Partition 70 Years On Newsnight

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India

You are free to go to your mosques, or any other place of worship

Welcome to this special edition of Newsnight.

70 years ago, British India was partitioned.

Today was the first day of India's independence

and the birth of a new country, Pakistan.

It was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire.

Tonight, we'll be hearing stories of those who lived

through one of the most convulsive moments of the 20th century,

exploring the reasons why the political legacy in India

and Pakistan is still so troubled, even poisoned.

We'll be discussing whether we as a country have come

to terms with Empire and how it ended,

and asking young British Asians why the split 70 years ago

This is Partition, 70 years on - a Newsnight Special.

With us is an audience including people who lived

through the partition of British India 70 years ago.

When the British left hastily and chaotically,

and with the drawing of the new borders, millions

of lives were changed overnight, and people who had lived together

side by side turned against each other.

We'll be hearing some shocking stories in a moment.

First, a reminder of how events unfolded.

Victory in Europe had left the country bombed,

With the task of rebuilding an exhaustive nation

With the task of rebuilding an exhausted nation

and repaying billions of dollars to the United States,

running an empire was the last thing the new Labour government needed.

In India too, which had supplied 2.5 million soldiers and had

geared its economy to the war, there was a new urgency.

The decades of nonviolent resistance to British rule,

led by the now octogenarian Mahatma Gandhi, had failed.

Now he was overshadowed by two men who vied for control

Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader of the Congress Party,

and Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League

had different visions of what would come next.

Nehru wanted a united India, but Jinnah felt India's

100 million Muslims, a quarter of the population,

would be marginalised by the Hindu majority.

He demanded safeguards, even a separate homeland,

Britain had been the dominant power in India for 200 years.

Now the proponents of Indian independence found that they were

In late 1946, the government of Clement Attlee announced

Britain's withdrawal from India by June 1948.

But in the face of rising sectarian tensions and violence which had

erupted around northern India, in June 1947, the last viceroy,

Lord Mountbatten, in agreement with Nehru and Jinnah,

decided the country would be partitioned.

He brought forward the date for Britain's exit.

There would now be just ten weeks to prepare for partition.

Jinnah celebrated independence on 14th August in Karachi.

Nehru's dream of a united India had failed, but on August 15th,

Independence Day, in Delhi he celebrated long-fought

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps,

India will awake to life and freedom.

The provinces of Bengal and Punjab, under the partition plan,

For centuries, communities had lived together in relative harmony,

making a smooth geographical division near impossible.

What followed was mass migration and dreadful violence.

It amounted to an attempt at ethnic cleansing.

Around 12 million people were on the move...

Muslims to Pakistan, Sikhs and Hindus to India.

Approximately a million men, women and children died

The authorities on both sides were completely unprepared

and appealed for calm, but it was too late.

The British relinquished responsibility for the region,

leaving India divided and their leaders trying

to get a grip on the bloody reality of partition.

That division had unforeseen consequences, which still shape

Joining me now is Gurbakhsh Garcha, Raj Dswani and Iftkahr Ahmed,

all of whom witnessed first hand the birth of the two

First of all, Gurbakhsh, you were a Sikh boy growing up

It was a small village with a population where a quarter

were Muslim and the rest were Sikhs, mainly, and a family of Hindus.

It was an open village with streets for us to run around in,

We could go wherever we liked,

and it was a wonderful life as children.

We had lots of trees around the village and there wasn't

And you celebrated festivals together?

At the time of Eid, the Muslim community

And when we had Diwali, we sent sweets to their houses.

My grandmother was very close friends with a Muslim lady.

Iftkahr Ahmed, you were a young Muslim living near Delhi.

How did it feel to you when independence was declared?

Well, around independence, Delhi was all lit up

and we all got together, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh,

we all got together and celebrated on the 15th, Independence Day.

We didn't know what would happen tomorrow.

We were just one India, Hindustan, and we celebrated together.

Because it was a day of huge celebrations.

Yeah, we all were together to celebrate on 15th August.

Raj, you were a Hindu boy living in Sindh province and overnight,

everything changed, it became part of Pakistan

Tell me what happened and what that meant to you to leave?

From Sindh, 1.2 million people migrated.

The day we left was a dark day, we would say.

But when you were there as a boy, you had a very close friendship

with a young Muslim girl called Jasmine.

