mixed population, with large numbers | 0:16:46 | 0:16:49 | |
of Hindus and Muslims in every town and district. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
But Punjab is also the birthplace of the Sikh religion and Sikhs | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
make up 15% of the population. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
As a minority group, the Sikhs are not being given their own | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
state and now some Sikh extremists | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
are embarking on a mission to derail partition. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
The most dangerous community in this whole mix was the Sikhs. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
Because the Sikhs were the most vulnerable. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
Any border you drew was going to divide their community in half. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
For them, the division of Punjab is a tragedy of epic proportions. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:25 | |
They feel they've been really let down and cheated on by the British. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:29 | |
And so there are some people who are just not going to accept it | 0:17:29 | 0:17:32 | |
and they fight it tooth and nail. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:34 | |
This morning, the Sikhs are targeting one of a series of | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
special trains leaving Delhi. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:42 | |
Pakistan does not have enough civil servants to run a government. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
Six days before they start running their new country, a train packed | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
with hundreds of Muslim bureaucrats and their families | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
is on its way to what will be the new Pakistani capital, Karachi. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:56 | |
The Pakistan Special's route passes straight through the Punjab, | 0:17:57 | 0:18:01 | |
the ancient Sikh homeland. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:02 | |
The Sikh bombing of the Pakistan Special kills four people, | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
but its significance far outweighs the death toll. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
The attack on that train really symbolises an attack | 0:18:37 | 0:18:41 | |
on the whole of the new Pakistani state and it was the first time | 0:18:41 | 0:18:46 | |
that a train has been derailed and blown up | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
and it really ratchets up the situation. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
It really creates even more tension | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
in an already terrible situation. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:56 | |
In Lahore, there are just five days left | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
before the last British governor of Punjab, Sir Evan Jenkins, | 0:19:08 | 0:19:11 | |
hands over control to the two new independent governments. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:14 | |
He's spent much of his career | 0:19:16 | 0:19:18 | |
administering a largely peaceful Punjab. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
Now, with time running out, | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
he sends a telegram to Mountbatten pleading for help. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
The situation now is most serious. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
Rural areas reporting organised raids that cannot be checked | 0:19:33 | 0:19:36 | |
except by display of force on massive scale. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
Our rural area reports about 100 Hindus missing, | 0:19:39 | 0:19:42 | |
believed murdered and thrown into canal... | 0:19:42 | 0:19:45 | |
I think it was probably very difficult for a lot of the | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
British on the ground at this time. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:49 | |
A lot of them could see that this was going quite badly wrong. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:52 | |
Not only are the British leaving but those who remain | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
are increasingly not being listened to because nobody's really sure | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
who's going to be in charge of any particular part of India or | 0:19:59 | 0:20:03 | |
which part of India's going to be India or Pakistan or what is | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
going to happen, so authority is really not very clear at this point. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
Prakashvanti and her husband are Hindus from western Punjab | 0:20:14 | 0:20:17 | |
who are looking forward to independence. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:20 | |
They never imagined the violence that would come with it. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
All the locals left their houses saying the Muslims were coming. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
So we left our home. We were scared. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:33 | |
Prakashvanti's husband decides | 0:20:35 | 0:20:37 | |
that they should hide and wait for help in a factory. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
I said to my husband, "I don't want to stay here." | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
My husband reassured me | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
the trucks from India would arrive to rescue us very soon. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:53 | |
The common understanding of the violence in the villages is | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
that suddenly Hindus and Muslims picked up pitchforks and | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
started attacking one another, even neighbours who'd lived | 0:21:01 | 0:21:03 | |
side-by-side for generations. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:05 | |
But that was only a small part of the violence. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:07 | |
Really, what made the violence take off and expand and grow | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
so large, was that it was organised. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
There are small groups of militia bands, oftentimes ex-soldiers | 0:21:13 | 0:21:17 | |
armed with weapons, that would go round from village to village, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:21 | |
gather up other supporters, so a band of 50 | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
might become 500, might become 5,000, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
then they would attack and they would wipe out entire villages. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
There's a lot of arson, a lot of things being set on fire. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:32 | |
Villages are ablaze. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
It's really about establishing facts on the ground, because, | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
if you can lay claim to an area | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
and say it's been cleansed of one community, or the other, | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
then you're, in a way, making a de facto stake to that territory. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
