Remembering Partition: The Stories Beyond the Numbers

On August 15, India celebrated its 79th Independence Day — honouring the country’s hard-fought freedom from nearly 200 years of British colonial control in 1947.

When I, a millennial, think about Independence Day, I am flooded with memories of school celebrations filled with fervour and patriotism, the stories of freedom fighters, and the simple joy of knowing we were free.

But of course, with independence came Partition — the division of British India into two nations, India and Pakistan. It was one of the largest forced migrations in human history: over 14 million people displaced, and more than a million lives lost in violence. We learnt about it extensively in our curriculum: the politics, the leaders, the maps that redrew boundaries. Yet what we never really learnt was this: how did people actually make those choices? Were they pushed out of their homes purely on religious identity and geography? Did they regret leaving? Did they rebuild? And how did they cope with losing family members — and with the trauma that followed them?

These were the conversations that filled the room at a recent discussion - Partition: Memory, Responsibility & Voice – On Owning the 1947 Partition & Giving It an Honest Voice, held at the Bangalore International Centre in Bengaluru.

The panel featured Urvashi Butalia — writer, publisher, activist, and author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India — along with archivist Soni Wadhwa, whose digital archive PG Sindhi Library is dedicated to post-Partition Sindhi writing in India, moderated by Tejshvi Jain, Founder-Director of the ReReeti Foundation.

(From left to right) Tejshvi Jain Founder-Director, ReReeti Foundation, Soni Wadhwa Archivist, and Urvashi Butalia Writer, Publisher & Activist during the panel discussion at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC). Image source - BIC YouTube Channel/amc

What emerged was not just a discussion about history, but about silence, memory, trauma, and survival. Through literature, oral testimony, archives, and immersive media, each speaker showed how Partition lives on in different ways. At its heart was the idea of shared responsibility: not just for writers or historians, but for each of us shaped by inherited memory.

“We Knew Numbers, But Not the Stories”

Butalia laid the foundation, pointing out how Partition is usually taught in India — as politics and statistics, not as human experiences. “We knew numbers but not what lay behind the numbers. In families like mine, these stories lay ever present,” she said. Calling herself a “Partition child” — with both parents refugees from Pakistan — she admitted that, like many of her generation, she had once brushed those stories aside.

Two moments, she explained, changed that. First, when filmmaker friends asked her help in researching people’s memories of Partition, she travelled across Punjab and other regions, meeting survivors and listening to their voices. Second, while investigating the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi — violent attacks on the Sikh community that followed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination — she began to see echoes of Partition everywhere.

That reflection pushed her to ask: Why, as a child of Partition, had I never truly listened to these human stories? And so began her journey into oral history.

Purana Qila (old fort), is not just a monument, but was a shelter for thousands waiting to cross into Pakistan. Image source/flickr (Adam Groffman)/amc

She described how this work transformed the way she saw the city she grew up in: familiar landmarks suddenly looked different. Refugee colonies, once invisible to her, came into sharp focus — Kingsway Camp (a historic locality in Delhi), was once a sea of tents; Purana Qila, not just a monument, but a shelter for thousands waiting to cross into Pakistan.

Her research also brought home difficult truths — stories of sexual violence, abduction, and survival that were buried deep within families. Some women carried the weight of silence for decades, even as they raised children born out of abuse. Yet others, through trauma, found new independence as the state rehabilitated widowed and displaced women, training them in work like stitching uniforms for government employees. “It was not just negative,” Butalia reflected. “For many women, Partition opened up wings — though it took trauma for them to live something closer to normal.”

One of her most personal stories came from interviewing her own uncle, who had stayed back in Pakistan. His choice severed him from the family for more than 40 years. “There was so much bitterness and anger over the choices he made,” she shared, reminding us of how one decision could define an entire life — and ripple through generations.

Children at play in the vast grounds attached to the Kingsway barracks where refugees from West Punjab found a shelter. Image source/Wikimedia (Government of India, photo division)/amc

Partition in Literature, Archives, and Memory

From Butalia’s stories, the discussion widened to how Partition continues to be remembered — and contested — in literature and archives.

Wadhwa explained how the Sindhi community was particularly divided, not just geographically, but through script. Some champion the Perso-Arabic script, others push for Devanagari. Each choice carries questions of assimilation, identity, and belonging. For readers unfamiliar with Sindhi: it’s a language spoken widely in present-day Pakistan and by displaced communities in India, whose literary culture itself fractured after 1947. “Approaching Partition through books and book histories is important,” she said, urging people to ask, what is missing from the archive, and how can we make it accessible for future generations?

Jain added that storytelling — whether through literature, archives, pedagogy, or art — allows the next generation to not just inherit Partition uncritically, but to question and reinterpret it.

And today, memory-making has new mediums. Butalia pointed to projects in animation, art, and cross-country collaborations like This Side, That Side — a graphic anthology of Partition stories. Diaspora communities, she said, are increasingly reclaiming these stories in the UK, US, and beyond. Even viral advertisements — like Google’s tale of two grandfathers reconnecting across borders — carry forward the emotional weight of Partition.

The panelists agreed: Partition is not just history. It is lived, retold, and reshaped constantly — through archives, diaries, blogs, social media, and the everyday act of remembering.

Calls to Remember

As the discussion closed, both panelists left the audience with appeals that felt deeply personal.

Wadhwa urged listeners to not simply consume her projects or archives passively, but to contribute. “Ask yourself what is not there, how you could make it more accessible. Don’t just listen to my narrative. Create your own — write a blog, help digitise scripts, contribute in ways that excite you.”

Butalia’s appeal was more intimate: “History lives in all of our families. Talk to your parents, your grandparents. What of their histories can you recover through conversations, through their belongings?”

She ended with a memory of her first visit to Lahore, Pakistan. While shopping, she spoke Punjabi to the shopkeeper — a language widely shared across northern India and Pakistan. Another man in the store overheard her speaking a dialect that came from his homeland. He left before she reached the counter, but when she went to pay, the shopkeeper told her the man had already covered her bill. He had done so, the shopkeeper explained, as a gesture of love for his homeland — moved by hearing his mother tongue spoken by a stranger.

It was a small act, but a powerful reminder: even across borders, language, memory, and belonging remain deeply intertwined.

Why It Matters

Listening to this conversation, I realised that Partition is not just about the past. It’s about how we carry memory in the present, and how we pass it on. We have all seen the images of partition like the one here (source-wikimedia/amc). But now, one could take a step back and try to find stories behind these photos - speak to partition survivors, their families, or visit the partition museums and learn about the forgotten or lost objects during the partition.

For me, Independence Day will always mean the joy of celebration — flags, songs, and patriotism. But now it also carries a quieter reminder: that freedom and Partition were two sides of the same coin. That behind the numbers are stories of pain, survival, resilience, and hope. And that remembering them is not just the responsibility of historians, but of all of us.

-Asia Media Centre