As my friend said, on Eid and Diwali, we used

to exchange sweets and on other festivals, we used to be together.

Now, for the brothers in Punjab and brothers of Bengal who suffered,

But your personal calamity was because you left your

That was also a personal thing, but I am talking of Sindh itself,

We didn't get a single inch of the soil.

Bengal got half of Bengal, but we were landless.

We had to leave our friends, our relatives, our materials.

Whatever we had, we just came in our clothes.

Iftkahr, it was dangerous for you to be a Muslim in Delhi

You got there and then what did you see at Lahore station?

I came through and the train was there and I asked

one of the soldiers, "Take me with you".

He said, "OK, if you're on your own, come over".

So I jumped on the train and they hid me.

And because for three or four days I hadn't eaten anything,

We reached Lahore and the soldier said

"There you are, son, you're in Pakistan,

Then he got off the train and left me on the platform.

Because I hadn't slept for so long, I just put

And I woke up about four o'clock in the morning.

I heard people talking, and realised that all the platforms

There were cut off women's heads, God knows, little babies.

And Gurbakhsh, you also saw the horror of corpses on trains,

mutilated bodies in the village in Punjab, but also,

and this is a particular story, you also saw a moment

This was something that happened side by side.

There was cruelty on one side and horrible scenes,

but on the other side there was compassion, and even love.

We saw the train passing by a village, very close.

And a woman with two small children fell out,

I think she was dreading another massacre.

And she was met by people in the village and she was taken

to a shed just outside the village and she was given a place to sit.

So your family protected her from the possibility

Yes, and they brought food and milk for the children,

They were really sad to see this happen to just an ordinary woman

So the Sikhs protected Muslims in that area.

And she was taken to a safe camp afterwards with her children.

Many never returned, but Raj, you did return eventually.

You went back to Sindh after decades.

Actually, when I boarded the aeroplane, I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't think of anything but my childhood, which street

was where and what were the roads, who were my friends.

Now I am returning back to my land, whether those same things

So when I landed there, I touched the soil, kissed it.

Put down my forehead and went inside.

My friends were there who were recent friends.

So they took me and I was very happy.

I went to my place also, where I used to live.

But I couldn't go inside, because I didn't dare to go inside.

You thought you would have collapsed because it would have emotionally

Iftkahr, as the years have gone past, do you ever

close your eyes and visualise where it was as a child?

For that reason, I have never told my children my story,

because my older son has often said, "Why you never told us?"

Because when I look back, the streets were

You don't want to remember this sort of thing.

Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed.

Unlike Raj, millions never saw their homeland again.

Even today, there are no direct air links between India

That's just one example of the lasting divide and inability

of the two nations to forge a modern relationship.

And the most obvious place to see this is at the border.

You are watching conflict transformed into ritual.

Every day, this exquisitely choreographed ballet

is played out at the border between India and Pakistan.

But the ongoing enmity between the two countries has

There are strict restrictions on movement.

All trucks have to be offloaded at the border.

Twice as much trade goes via Dubai than across the land border

It is just too much trouble to trade direct.

Economists say if it was made easier, there could be as much

as ten times the business between the two countries.

Whilst, as Justin says, physical trade between Pakistan

and India might be limited, there is a free-flowing cultural

exchange between them, most notably Bollywood.

Despite past attempts to ban Indian films here,

they have always been hugely popular, and many, like this one,

now feature Pakistani actors and Pakistani musicians.

But a love of Bollywood doesn't mean a love of India.

Many here believe India is trying to sabotage Pakistan.

TRANSLATION: Most of the Pakistanis like Indian movies

because they are good quality and have the best plots.

But they think of India as their enemy.

Otherwise, the attitude of Pakistanis is always against India.

These films cannot change that attitude.

All the best scenes, dances and songs, packaged up

Bollywood has traditionally been pretty much blind to religion.

Despite India's large Hindu majority, some

of the most popular stars are Muslims, even Pakistanis.

There were calls for a ban on Pakistani actors after a militant

in Indian-administered Kashmir last year.

India was founded on secular principles, with protection

for religious minorities, but many fear that India's secular

That's something the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi denies.

But Mr Modi is a Hindu nationalist, and under his government

tensions have been growing between communities,

heightened by a series of murders of Muslims by Hindus.

TRANSLATION: There is some attack on Muslims

The only option for us Muslims now is to pick up arms.