Prakashvanti does what her husband says. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:51 | |
She sits and waits for the authorities to rescue them. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:54 | |
The trucks never came. A Muslim policeman came to the door. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:05 | |
The police really fall apart at this time and they collapse, often | 0:22:05 | 0:22:09 | |
turning a blind eye when their own community is involved in instigating | 0:22:09 | 0:22:13 | |
violence, or they are, even worse, actually taking part in violence. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
He said to give him whatever possesions we had and he would | 0:22:18 | 0:22:24 | |
let us go. We gave him all our money and gold. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:29 | |
My husband returned to the room and said, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
"They are taking the young girls away." | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
"They are going to dishonour you." | 0:22:35 | 0:22:37 | |
For woman, the partition is a tragedy of epic proportions, | 0:22:37 | 0:22:43 | |
because tens of thousands of women | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
are raped and there's terrible sexual violence against women. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
Women have really hard lives in India before independence. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
They are like property in many ways. | 0:22:57 | 0:22:59 | |
But they're also the upholders of the family honour. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:02 | |
And if women are raped or violated, | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
that's seen as bringing not just shame on them | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
but on the whole community, on their whole society. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
And so it becomes a weapon of war, | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
used by both sides very extensively, | 0:23:13 | 0:23:15 | |
because the women themselves are seen almost somehow as symbols | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
of these new nation states, and so it's a horrific situation | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
where women's bodies are actually being used | 0:23:22 | 0:23:25 | |
to kind of mark out and create the new states. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:27 | |
My husband said, "Now they will dishonour you." | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
"If you agree, I will kill you myself." | 0:23:33 | 0:23:37 | |
He didn't wait for my response. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:43 | |
The feeling that you might actually risk your women falling | 0:23:45 | 0:23:50 | |
into the hands of the enemy, to the other, was so shameful, such | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
a taboo, that some men would rather kill their daughters or their | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
wives than actually have them fall into the hands of the other. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
There was a sense, a really profoundly misogynist sense, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
that a woman's chastity was worth more than her life. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
Sometime later, Prakashvanti wakes up. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
She is wounded but her husband had failed to kill her. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
The killers had moved on. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
They must have thought I was already dead. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
Just outside the building, Prakashvanti finds her family. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
The Muslims had killed my husband and son. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
Only a short time ago, Prakashvanti had been looking | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
forward to independence. Now it has cost her her family. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:47 | |
She is not alone. | 0:24:48 | 0:24:50 | |
The death and destruction | 0:24:50 | 0:24:51 | |
in the week leading up to partition is spreading, | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
dividing and destroying hundreds of thousands of families across Punjab. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:58 | |
I don't think the British had any idea | 0:24:58 | 0:25:01 | |
about the scale of violence that was going to take place in 1947. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
So, in that sense, the British really didn't understand, | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
I don't think, the nature of the implications of what they | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
were proposing in the partition of India. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
Terrified that the killers will return, Prakashvanti has to leave | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
the bodies of her murdered family behind and seek safety. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:22 | |
I went into another building. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
There were lots of people hiding. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:29 | |
The refugees of Punjab can look to no-one for help. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
All they can do is wait and hope that the violence will somehow pass. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:43 | |
The fact is that some people did foresee this violence but | 0:25:43 | 0:25:45 | |
they weren't really in positions of power | 0:25:45 | 0:25:47 | |
and they weren't really being listened to, | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
nor were the resources available for them to do much about it. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:52 | |
In five days, a new government will take over. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
Until then, the refugees have to rely on themselves. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:59 | |
Hiding in a corner, Prakashvanti finds two girls who, | 0:26:00 | 0:26:03 | |
like her, have lost their family. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
They had no father or mother or uncles. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:12 | |
I couldn't leave him. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
Later, when my wounds were being treated in the hospital, | 0:26:15 | 0:26:19 | |
I was asked if the girls were mine. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:25 | |
I said, yes, they were mine. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
Located on the banks of the Arabian Sea, Karachi is today | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
one of the biggest and fastest growing cities in the world. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:44 | |
Pakistan's leading financial and industrial centre. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:47 | |
Back in 1947, it was a very different place. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:52 | |
The one-time fishing village turned port | 0:26:52 | 0:26:54 | |
had just been named Pakistan's new capital. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
But it wasn't ready for independence. | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
Nor was the rest of the soon-to-be former Raj. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
When Lord Mountbatten announced back in June | 0:27:04 | 0:27:07 | |
