A Take on Education, Migration, and Immigration...What Connects America to the World and Why

Issue 7: August 15, 2021, Fault lines

August 15 is marked by much pomp and pageantry in India, a day of celebrating the country’s independence from British rule in 1947. As a school child I dutifully saluted the bold tricolor flag as it unfurled and released rose petals, and as we all stood at attention, singing the national anthem in unison. Yet for much of my young adulthood, I did not fully grasp that behind the nationalistic pride of August 15 was a history of deep fractures and fault lines, when two nations were cleaved from one. On the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, almost five million Hindus and Sikhs were displaced and forced out of the newly formed Pakistan—including my father’s family—while 5.5 million Muslims fled what became a Hindu-majority India. By the time the most tumultuous and violent phase of the Partition was over, more than fifteen million people had been displaced—the largest forced migration of its kind in modern history—and a couple of million had died in massacres or in their attempts to flee.

Just as the memory and narrative of the Holocaust is central to the identity of modern Jewish families in the US, the story of the Partition is woven into the fabric of many Punjabi families’ lives in post-independence India, especially those settled in Delhi. Following the Partition, a city that was once the seat of power of Muslim and British Empires was remade into a vast refugee colony, providing a haven to almost half a million Hindus who fled Pakistan.

But despite the magnitude and horrors of the Partition and the role it played in displacing so many Indian families, rendering them refugees, I barely knew anything about it growing up. Other than a handful of films and books such as Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, the Partition and its aftermath didn’t occupy a place in the social awareness of my generation in India. There seemed to be a carefully maintained silence about it and we didn’t fully understand the histories of where our grandparents had come from or have a sense of how the ravages of this forced migration—where all was lost—had affected generations to come. It has made me wonder over the years whether this was an attempt to erase it from our collective memory?

After coming to the U.S. and learning more about harrowing episodes in recent human history such as the Holocaust, I realized how little I knew about the Partition. I slowly began to piece together my family’s history by asking my grandmother about it during my visits back home. I learned how my grandparents fled Lahore with three children, carrying only what would fit in a few bundles and small trunks. My father, the oldest child, had barely any clothes—everything had been left behind except for what he was wearing the night they fled.

My grandmother made do the best she could: she would alter my grandfather’s discarded trousers for my father, and when he outgrew them, she would alter them again, shortening them for the next boy in line. Nothing was ever wasted or discarded. But even after things improved for the Bhandari family, the sense of frugality and impending loss never seemed to go away, and my grandmother continued to collect and hold on to things. Despite everything she had surrounded herself with, despite the comfortable life she eventually came to lead in Delhi, she could never reclaim what she had lost in her journey as a refugee. As Delhi began to overflow with thousands of refugees, my grandmother realized that she would never see Lahore again. The city was lost to her forever; there was no going back, no reclaiming of places or moments.

I had left home to learn more about America, but leaving India had helped me understand my own country’s history better. I am not alone in this realization. Guneeta Singh Bhalla, founder of The 1947 Partition Archive which has recently amassed and preserved over 9,300 oral histories from those who witnessed the events of 1947, has this to say: "The 1947 Partition Archive couldn’t have been initiated in India. Being in the diaspora, I was unburdened by the identity politics that are so prevalent and mostly inescapable in South Asia today. I was an Indian American, looking to serve my homeland and looking to learn a bit more about my own heritage from a blank and unbiased lens."

Rajika

Essential reading about the Partition

If you are interested in reading more about the Partition, I consider these books to be essential references.

• Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh. This remains one of the earliest and most important accounts of the Partition by veteran Indian journalist and author, Khushwant Singh.
• Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa. Another classic, Cracking India was also made into a must-see film, Earth, by the Indian Canadian director, Deepa Mehta.
• Midnight's Furies: The deadly legacy of India's Partition by Nisid Hajari. A masterful non-ficiton account that was on many "best book" lists in 2015.
• Remnants of a Separation by Aanchal Malhotra. I love this book because it tells the story of the Partition through objects that were lost and found and that remained even though families were split apart.

Five Highlights & Top Picks

• DREAMing out loud: Voices of Migrant Writers Volume 3: From PEN America comes this third anthology of writings by PEN America’s tuition-free writing workshop series for young undocumented and immigrant writers in New York City. Also listen to the podcast here.
• Did you know that August is Women in Translation Month (#WiT)? Check out this virtual reading series that PEN America is organizing this month, and also this recommended reading list put together by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.
• Congratulations to the winners of the International Association of College Admission Counseling giveaway! I shared with you in my last newsletter that I was a keynote speaker at this year's International ACAC conference and we also ran a giveaway for my book and I am delighted to announce the winners today: Jose Olavo (Brazil); Damien Tomkins (China); Xue Yan, Oresta Felts and Amanda Gearhart (U.S.). Winners, please stay tuned for more information!