We will fight to survive, or we will die here.

If they want us to leave India, that is not possible.

We were born here and it is our right.

This isn't something you see every day in Pakistan.

Today, over 60 Hindu couples are getting married in a mass

ceremony in the southern province of Sindh.

Most Hindus left Pakistan during partition, worried about how

they would be treated in a Muslim dominated country.

But there are still around 2 million living here.

Today is a day for celebrations, lots of celebrations.

But until recently, Hindu marriages like these were not legally

Many in the community complain that they face discrimination.

As a result, over the years following partition

thousands more Hindus have left Pakistan, many heading to India.

TRANSLATION: Around eight to ten people leave every week

My relatives left in 1991 after there was communal violence.

So 70 years on, the communal tensions that drove partition

are still very much alive in both India and Pakistan.

So what hope is there of that changing?

How many people think there will be a solution

between India and Pakistan and there will be peace?

Why do you think there is such a conflict?

The real power is in the hands of the army.

The democracy is nothing to do with terrorism.

So the army promotes the terrorism that leads to the death

Pakistani pupils are taught that the country was create under

the two-nation theory, that Muslims and Hindus are separate

What's your understanding of why Pakistan was created?

TRANSLATION: There was nothing common between Hindus

and Muslims other than the fact that they shared a land.

There was a lot of difference between the two, religion-wise,

creed-wise, their values, their culture, so that was why

a new country was needed to get their rights and to succeed.

What do you think could be done to improve the relationship

TRANSLATION: If our politicians stopped bashing India

just to get votes, that can help improving relations.

If cricket matches are allowed to continue between the countries,

I am not sure about politics, but that will help improve relations.

It would decrease the hatred between ordinary people on both sides.

Ultimately, this is really just a story about feuding families,

because so much more unites India and Pakistan

than divides them, like, for example, the food.

The problem is that there are some in both countries who believe

it's in their political interest to continue the hostilities.

After all, there's nothing like an external enemy

So at the moment, it seems there is no sign

I'm joined now by Professor Sunil Khilnani from King's College

London's India Institute, who has a written number of books

on India, including his most recent, Incarnations: India in 50 Lives,

and Dr Farzana Shaikh, an academic at Chatham House and the author

It is a difficult day because of course it's

a celebration, in one way, but it's also a memory

And I wonder, first of all, Professor Sunil Khilnani,

how does a vision for the nation 70 years ago add up to the reality?

Well, I mean, I think what's very interesting about this subcontinent

is you really have had two very different views of the

You had the idea of Pakistan, which has been just talked

about in the film we just saw, which was you have to

have a separate nation for a different religion.

In the sense, that's the European idea of a nation.

Which is that you have to define a nation by a single religion

But then you had the Indian idea of a nation, which was the idea that

I think Nehru and Tagore and Gandhi tried to develop which was could you

I think he was in the sense that he wanted to build

protections for minorities, and that's a very secular

But I think he also began to use religion in order to advance

Doctor Farzana Shaikh, do you think, of course,

That kind of legacy of the empire which was divide and rule,

was it ever going to be other than what it has appeared to be,

Well, there was nothing inevitable either about partition or indeed

But decisions were made at key moments.

The consequences of which we are living with today.

The decision to divide up India on lines of religion.

There were many moments, particularly in the 1940s

when leaders on both sides were trying to come to some

So, had independence come earlier, say even in the late 30s,

this idea of a religious divide would not have been so embedded

because it came to be embedded earlier than partition had?

One can't say for certain but there was certainly moments

when the course of history might have been very different.

We are in a situation where we've got the Indian president saying

today in his speech there is no to be no attacks on Muslims.

There is almost as many Muslims in India as there aren't Pakistan.

There seems to be a move to more reconciliation just at the time

when you think Hindu nationalism is on the rise.

I think there have been cycles of reconciliation and hostility.

I think you're absolutely right and I think it is an important point

to remember that India is about the second or third

largest Muslim country in the world, and that's a very,

I think what Prime Minister Modi has said today is a kind of more

conciliatory Independence Day speech but, at the same time,

he's also spoken from the other side of his mouth or rather not spoken

at all, it is his silences in many cases when there's been violent

against Muslims and minorities in India which has been telling.