that partition would take place in just 61 days, | 0:27:07 | 0:27:10 | |
he shocked everyone, including his own advisers. | 0:27:10 | 0:27:13 | |
Now, with the clock running out, thousands of details, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
large and small, are still up in the air. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
Nobody's ever done anything like this before | 0:27:22 | 0:27:25 | |
and it's absolutely astonishing in its recklessness. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:29 | |
There is no sense of how this is going to be done. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
This whole process is a good example of just how difficult it is to split | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
any political entity, this big, that has been held together for so long. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:43 | |
It involved everything from the big questions of who is going to | 0:27:43 | 0:27:47 | |
get how many fighter planes from the Indian army, of currency, | 0:27:47 | 0:27:51 | |
who is going to print it and how, to the smallest things, | 0:27:51 | 0:27:54 | |
the police band, who is going to get which instruments from it. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:58 | |
We see the division of the army, we see some of the great treasures of | 0:27:58 | 0:28:02 | |
archaeological India being divided | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
down to the actual beads on necklaces. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
We see the encyclopaedias being divided, | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
sometimes, by letter in the alphabet. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
The pettiness is astonishing. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
I mean, rugs, ceiling fans, cutlery, | 0:28:17 | 0:28:21 | |
pieces of stationery, boxes of paper clips. | 0:28:21 | 0:28:26 | |
I mean, things were being counted out with forensic detail. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:29 | |
There was a ratio of 4:1, India-Pakistan, | 0:28:29 | 0:28:31 | |
because of the respective size of the countries, | 0:28:31 | 0:28:34 | |
and so these things were being kind of carved out. | 0:28:34 | 0:28:38 | |
One of the most poignant elements of this moment is, | 0:28:38 | 0:28:42 | |
where are the so-called insane going to go? | 0:28:42 | 0:28:45 | |
There is a very major insane asylum in Lahore. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:48 | |
It has Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:50 | |
And it opens up this absurd bureaucratic debate - | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
do the mad, who have been certified | 0:28:54 | 0:28:56 | |
as people who do not belong to society, | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
should they also be now divided up as Indians or Pakistanis? | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
With four days to go until independence, Muslim extremists | 0:29:12 | 0:29:15 | |
begin a series of attacks on Sikhs and Hindus in Lahore. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
Revenge, for the bombing of the Pakistan Special. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
Punjab's British governor sends his daily telegram to Mountbatten. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
Jenkins to Mountbatten, 11th August. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:34 | |
Today, train attack outside Lahore Station. | 0:29:34 | 0:29:36 | |
Six or seven non-Muslims murdered. | 0:29:36 | 0:29:39 | |
Outrage, doubtless retaliation for derailment of Pakistan Special. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:45 | |
Situation out of control. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
During last day, Lahore reports 18 Hindus stabbed, | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
two fatal, one identified corpse. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:55 | |
Situation seriously disturbed and likely to deteriorate. | 0:29:57 | 0:30:00 | |
News of the outbreak of revenge attacks on innocents is spreading. | 0:30:01 | 0:30:05 | |
Even to the furthest reaches of the country. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:08 | |
Some 600 miles west of Lahore, | 0:30:11 | 0:30:13 | |
on the border with Afghanistan, is Quetta. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:16 | |
This quiet backwater of the Raj is largely populated by Muslims. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:21 | |
Sunderdas Lalwani is a Hindu civil engineer, | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
sent there by the British to build a bridge. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
But trouble is on the way. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:34 | |
A mob is scouring the area, looking for Hindus to kill. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:39 | |
A gang of Muslims came banging on the front door. | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
They heard there was a Hindu inside. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
You know, when I heard about partition, | 0:30:53 | 0:30:55 | |
I'd sent my family away to Delhi. | 0:30:55 | 0:30:57 | |
When I heard the mob that day, I thought I'd never see them again. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:02 | |
What is so peculiar and unique for this time is the fact that | 0:31:04 | 0:31:09 | |
almost everyone is drawn into this macabre narrative of violence. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:14 | |
The ordinary householder going about their business, | 0:31:14 | 0:31:17 | |
the regular professional man, everyone is baying for blood, | 0:31:17 | 0:31:21 | |
everyone's out there on the streets | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
and ready to attack the rival community. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:25 | |
I had a Muslim servant who looked after my house. He opened the door. | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
How do you know how you will react under this kind of pressure? | 0:31:36 | 0:31:40 | |
At a time of such great chaos, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:42 | |
where there's a total breakdown of law and order? | 0:31:42 | 0:31:45 | |
You may never envisage that you could be someone who kills someone | 0:31:49 | 0:31:53 | |
and yet that is what happened. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:55 | |
The gang wanted to come in to look for me. | 0:31:57 | 0:31:59 | |
But then I realised the servant wouldn't let them. | 0:32:02 | 0:32:04 | |
But, equally, there are stories at this time of extreme bravery, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
where people really put themselves on the line to protect people. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
Eventually, the Muslim servant boy persuades the mob | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
that there are no Hindus heading inside. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:20 | |
He said Lalwani, his master, had already fled Quetta, that morning. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
I never really spoke to him before then, except maybe an order, | 0:32:28 | 0:32:32 | |
but now that Muslim boy had saved my life. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
He guided me to a place he knew in the forest. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
He said the mobs wouldn't find me there. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:46 | |
He told me to wait there for the night and then he left. | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
I started to worry that he'd changed his mind | 0:32:54 | 0:32:57 | |
