Based on 1951 Census of displaced persons, 72,26,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 72,49,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after Partition. It was the biggest migration ever of the world to which these people bear a raw witness.
These refugees saw all the raw horrors–massacres, rapes and plundering with their own eyes. Having been through all those nightmares, and sustained the tough times, these families, now well settled talk to Ashok Kumar of Expressindia.com.
?I was barely twenty years old when I crossed the Indian border as a refugee,? recalls Gurcharan Das, 86-year-old refugee whose well built seems to fly in the face of his old age. This man who came from Pakistan?s Lahore feels sorry about the state of affairs in those times in Pakistan and want to forget all those memories. ?We lost our lands and our house while coming to India. We have forgotten everything (times during Partition). It is a cruel place (Pakistan). During Partition I have witnessed many trains full of dead bodies. The atrocities on them (people who migrated) were unimaginable.?
Another Octogenarian Ramji who turned 84 this year begs an excuse to talk anything of the past as he adds that such times (Riots during partition) should not come in anyone?s life. ?Talk of today, forget the past. In those times it was massacre everywhere. We pray to the almighty that such times (Riots during Partition) are never repeated.?
Septuagenarian Baldev Singh says he was merely eighteen years old when he left his place in Sialkot (now in Pakistan) for India. ?I came along with my mother. We had to walk 17 days to reach Amritsar. We did not have anything except the clothes on our bodies. When Gandhi died, we were in Patna. We took to whatever work we could lay our hands on, but did not compromise with our honesty and integrity,? asserts Singh.
He proudly mentions that his locality was the only camp out of others who denied any help which came their way and have written their destinies by their own hard work and determination. His eyes shines with pride when he says that he is no more a refugee now. ?I am not a refugee now, I am like any other Indian.?
Showing a sense of content the proud Sikh says that they have shouldered all the responsibilities of a family and are now content with their lives in India and have completely forgotten Pakistan and says that he does not wish to visit his ancestral place in Pakistan ? We have lived our lives. We just don?t want to go back to those places (ancestral places in Pakistan).?
Seventy two year old Pindi Das is stoic in his feelings for his abandoned home in Pakistan. He recalls how military trucks came to pick them up from their places and how they were ferried till the border. Coming from Gujranwala district of Pakistan, this man says he got his family well settled in this country.
As he says, ?When we reached Amritsar, we had to live in tents. But the bad times are over as now we own two restaurants in Delhi which are doing fairly well.? Maintaining that he has no grouse against the people of Pakistan where they had lost all their property he asserts, ?Yes, I am still a refugee here but we can?t forget our ancestral land. I don?t mind people still calling me a refugee. We have got our children well settled and are happy now.?
But seventeen-year-old teenager Priyanka, a third generation of this refugee family objects if she is referred to as a refugee, as she elaborates, ? I feel bad if somebody called me a refugee. Why should anyone refer to me as a refugee, when I have born and brought up here.?
But Sushila Dutta from the same family who represents the second generation of the migrated families feels no attachment with their ancestral roots in Pakistan. ?Why should we feel (an attachment to Pakistan) any such thing, when we have nothing to do with that country. I am an Indian born and hence feel myself like any other Indian.?
Seventy-two year old Deva Rani who was born in Multan (now in Pakistan), faintly recalls that she was around twelve years old at the time of Partition (of India and Pakistan). ?I came with my parents and the first place we got settled in this country was Jalandhar. After that I was married to a Delhi based person and I came here (to Delhi).?
Narrating about the turbulent circumstances when they left for India she can dimly recalls of having boarded a train from Pakistan. ?People were killing each other. We could carry only cash and nothing else. My mother started crying while leaving Pakistan. She said, how could we leave our house behind. We had everything there, orchards, fields.? Adding how her father started a new life in India by starting a Kirana shop.
Another eyewitness to the riots (during India-Pak partition), 67-year-old Surjeet Kaur recalls that she was just seven years old in 1947. She gets lost while recounting how in those trying times she not only lost her only brother but her parents also. ?My parents were left there (in Pakistan) and I don?t really know what happened to them. I crossed the border with a couple who had two daughters. They took care of me until I was married.?
She goes on to add how she was married at an early age of twelve. Surjeet who now seems content with her children who takes good care of her says she lost her husband twelve years back. ?Me and my husband used to run a restaurant. He passed away more than a decade back.?
Surjeet says though she has no concern with their ancestral home in Pakistan, on certain occasions such as festivals, she feels the pain in the heart for her missed parents. She intends to live with her children as long as she lives and has no intentions of going back to Pakistan, even for once. ?I will live and die here (India)?, reminds the lady with a conviction.
One more second-generation face of the refugees, 57-year-old Ashwani Kumar Talwar, whose family came from Sargodha district of Pakistan, recalls of coming to Ambala first before settling in Delhi. Talwar has many stories of how his extended family got scattered and then found back some of the lost members, a fate which most of the families which bore the brunt of riots have to face.
Mr. Talwar says he has no intentions at all of going back to his ancestral home in Pakistan. ?I don?t want to go there (in Pakistan). Even our (Indian) ambassadors are not safe there, what to talk of the common man like me.? Talwar makes his disappointment towards the politicians and police when he says, ?Politicians of the present day are really getting on our nerves. Once, I had to pay a bribe of Rs 6000 to lodge an FIR for the theft case.
Kishan Lal who is now 60 year old says that he was born in Jalandhar, though his parents came to India as refugees. ?I realized this (refugee status of the family), when I was twelve years old. But we don?t regret leaving Pakistan?, he emphasizes.
His 33-year-old son, who is the face of second generation, does not want himself to be called a refugee. He laments that the place they have been living since their arrival in India, is still not their ?own? and reminds him of his refugee status, as he puts ?My grandfather was a refugee, my father is also a refugee, even I don?t have a problem being referred to as a refugee, but certainly, I don?t want my son to give this refugee tag.?