But if you look at what is best indeed, for the future both

of the nations on a purely economic basis, you saw Justin Rowlett saying

there that, actually, more trade goes via Dubai than goes

And that's a huge opportunity for both countries, isn't it?

But, you know, here history and present-day

We have the history, of course, of communal violence.

Which marred and scarred millions of families, Hindus

We have the unfinished business of Kashmir which, again,

remains a burden on the Pakistani side and, of course,

the role of the military, whose political fortunes in Pakistan

have been built on keeping this conflict alive.

We are now in a situation where the last generation who lived

together is moving forward and we won't have them in ten years'

time but they are also the generation that saw

So, does that lead you to believe that there will be...

There's never been a process of reconciliation but with

the passing of that generation, is it going to make reconciliation

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is the first

Indian Prime Minister who was born after partition.

So, already the political class are now moving beyond and don't

In a way, I think that can also be much more dangerous.

I think the previous Prime Ministers, Manmohan Singh,

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it was really part of their integral

being to try and find a reconciliation with Pakistan.

I think today politicians in India see religion

as something they can play with, really, much more in a way

because they haven't had that burning experience of having

It is interesting because in this particular anniversary,

more than I think ten years ago, we are hearing these voices

We are hearing shocking stories now which should, in a sense,

give people pause to think we never want to have that kind

And I think those stories have a place.

But I think we also need to bear in mind the risk of perhaps losing

sight of why things turned out the way they did.

In other words, why did it happen rather than just what happened.

And I think finding the balance is going to be quite a challenge.

I think what's happened is that partition is this founding moment

of the kind of myths of the two nations today.

And so much of what happens in the retelling of the stories

of that confirms those stories, that myth, really.

So I think until each of these nations starts to think

of itself differently, and imagines its possibilities

differently, I think you really are not going to be able to see

And there's a way in which, unfortunately, each of these

national governments today feeds off each other.

And, for me, as an Indian, one of the troubling things is that

India is now becoming more like Pakistan in the way that it

thinks about the relationship between religion and power

And that's a very troubling development.

At the moment of independence, the two men who had led

the negotiations with the British, Jawaharlal Nehru and

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, addressed their people

and the world in words of great idealism,

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny,

and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge,

not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.

At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India

A moment comes which comes but rarely in history when we step

out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when

the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.

At the dawn of history, India started on her unending quest

and trackless centuries have filled with her striving and the grandeur

Through good and ill fortune alike, she has never lost sight of that

quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength.

We end today a period of ill fortune, and India

The achievement we celebrate today is but a step,

an opening of opportunity to the greater triumphs

Now, if we want to make this great state of Pakistan

happy and prosperous, we should concentrate

solely and wholly on the well-being of the people.

If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past,

burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed.

If you change your past and work together in a spirit

that every one of you, no matter what community he belongs

to, no matter what relation he had with you in the past,

no matter what his colour, caste or creed, he is first,

second and last a citizen of this state.

Equal rights, privileges, and obligations.

There is no end to the progress that you will make.

You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques.

Or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan.

You may belong to any religion or caste or creed.

That has nothing to do with the business of the state.

We are starting with this fundamental principle

that we are all citizens, all equal citizens in the one state.

Those speeches signalled the emergence of two new nations

and the beginning of the end of British Empire.

At its height, it controlled 23% of the world's population,

But in the decades since Empire came crashing down, have we ever properly

examined its effect and legacy for us all?

With me now to discuss this are the historians, Yasmin Khan,

Joya Chatterji and Alex von Tunzelmann.

But before I speak to them, I'd first like to call

upon Dennis Wilde, who was an officer in

the British Indian Army in Lahore on the day of partition.

What, Dennis Wilde, did the end of the British Empire look like to you?

Well, I don't think, as a young army officer,

I don't think we were really old enough to think strongly

But, having said that, I think we all realised that it

It took place in dreadful circumstances, where Sikhs

and Hindus murdered Muslims and vice versa.

It made an impact on me because I happened to be in Lahore

at the time and I couldn't get away back to Burma,

And one heard terrible stories of the chaos

and the slaughter that had gone on, which was being cleared up

while we were sitting, waiting to get a train back

You didn't have much of a good word to say about Mountbatten.

my opinion, Mountbatten was too precipitate.

I think he was a man who had made a huge name for himself.

He was the Southeast Asian command supremo,

He was approached by Attlee to become the Viceroy of India

and speed up the whole process, which she did.