and he'd come back with some Muslims to kill me. | 0:32:57 | 0:32:59 | |
-NEWSREEL: -With hordes seeking escape from the danger areas, the railroad | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
system of the Indian Northwest proved inadequate to the strain. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
There's only three days to go until independence. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:23 | |
Refugees converge on railway stations, desperate not to be caught | 0:33:23 | 0:33:27 | |
on the wrong side of the border when the country is divided. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:31 | |
Partition, when it became inevitable, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:33 | |
could have happened in a different way. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:35 | |
It could have been more organised, it could have been dragged | 0:33:35 | 0:33:38 | |
over time and people could have moved in a manner that was | 0:33:38 | 0:33:41 | |
more safe and secure, over a period of months or maybe even a year. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:46 | |
It was the rush of partition that created the tragedy, | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
not just the partition itself. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:51 | |
600 miles away from his family, who have already escaped to Delhi, | 0:33:54 | 0:33:58 | |
Sunderdas Lalwani wakes up in the forest. | 0:33:58 | 0:34:01 | |
I don't know how but I managed to get some sleep. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
Thanks to his Muslim servant, Lalwani has managed to avoid | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
being captured by mobs out for revenge against Hindus. | 0:34:12 | 0:34:17 | |
But now he must escape them once more | 0:34:17 | 0:34:19 | |
if he is to get to a train that will carry him to safety. | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
I had no idea what I was going to do. | 0:34:24 | 0:34:26 | |
I couldn't believe it when my Muslim servant came back. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:31 | |
He told me I needed to get to the train station and he said the | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
only way I could get their safely was to pretend I was a Muslim. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:40 | |
It was hard for anyone, if you were faced with the mob | 0:34:43 | 0:34:46 | |
from your own community, to resist that. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:49 | |
Even if you didn't want to participate in the killing yourself, | 0:34:49 | 0:34:52 | |
for individuals to try and stand against this | 0:34:52 | 0:34:55 | |
was virtually impossible, so the best they could do - and many, | 0:34:55 | 0:34:59 | |
many people did do this - was to shelter friends | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
or neighbours, individually try and get them away to safety. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:06 | |
I owed him my life. He said, "Good luck". | 0:35:11 | 0:35:14 | |
I find it very moving, when I think about those individual acts | 0:35:16 | 0:35:19 | |
of courage, because so much is being risked at that time | 0:35:19 | 0:35:23 | |
if you decide to try and protect someone from the other side. | 0:35:23 | 0:35:27 | |
Dressed as a Muslim, Lalwani is able to survive the long journey south | 0:35:28 | 0:35:32 | |
to reunite with his family. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:34 | |
I, myself, wouldn't be sat here in front of you right now if it wasn't | 0:35:35 | 0:35:40 | |
for the fact that my grandfather, Sunderdas Lalwani, | 0:35:40 | 0:35:44 | |
was saved by a Muslim boy, who really risked his life | 0:35:44 | 0:35:48 | |
in order to get my grandfather out of the country. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:52 | |
I don't know why he did it, but it's an incredible act of bravery | 0:35:52 | 0:35:57 | |
and it's humbling, whenever I think about it. | 0:35:57 | 0:36:00 | |
The rail network has always been seen as one of the great successes | 0:36:03 | 0:36:07 | |
of Britain's Indian Empire. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:08 | |
But now, with only three days before the Raj is finally over, | 0:36:08 | 0:36:13 | |
trains are becoming the dark symbol of its chaotic end. | 0:36:13 | 0:36:17 | |
This is when killers on all sides begin to discover that they | 0:36:17 | 0:36:20 | |
provide the perfect means to identify and destroy the enemy. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:25 | |
The direction that you're travelling in gave off your ethnic identity, | 0:36:25 | 0:36:28 | |
because if you're travelling towards Pakistan, you must be Muslim. | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
If you're travelling from Pakistan towards India, | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
you must be either a Hindu or Sikh. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:35 | |
And this week leading up to independence is when train | 0:36:35 | 0:36:38 | |
massacres really start in earnest. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
Trains become the centre of violence in this period. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:46 | |
Targeting people who are moving from one part of the country | 0:36:46 | 0:36:51 | |
to another in the hope of safety, | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
in the hope of being with their co-religionists, | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
but this becomes the most perilous journey of their lives | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
and the carnage is excessive and complete and bloody. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
The violence on the trains is absolutely horrific. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
These are contained spaces | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
and people can't run out, as they're attacked. | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
The perpetrators just move from carriage to carriage, | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
hacking people to death as they move along. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:16 | |
And, as the train pulled into its destination, almost | 0:37:18 | 0:37:22 | |
completely, the entire train would be full of corpses. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:27 | |
As the massacre spread, whether your train is attacked or reaches | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
its destination safely is just a question of fate. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
Harbhajan Singh Puri is a young Sikh government engineer, | 0:37:41 | 0:37:45 | |
one of the lucky ones who makes it to safety. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
I left Lahore by train. The violence had started. | 0:37:48 | 0:37:51 | |
Stabbings, bombings. I got too scared to go out there. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:56 | |
Even though my Muslim friend said | 0:37:56 | 0:37:58 | |
they'd have to kill him to get to me. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:00 | |
When Harbhajan's train made it safely out of Lahore, | 0:38:00 | 0:38:03 | |
and beyond the reach of Muslim militias, he was relieved. | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
But Ludhiana Station, north of Delhi, | 0:38:07 | 0:38:09 | |
the violence of partition catches up with him. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
Harbhajan is forced to face the truth | 0:38:12 | 0:38:14 | |
of how this week is changing people he thought he knew. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
