Families torn apart at stroke of a pen

AUGUST 14 brings deep sadness to the collective memory of our family. At midnight, August 14, 1947, India rightly celebrated freedom from colonial rule.

The following day, boundaries for partition were announced. Freedom at Midnight gave way at dawn to legislated dispossession, mass migration, mindless slaughter and unreasoned savagery.

India’s tryst with destiny was exactly that for our family and millions of others of every race and creed. In my family’s household in Lahore and in my father’s regiment, the 16th Punjab, previously harmonious inter-religious and interrace relationships were, with the stroke of a pen of political leaders, destroyed and replaced with legislated frenetic and murderous hatred.

Ours was just one family among millions who had to make the perilous trip by overcrowded train to escape, our father beating off the violence to protect us; my three Indian born siblings and my mother, eight months pregnant with me.

We survived. Nearly one million did not. August marks 70 years of partition that even Gandhi could not stop, and in consequence 70 years of escalating nuclear capability and armed conflict between India and Pakistan, and ongoing destruction of the lives of millions of ordinary people. A sobering thought about political responsibility.