I think it all happened too horribly.

We're just coming now to look at a talk about Empire.

Do you think we've ever really come to terms, Joya,

I'm not sure who we are, in your question.

Interestingly, I think all of us in different ways, actually.

If we're talking about the subjects of British Empire, curiously,

I would say to a greater or lesser extent, we have.

I think this generation growing up probably doesn't

about the issues that bothered us so greatly about colonial

When it comes to looking at British people, I think perhaps the answer

I think even so, again, here we have to be careful

about disaggregating between different sections

of British opinion, I would be inclined to say that,

no, there hasn't been that much moving on.

There's a great deal of nostalgia for an imagined Empire

about which people are hugely and strangely ill informed.

They are not taught about what it was or what it actually

Unwillingness to understand that Empire was not

So, actually, one of the ways in which one can think

about the meaning of Empire today is to bring up that awful word

which you probably don't want me to bring up,

When I woke up this morning, or when I woke up on the morning

of Brexit, I thought, this is probably what 15th

Is there any defence, do you think, of Empire that can be

mounted when you hear people saying it was all about infrastructure and,

in fact, the law in India was well made law, and it was the biggest

democracy in the world, and still is one of the biggest

democracies in the world, can you mount that kind of defence?

Not very convincingly, in all honesty.

It wasn't the biggest democracy in the world

Yes, but that's got very little to do with the British.

In terms of defending the British Empire, I think...

Current research really points much less to it being a sort of coherent

project and much more to it being very chaotic throughout,

Of course, it was begun as a private company,

We are in a situation now, and you absolutely make

the distinction about who remembers Empire and in what way.

Just before I come onto Yasmin, I want to talk about this because,

actually, it's not just, as it were, the idea the British

It's also the Belgians and the Congo, it's also

You know, Empire's something the British just don't

I mean, it's lots of different things and I think the confusion

sets in when people think it is a moral slur on individuals

because there were plenty of people's parents and grandparents

who were working as irrigation officers

And I think they feel sensitive about that.

The thing is, ultimately and fundamentally, it is structured

That is the basic premise of Empire, is that one group of people has

the right to rule over another and have more responsibilities,

And, so, I think when you look at it from a modern perspective

of supporting democracy and racial equality, it's just really

Britain's littered in strange municipal parks with statues to men

of Empire who nobody wants to remember now.

I wonder, just bringing Andrews in here, because you've studied

all this, the sociology of all this, tell me, when we're looking

at Empire, we find it very difficult in this country.

I would say white people find it very difficult to imagine

what Empire actually has done for them now.

What it should be is, it should be a stain

Unfortunately, 59% of British people believe it was a good thing

because of the deficits in our school system.

And I think partition's a really good example

So you have that colonial arrogance that you can redraw a map and it

doesn't matter if 12 million people have to move, the same way

You have the callous disregard for black and brown lives.

You see the slave trade, you see it in Africa,

you see it in India, and this is what Empire is.

This whole idea about drawing lines, there was this great

You can also see that in the following year, 1948,

Palestine was partitioned, which has also not turned

And also, Iraq that year was stuck together, which also hasn't

So I think we can probably say on the evidence

of that year that this kind of very high level line drawing

on map and then run away state building isn't very successful.

But, Yasmin, in order to move forward in this country,

do we have to address Empire and in a way

I think atonement is a different thing but I think it's our history.

When people think about British history in segregation from Empire,

to me, that's just unthinkable because the institutions of state,

the economy and the people who are here living in Britain,

We are all children of Empire, so just to put it in a box

as somehow a separate subject denies its fundamental

importance to the origins of the modern British state.

I think we also need to get away from ideas about it

We have heard from some people tonight who did experience it.

And they may have their own opinions, but very few of us had

It's more about trying to understand why it happened,

Why do we find it so difficult in this country to talk about Empire?

It's something that is 300 years of the way we behaved and,

yet, we set it aside because it's too difficult.

I mean, I think there are lots of ways one could try

and start moving towards discussions about Empire which perhaps focus

more on the positive contributions that we see for instance in this

room, of diversity, of flows of goods and people.

It was partly incoherent, but it was also largely an economic

And as we sit today through a moment of deglobalisation, we can

reflect in interesting ways on what it was and what it wasn't

and what its legacies have been and what they might

And also, there is a new narrative now, which is that India

And we are actually going to be looking,

going as supplicants to India, in a way, for a lot more trade.