Some people started shouting, "Clear the train. Everyone out." | 0:38:18 | 0:38:22 | |
They were looking for Muslims | 0:38:22 | 0:38:24 | |
who might have been hiding in amongst us on the journey. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:27 | |
In the space of the train carriage, | 0:38:28 | 0:38:30 | |
what happens is your identity became reduced, largely to your religion. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:34 | |
You might be a civil servant, you might be a teacher, | 0:38:34 | 0:38:37 | |
you might be a gardener, | 0:38:37 | 0:38:39 | |
but at that moment you become a Hindu, a Muslim, a Sikh, a Christian | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
and I think that is a really important facet of the violence | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
because it reduced people's identities to that of religion | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
and it meant that they became targets | 0:38:50 | 0:38:52 | |
for systematic religious violence. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
I saw one young man, they questioned him and asked him, "Who are you?" | 0:38:57 | 0:39:02 | |
He give some Hindu name and they searched him. | 0:39:02 | 0:39:05 | |
They found some papers which showed that he was actually a Muslim. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
There are some people who don't agree that their identity | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
is just about being Hindu, Sikh or Muslim | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
and there are people who are trying to bring peace, | 0:39:17 | 0:39:20 | |
who are trying to bring people together | 0:39:20 | 0:39:22 | |
and they are just sort of drowned out, really, | 0:39:22 | 0:39:27 | |
by the wave of hostility and violence that takes place. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:32 | |
He raised his arms to protect himself. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:35 | |
His arm was all cut and then they killed him. | 0:39:35 | 0:39:40 | |
I hadn't seen such a sight before. It was shocking. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
I felt so sorry for him. But I couldn't help him. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:47 | |
I just couldn't understand it. They were Sikhs like me. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:52 | |
It was the madness that was around the people, religious | 0:39:52 | 0:39:56 | |
fanaticism and then it's a vicious circle. It's a very sad thing. | 0:39:56 | 0:40:00 | |
The partition of this country was a misfortune for humanity. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
While many refugees were seeking sanctuary with family and friends, | 0:40:08 | 0:40:12 | |
others had simply run away from danger and were now | 0:40:12 | 0:40:15 | |
forming part of a rapidly escalating refugee crisis. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:19 | |
-NEWSREEL: -Hungry and homeless refugees set up housekeeping | 0:40:19 | 0:40:22 | |
in the streets of the major cities. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:23 | |
Bewildered, they waited helplessly for someone to take care of them. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:27 | |
With nowhere else to go, refugees across the country are being forced | 0:40:27 | 0:40:31 | |
to live in makeshift camps that are struggling to cope with the influx. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:36 | |
The state of the refugee camps was really an example of how the British | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
hadn't prepared for petition but nor had the independence leaders. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:42 | |
Nobody had really prepared for the level of disaster that was | 0:40:42 | 0:40:46 | |
going to occur and so the provision for refugees was incredibly basic. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:51 | |
Quite frequently, there was no food, no water, certainly no | 0:40:51 | 0:40:55 | |
medical supplies and no security so people found themselves still in | 0:40:55 | 0:40:59 | |
immense danger of violence because there was nobody to protect them. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
Somehow, all these leaders had convinced themselves | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
that it was not going to be as big a deal as it was. | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
That it could be managed. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
This kind of enormous, nation-breaking, | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
continent-splitting project could be managed without vast loss of life, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:18 | |
without vast crisis and, of course, they were wrong. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:22 | |
1,000 miles from Punjab in India's east | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
is the other region that will be partitioned, Bengal. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:31 | |
Today, the capital of India's half of Bengal is known as Kolkata. | 0:41:34 | 0:41:37 | |
But back in 1947, the British called it Calcutta. | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
The days before leaving India, | 0:41:41 | 0:41:43 | |
they still have not announced who the city would belong to. | 0:41:43 | 0:41:46 | |
Fuelled by the uncertainty, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:50 | |
Calcutta's Muslims and Hindus are preparing for all-out war. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
One of the leaders on the Hindu side | 0:41:55 | 0:41:57 | |
is a wrestling coach named Jugal Chandra Ghosh. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
I was a goonda, a thug. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:03 | |
People were terrorised by me but they used to love me as well. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:08 | |
Jugal Chandra Ghosh is a goonda, a gangster, who uses his wrestlers | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
as muscle in the protection racket he runs in central Calcutta. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
Just one year ago, in August 1946, | 0:42:15 | 0:42:19 | |
he took part in one of the most violent riots in Indian history. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:23 | |
What began as a peaceful Muslim protest turned into four days | 0:42:26 | 0:42:30 | |
of murderous street battles. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:32 | |
Chandra Ghosh used his men as a Hindu killing force. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
When I saw Hindu shops burnt | 0:42:40 | 0:42:42 | |
and scattered Hindu dead bodies all around, | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
I went down to the Rattray's. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:48 | |
I asked for money from them. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:50 | |
They paid up. | 0:42:50 | 0:42:52 | |
Then I declared to my boys, "For one murder you get 10 rupees." | 0:42:52 | 0:42:57 | |
On my order, all of my boys began the counter attacks. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:03 | |
So Calcutta was full of these goonda groups, both Hindu and Muslim | 0:43:05 | 0:43:09 | |
and until this point they had really operated more as an | 0:43:09 | 0:43:11 | |
underworld Mafia, rather than as ethnic partisans, but this | 0:43:11 | 0:43:16 | |
was the first time that they were used specifically as almost | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
an ethnic militia and you had sort of pitched battles | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
in the streets between these two armed Mafia groups. | 0:43:23 | 0:43:27 | |
