How one girl saw Nehru’s message of hope lost in dark clouds over India

Amina Kidwai, 85

Amina Kidwai lives in Delhi and comes from an influential political family. Her uncle was Rafi Kidwai, a freedom fighter and a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru. Amina’s mother died when she was 10 and her father, a civil servant, was posted all over India for work, so Amina lived with her uncle in Lucknow.

“We had no television in those days, of course. So on the night of August 14, we all stayed up to hear Pandit-ji’s [Nehru’s] Tryst with Destiny speech on the radio. All of us had tears in our eyes. What a wonderful speech it was.

“The next day was a holiday, and everyone was happy, but there were discussions going on in our family about Pakistan and how the conditions of Partition were so bad.

“I remember going to Raj Bhavan [the seat of the local legislature] that day. There was a huge gathering – a lot of Lucknow’s elite.

“But they had a havan [a Hindu rite], and I wasn’t happy with the religiosity. India was born a secular country, after all.

“They had a maulvi [Muslim scholar] also, but the main emphasis was on the havan.

“Later in August, we moved to Delhi. [Rafi Kidwai was named minister for communications in India’s first government.] From our house, which is where the vice president of India now lives, we could see Connaught Place, Delhi’s shopping district, in flames. There was rioting everywhere.

“We knew a lot of Muslims so we told them to come over. The result was that they were camped in the complex of our house, and my uncle had to manage them until they could go on to Pakistan. One family stayed for four or five months. My uncle was a very hospitable man.

“Then women who my aunt had rescued started coming to the house. They had experienced terrible things. Some would come to us so devastated.

“The family tried to protect us, the youngsters, from all this, not wanting to make us religiously polarised.

“But it was horrifying. The riots were just terrible. My husband’s father was murdered. He was an administrator in Mussorie, and his job was to protect all the Muslims stranded there. One day the mobs decided to kill him because he was their stumbling block.

“Despite of all of this, no one in my family even thought of going to Pakistan. We belonged in India and we stayed here. Now, though, one feels cornered.”

As told to Samanth Subramanian