But there's also, I think, a misapprehension in many minds,

at least in terms of what I've seen, about the approach that Britain's

When it goes as a supplicant, there is an assumption that Britain

is going to be embraced as long lost friends.

That is not how Britain is perceived out there.

The sooner the British recognise that, the better.

But there is some friendliness towards the British.

The term global Britain that Theresa May used the term

that is her very differently around the world.

They remember global Britain differently.

I have spoken to some Indians who say, ask me about Europe.

They want to deal with big blocks of commercial power.

Now, Empire may be long gone, but its legacy is imprinted

In 1948, the government passed an act allowing all citizens

of the former colonies to live and work in Britain and help

rebuild after the ravages of the Second World War,

That open invitation lasted until the early 1960s,

and these British citizens that came from South Asia were among those

who began the transformation of the way Britain looks today.

Canon Roden, what did you know about what happened?

Well, I was at secondary school in the 70s, and I learned

about Clive of India, and I learned about

And then I learned about Gandhi by watching the film.

That was the sum total of my historical knowledge.

So you decided to do something about it.

I thought, I am sure my children, who were at school, I am sure

they will be learning all about India and Pakistan

and Bangladesh in their history, and then I realised

they were learning less than I was learning.

The sticking point seemed to be the terribly sad story

And that was making teachers very shy of teaching Indian history.

So we then tried to set about a method by which we might be

able to try and put the Indian history into the school curriculum,

And when you tried to educate people, what was the response?

Well, I think people would say, "We just didn't know this stuff."

At the moment, the history curriculum is Hitler and the Henrys,

essentially, and it's not good enough.

We have millions of people of South Asian descent in this

country, and it's not serving us well.

So if partition is the most difficult thing that is stopping us

telling the South Asian story, the key thing seemed to be to find

So we have been using drama, a very fine play written

We got various children in from Luton to watch the play,

and then we got the Runnymede Trust in to evaluate how that went.

Luckily, we got an Arts Council grant and that play

But, really, the government ought to shove this onto the National

And to discuss this further, I'm joined by the composer

Nitin Sawhney, Shelina Jan-mohamed, author of Generation M and Love

in a Headscarf and the writer and broadcaster Sarfraz Manzoor.

These narratives that we have about partition in British Asian

I think it is partly about whether they get heard.

One of the interesting things about the 70th anniversary is that

My mum's 84 and never talked about any of this stuff.

I think part of it is these stories are so traumatic people didn't

want to talk about it but also I don't think there's as much

of this oral tradition, in a way, of storytelling so,

the only way you can sort of own the part is if you know it.

At the moment, I don't feel kids are taught it in schools,

and for a long time they haven't been taught it in

It's interesting you're saying your mum's talked

Has that been very difficult for her?

What has been quite interesting, in a way, is that often you see...

One of the things that's been interesting about the Radio 4

documentary and these programmes, and some of the people you can see,

you see these people, they look old, and they look like if you just

walked past them, you might just think they are sort of, you know,

And you hear their stories, you see there is horror and pain

When I listen to my mum, it made me think about her as a 13-year-old

girl and seeing all this stuff and hearing these kinds of things.

In a way, you're brought back to what these people

were like as children rather than as old people.

Nitin Sawhney, these stories in your family must

I mean, my dad was 20 during the time partition.

He came down from Lahore at that time into India and my mum was 11.

And they do have very dark and awful stories of bloodshed, and so on.

But, at the same time, I think they came to England

And I guess one of the legacies is that there is a real sense

of resisting racism, to be honest, which I think

they passed down to us, to actually really understand

Shelina, there is an issue with conversations between the different

British Asian communities to discuss this.

I've really felt over the last week or so with all this coverage

of partition that actually the barometer's felt very emotional.

I've sat in front of the TV and cried tears at some

of these stories and, actually, what other side,

whatever country, origin you're from, your heritage,

there's been something about loss and heartbreak that has brought

people together and, actually, I think that's rather

poignant and ironic given that, actually, we talk about partition

but, actually, we ought to talk more about independence.

Because this ought to have been a moment of great joy for people

And it's very interesting in the UK we talk so much

about partition and we don't talk about independence.

In a way, that's part of the discussion of trying to think

about Empire as this benevolent good thing.