I paid for at least 150 to 200 murderers. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:31 | |
Back in 1946, at the end | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
of what became known as the great Calcutta killings, 5,000 were dead. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:39 | |
Now, with just two days to go before partition, Calcutta's | 0:43:40 | 0:43:44 | |
newspapers are reporting that goonda gangs on both sides | 0:43:44 | 0:43:48 | |
are getting ready to kill each other again. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:51 | |
When the police arrived, | 0:43:53 | 0:43:54 | |
there was an exchange of shots between the two parties. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:56 | |
Two armed constables were killed in this goonda-police clash. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
The casualties among the miscreants is not known. | 0:44:04 | 0:44:06 | |
The entire area was searched and about 24 bombs were recovered. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:12 | |
In this week, there is a fear that what happened in 1946 might happen | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
again, that thousands of people might die again in Calcutta | 0:44:20 | 0:44:23 | |
and so people are on a knife edge, they're really feeling very, very | 0:44:23 | 0:44:27 | |
tense and there's the fear that one killing or one episode of | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
violence might spark something that can't be brought back under control. | 0:44:31 | 0:44:35 | |
-NEWSREEL: -The fate of 400 million Indians | 0:44:38 | 0:44:40 | |
rests on these men's shoulders. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:41 | |
Iron-willed Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:44 | |
Here is silver-tongued Pandit Nehru. | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
It's only two days before the British hand over power | 0:44:47 | 0:44:50 | |
to India's Nehru and Pakistan's Jinnah but they can only watch | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
events in Bengal and Punjab from afar, powerless. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
Nehru and Jinnah are about to become leaders of these new | 0:44:56 | 0:44:59 | |
countries and to have control over them but, actually, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:02 | |
they're worried about the states they are going to inherit. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
Everything that these men had fought for their whole adult lives | 0:45:05 | 0:45:08 | |
was now coming apart at the seams, so they are really traumatised, | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
these leaders, by what's happening, but they just keep going, | 0:45:11 | 0:45:15 | |
really because what else can they do? | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
The agreement has been made with the British, independence is coming, | 0:45:17 | 0:45:20 | |
come what may, and they have to just keep ploughing ahead. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:23 | |
Fearful that Calcutta will explode once again in civil war, | 0:45:24 | 0:45:28 | |
the Chief Minister of Bengal turns in desperation | 0:45:28 | 0:45:31 | |
to the only man he believes can help... | 0:45:31 | 0:45:33 | |
..77-year-old Mahatma Gandhi. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:36 | |
Gandhi decides that goonda leaders like Jugal Chandra Ghosh will | 0:45:37 | 0:45:41 | |
be the key to stopping the cycle of violence in the city. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:45 | |
I was not a Gandhian at that point in time. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
But Gandhi's secretary came to see me. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
He said Gandhi would like to meet | 0:45:51 | 0:45:53 | |
some of the influential people of the area, | 0:45:53 | 0:45:56 | |
later that afternoon. | 0:45:56 | 0:45:58 | |
Gandhi's technique of nonviolence | 0:45:58 | 0:45:59 | |
had never really worked against the British | 0:45:59 | 0:46:01 | |
and really had fallen out of favour in the previous few years. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:04 | |
Gandhi had fallen out of favour. | 0:46:04 | 0:46:05 | |
By 1947, he really was rather a sidelined figure. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
But he still did believe in nonviolence. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:11 | |
I went to see Gandhi. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
When he started speaking, there was pin-drop silence all around. | 0:46:13 | 0:46:17 | |
By this stage, that older, Gandhian story of using nonviolence | 0:46:17 | 0:46:21 | |
as a powerful tool is no longer washing with people. | 0:46:21 | 0:46:25 | |
They're no longer really buying it. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:27 | |
Gandhi started telling how we should stop killing. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
Some of us would die but the riots would stop. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
He said if we keep thinking that we must repay murder with murder, | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
then this would never stop. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:39 | |
At this point, he's really having a dialogue. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:41 | |
He's having a debate with some of the goonda leaders | 0:46:41 | 0:46:43 | |
about what the right course of action should be. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:46 | |
And they are saying, | 0:46:46 | 0:46:47 | |
"Come on, we have to fight. It's our duty to fight. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:49 | |
But Gandhi, as always, is absolutely adamant | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
that nonviolence and peace is the only way. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:55 | |
A few did not listen. They cursed Gandhi but he kept standing there. | 0:46:55 | 0:46:59 | |
Not everybody saw him as a great hero. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:01 | |
You know, he was attacked, he had brickbats thrown at him, | 0:47:01 | 0:47:04 | |
then there were people who actually did start listening to him. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
He still had this kind of moral power and, amazingly, some of these | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
gangster guys did start to sit down | 0:47:10 | 0:47:12 | |
and listen to him and even lay down their arms. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:14 | |
Jugal Chandra Ghosh's life would be changed by Gandhi's words. | 0:47:14 | 0:47:19 | |
I was convinced. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:22 | |
I took to the streets to spread the teachings of Gandhi. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:25 | |
Such is the power of his words that some actually come over and | 0:47:26 | 0:47:30 | |
lay down their arms in front of him. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
There are others, of course, who don't listen, | 0:47:33 | 0:47:35 | |
but he does have a terrific impact on the city, | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
where he's able to stall the violence that could have happened. | 0:47:38 | 0:47:42 | |
And that's quite unique. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:44 | |
That's quite amazing. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:46 | |
But 1,000 miles west of Bengal, in Punjab's ancient capital, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:51 | |
Lahore, there's no-one working to bring calm to the streets. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:54 | |
