At midnight on 14/15 August 1947, the largest recorded forced migration began. Millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were forced to journey hundreds of miles, with many experiencing brutal violence, as the Indian subcontinent was divided into two independent nation states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Communities that had coexisted for a thousand years succumbed to an eruption of sectarian violence. More than a million people were killed and between 10 and 12 million people were displaced along religious lines.
‘I was the only one of my family to survive’ – Nasim Fatima Zubairi, 82, retired foster carer, UK
My last memory before seven members of my immediate family were killed is looking through a keyhole in our house and seeing my father praying, with my two-year-old brother crying in the background. I was hit over the head and I still have a scar from the attack. My father, mother, grandmother and four brothers and sisters were all killed. I was the only one of my family to survive.
Before the partition I had a very happy childhood in Karol Bagh, in Delhi. It was a Hindu area, so as Muslims we couldn’t leave the house. Our neighbours were Sikh and they had said they would protect us. But that didn’t happen … in fact, it was the Sikh neighbours who attacked us.
‘We didn’t have roots’ – Vijay, 60, UK, retired GP
My family are Hindu, and my father would have been in his mid-20s and my mother in her late teens when partition happened.From my mother there was a huge sense of loss. It wasn’t until the last five years – she’s now 86 – that she was able to talk about her childhood. Before that it was a blank wall, as if her childhood hadn’t happened.
Speaking to uncles and aunts of a similar age, their lives before 1947 were blanked out. Their lives started again in the weeks and months after independence and there was a great sense of deprivation, of denial. My cousins and I were brought up not-knowing; we didn’t have roots.
The partition explains one of the waves of Indian immigration to the UK and America in the late 1950s early 1960s. Even when we came to the UK, our parents didn’t talk about their lives before the partition. Now, I feel I have nothing to offer my son and daughter of my parents’ family stories.
English 
Hindi