Actually, when independence was granted, it could have been done

in a completely different way but instead we talk about partition

as a sort of trouble of the colonised that made it all go

wrong when the seeds of this terrible man-made disaster

were in the way that independence was granted.

It is good now to have this particular anniversary

where we are hearing, as you say, so many more stories.

But I wonder, I'm now going to go to the audience

You are a Hindu woman married to a Muslim in this country

and still the communities, on many levels, are still entirely

separate and lots of people within the communities themselves,

I wonder what your story is and how your family dealt with it.

So, my story is my mother was 17 when she left Lahore.

And I guess the genesis of who I chose to marry is the seeds

are there in her story, which is that her life was saved

by a Muslim neighbour, so he was her brother.

He enabled my grandmother and my mother and her sister to escape,

The train after everyone was slaughtered.

They arrived where they were sheltered by Sikh family,

and then she was harassed by Hindu men for being on her own.

What she showed me was the complexity of conflict and violence.

So she kind of stepped away from saying Muslims do

this, or reducing people to their identity, and she spoke

of horror, but she also spoke of compassion.

And, in a sense, was that a way in which you felt at ease

It is a very clear message in any Hindu-Sikh household,

do not marry somebody who comes from a Muslim background.

It's the whole history of Hinduism, Islam in India, seekers.

So, the idea is that partition still reverberates in the lives

One of the things I think is very interesting about the potential

ripples through it are one of the things when you hear

people talk pre-47, you hear people saying,

as you've heard, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus barely

knew what their faith was when they turned up to each

Pre-9/11, and definitely pre the Iranian revolution,

there was a sense of migrant communities basically being Asian.

What's happened since 9/11 and after 7/7 is there has been that

increased fragmentation and identification by religion,

which is exactly what happened after '47,

so there are these parallels of identification by

The way that we frame the story of independence and partition is...

And I speak as somebody who's of Indian heritage,

that India is seen as the great inheritor of the greater India

and somehow Pakistan and Bangladesh, which,

by the way, hasn't been mentioned today.

They are somehow the problem children.

They're seen as the problem children and that reflects back

on the way that we talk about subcontinental communities.

This week the Sun published a column about the Muslim problem.

So these echoes have regenerated through the years.

One of the youngest numbers of the audience is here.

You're going to be very honest and I'm going to ask you, what did

you actually know about the homeland that your family inhabited?

I only knew when I was eight years old that

my grandmother came from India to Pakistan.

Before then, I had no idea that they were one country before.

And I didn't know anything about empire.

No one taught it to me, so I didn't learn about it until I was eight.

And your family never talked about the idea that they had come

from one country and that it had been divided?

Well, they might have done, but I probably wasn't

It is not taught in schools, Nitin, and I wonder if the divisions exist

because many families don't talk about it to their children and they

think, all I know is that I am not to marry a Muslim.

My parents were very complimentary about other religions.

But at the same time, they always said, you should embrace all

religions and all different ways of thinking.

And I grew up listening to great music like Ravi Shankar and lots

As somebody mentioned earlier, food is something we all have in common,

but music is also a great celebration of life.

So, do you think that divisions in the British Asian

community can be closed without a reconciliation

I personally think that this amnesia or ignorance that people

have, partly through education, I think there is an opportunity there

as well, because if people realise that there was a time pre-1947 when

they were together, if people realise the role that the British

had in creating some of those problems,

if they also realise the ties that bind Britain

perhaps some of the existential issues of identity facing the second

and third generation could be alleviated.

We were talking about the idea of the

Indians having this idea of a greater Indian.

Coming from Pakistani heritage, there is an

existential crisis of, how do you feel loyal to a country

How can you feel proud about something which is

So there are existential questions on that side as well.

Do you think this is a defining moment and that the trauma

of partition will never go away, but there is something in this

I think there is an opportunity because of the way these human

It doesn't matter which side of the divide your family came from,

There was huge trauma, and that trauma continues

It is important when we have the conversation about,

what was empire, that the broader British community is in that.

This is a discussion that everybody needs to have with honesty.

We have to understand that actually, the place we are in today

and recognising our place in the world depends

That's it from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House.

From all our guests both on the stage and in our audience,

Weather-wise, August is the month that keeps on giving. A cool and

fresh start Wednesday morning after a chilly night, but at least lots of