Neighbourhoods are being barricaded along religious lines. | 0:47:54 | 0:47:57 | |
Ordinary people are being turned into soldiers. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
One of them is a baker | 0:48:03 | 0:48:04 | |
who has been recruited by a local police officer gone rogue. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:08 | |
His name is Taj Din. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:10 | |
He's a well-known character in his neighbourhood, | 0:48:13 | 0:48:15 | |
who runs a popular naan stall. | 0:48:15 | 0:48:17 | |
But, this week, he has been caught up in the religious hatred | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
that's spread throughout Lahore. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:24 | |
The policeman told us that our Muslim brothers and sisters | 0:48:30 | 0:48:34 | |
were being killed. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:36 | |
He told us that if we died fighting against non-Muslims, | 0:48:36 | 0:48:39 | |
we would be markers. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
And if we survived, we'd be soldiers of Allah. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
Why would somebody just carrying on | 0:48:48 | 0:48:50 | |
a normal profession in their daily lives be suddenly eager to kill | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
as many members of the other community as they wished to? | 0:48:54 | 0:48:57 | |
That, in a sense, for us, seems like madness. | 0:48:57 | 0:49:02 | |
But the main objectives of our training | 0:49:02 | 0:49:04 | |
were to protect Muslims and to take revenge. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
It's one of the really dark mysteries at the heart of partition, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
is why ordinary people could turn into killers. | 0:49:13 | 0:49:16 | |
I think the best answer that we have is that people were just so | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
whipped up through demonisation of the other and the sense that you | 0:49:20 | 0:49:25 | |
have to kill or be killed, that they were fulling themselves | 0:49:25 | 0:49:29 | |
into thinking they were killing in self-defence. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
During this week, Taj Din has been transformed | 0:49:31 | 0:49:34 | |
from a baker into a killer. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
He's leading an attack on a local Sikh temple, | 0:49:36 | 0:49:39 | |
hoping to kill as many of the enemy as he can. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
It was pitch dark when we stormed the Sikh temple. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
I led the advance party. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:49 | |
We give a battle cry, shouting, "Long live Pakistan." | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
Suddenly, one of them appeared. He struck me with a blow. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:57 | |
But in hand-to-hand combat, I managed to kill him. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:01 | |
Partition turns just regular people into killers | 0:50:04 | 0:50:07 | |
and that's a chilling thing to think of. | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
There were 20 to 36 hiding out in the temple, men, women and children. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:15 | |
If you're caught up in those times, that is the only way in which | 0:50:16 | 0:50:20 | |
you can defend your communities. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:22 | |
Attack becomes the only form of defence. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:26 | |
All of them perished. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:27 | |
I think I killed four. | 0:50:27 | 0:50:30 | |
This is not to justify, of course, what went on, | 0:50:30 | 0:50:32 | |
but this is what was going through people's minds. | 0:50:32 | 0:50:35 | |
At the end of today, | 0:50:38 | 0:50:40 | |
Britain's 200-year-long rule of India will be over. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:43 | |
-NEWSREEL: -Pakistan have claimed the transfer of British power | 0:50:48 | 0:50:51 | |
as Mr Jinnah, the governor general of the new dominion | 0:50:51 | 0:50:54 | |
arrives at the constituent assembly in Karachi. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:57 | |
On the morning of August 14th, 1947, | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
just hours before partition is official, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:02 | |
Lord Mountbatten celebrates | 0:51:02 | 0:51:04 | |
the birth of the world's first Muslim state, Pakistan. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
-NEWSREEL: -Addressing the assembly, | 0:51:07 | 0:51:09 | |
Lord Mountbatten first read a message from the King. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:12 | |
"I send you my greetings and warmest wishes." | 0:51:12 | 0:51:14 | |
Jinnah is happy that he's achieved a separate state, | 0:51:17 | 0:51:20 | |
but, at the same time, there's this lingering doubt, | 0:51:20 | 0:51:23 | |
because Pakistan is really trying to rise from the ashes at this time. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
I mean, it's not actually a fully functioning state. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
One in five people is a refugee in West Pakistan. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:32 | |
So, there's a paradox there, because, on one hand, | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
people want to celebrate independence but, at the same time, | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
it's starting them in the face | 0:51:38 | 0:51:39 | |
that millions have been moved and this terrible death and | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
destruction and it's not just been done to them, they've also | 0:51:43 | 0:51:48 | |
been acting out and involved in that violence themselves. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:51 | |
At midnight, India will become independent. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:55 | |
-NEWSREEL: -People are rejoicing, | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
ready to welcome their long-awaited liberty. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
There was unbounded joy... | 0:52:00 | 0:52:02 | |
After decades of doing everything they could to make sure this day | 0:52:02 | 0:52:06 | |
would never come, the British have planned | 0:52:06 | 0:52:08 | |
an elaborate handover ceremony tomorrow, in Delhi. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:11 | |
But, for the 100,000 refugees crowding into camps | 0:52:11 | 0:52:14 | |
around the capital, there is little to celebrate. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:18 | |
These refugees, who've lost so much in the run-up to independence, | 0:52:18 | 0:52:22 | |
don't fit in with the upbeat narrative of the day. | 0:52:22 | 0:52:25 | |
The British, were, of course, keen to orchestrate these images | 0:52:26 | 0:52:29 | |
of a smooth transfer of power. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
You know, the whole thing | 0:52:31 | 0:52:32 | |
was so well orchestrated, it was a spectacle. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:34 | |
But, in reality, these smooth narratives | 0:52:34 | 0:52:37 | |
of the transfer of power really need to be placed alongside | 0:52:37 | 0:52:40 | |
these individual stories of trauma, | 0:52:40 | 0:52:43 | |
of uprootment, of migration and violence, of killings and murder. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:48 | |
And this was the reality of what was going on in some parts of India. | 0:52:48 | 0:52:51 | |
Among those taking shelter | 0:52:53 | 0:52:55 | |
in Delhi's main refugee camp at Purana Qila is Arghwani Begum. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:59 | |
She is nine months pregnant with her third child. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
Arghwani had grown up in luxury in the north-east of India, | 0:53:03 | 0:53:06 | |
a Muslim, waited on by a staff of loyal Hindu servants. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
Our house was built in the old style, | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
we even had stuffed tigers on the wall. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
We had Hindus working on our farm and their wives were always | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
around the house. There was never any tension between any of us. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:25 | |
Those were the days. | 0:53:26 | 0:53:27 | |
But, this week, she had to flee after hearing that a gang | 0:53:27 | 0:53:31 | |
was coming to ransack her home. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
Escaping to Pakistan, | 0:53:33 | 0:53:34 | |
Arghwani is forced to witness the horrors of partition. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:38 | |
They were killing people on our train. | 0:53:40 | 0:53:42 | |
The killings spree lasted for a while. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:46 | |
I heard screams and cries of panic. It was horrifying. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:53 | |
There were a lot of people, especially children, killed. | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
I saw their bloodied bodies with my own eyes. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:01 | |
But our compartment was safe, thanks to Allah. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
Arghwani and her family have to stop in Delhi | 0:54:09 | 0:54:11 | |
and take refuge at the camp in Purana Qila. | 0:54:11 | 0:54:14 | |
We arrived at the Fort. | 0:54:16 | 0:54:18 | |
There was panic, pandemonium. No food or water. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:23 | |
You could hear the screams from the families when someone died. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:27 | |
There were no coffins. It was terrible. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
I wasn't supposed to give birth for a couple of weeks. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:38 | |
But I suppose that the trauma of being in that camp | 0:54:41 | 0:54:44 | |
made me go into labour. | 0:54:44 | 0:54:46 | |
I gave birth to my third child at the camp. | 0:54:48 | 0:54:51 | |
It was a boy. There were no clothes for the baby. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:02 | |
He had to be draped in one of my daughter's frocks. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:05 | |
-NEWSREEL: -It is the night of August 14th, 1947. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:12 | |
The auspicious moment is on its way. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:15 | |
In every house, throughout the land, the lamps of good fortune | 0:55:16 | 0:55:20 | |
are lighted to illumine the path to freedom. | 0:55:20 | 0:55:22 | |
At midnight, Jawaharlal Nehru prepares to address his new nation. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
In Lahore, a city under curfew, | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
the Hindu writer Fikr Taunsvi listens to Nehru on the radio. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:36 | |
At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, | 0:55:38 | 0:55:43 | |
India will awake to light and freedom. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:46 | |
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:51 | |
The whole night, the rages screamed freedom. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:55 | |
Freedom. Today, we're free of white's imperialism. | 0:55:55 | 0:55:59 | |
My friend said, "Are you unhappy at getting freedom?" | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
I said, "Yes. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
"We should welcome this. We're greeted with the piles | 0:56:05 | 0:56:08 | |
"of dead bodies of Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
"with the burning buildings and murderer's bombs." | 0:56:11 | 0:56:15 | |
On 15th August, 1947, Britain's Indian Empire was over. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:35 | |
India and Pakistan were now independent, | 0:56:35 | 0:56:37 | |
although the border between them, the Radcliffe Line, | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
would still not be announced for another two days. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:43 | |
Britain proclaimed to the world that the handover of power | 0:56:45 | 0:56:49 | |
had been a great success. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:51 | |
-NEWSREEL: -Tumultuous crowds fill the streets, | 0:56:51 | 0:56:53 | |
celebrating, singing and laughing. | 0:56:53 | 0:56:54 | |
Police were called out many times to restore order | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
where everyone ran wild with joy. | 0:56:57 | 0:56:59 | |
Independence meant different things for different people. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:04 | |
For the Indian elite, independence was a great moment of celebration. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:07 | |
But, for the poverty stricken man who's been uprooted and has | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
migrated over miles, who has lost his means of livelihood, lost | 0:57:10 | 0:57:14 | |
property, what does independence mean? It means absolutely nothing. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:18 | |
One of the legacies of partition was the way in which violence | 0:57:19 | 0:57:21 | |
scaled up from being about individuals, but families, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:25 | |
about conflict between communities and religions, into something | 0:57:25 | 0:57:28 | |
much bigger, violence between armies, violence between nations. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:32 | |
This one week transformed the world we live in today. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:36 | |
If you look at Pakistan and India right now, this border that | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
was created in this week is the most dangerous border in the world. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:43 | |
In 1847, even though some people foresaw violence and foresaw | 0:57:43 | 0:57:47 | |
difficulty, I don't think really very many people foresaw how | 0:57:47 | 0:57:51 | |
bad relations between India and Pakistan would continue to be. | 0:57:51 | 0:57:54 | |
I think a lot of people thought | 0:57:54 | 0:57:56 | |
that actually it would all blow over and they would be friends again. | 0:57:56 | 0:57:59 | |
As we can see, tragically, that has not happened. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:01 | |
For me, the tragedy is that the war has never ended. | 0:58:01 | 0:58:04 | |
It's really become a cold war, at times it's been a hot war, | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
there have been three wars between the countries. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:10 | |
So, really, we're still seeing that fight that went on in 1947, | 0:58:10 | 0:58:13 | |
replayed and replayed. It's never really come to an end. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:17 | |
Memories of that time still echo and rebound now, | 0:58:17 | 0:58:20 | |
in that relationship between the two countries. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:24 |