Strictly Anita’s tears for relatives killed in the post-Raj bloodshed
ANITA RANI has been reduced to tears by the discovery of her family’s fate during the violence that consumed India at the end of British rule.
The Strictly Come Dancing star’s grandfather was caught in the conflict during the partition of the Raj between India and Pakistan in 1947.
His first wife was killed, but until taking part in Who Do You Think You Are? Miss Rani knew little of her fate.
In the programme, Miss Rani breaks down as she learns that Sant Singh’s wife Primtam Kaur died after falling to the bottom of a well. It is not known if the 25-year-old was pushed or threw herself to her death to avoid a worse fate.
Miss Rani was even more shocked to learn that Primtam and Sant had a seven-year-old daughter who also died in the bloodshed. The TV presenter had previously not known of the girl’s existence. She said: ‘Nobody in my family talks about the daughter. Nobody knows this. I don’t know what I am going to do but this has changed me.’ Bradford-born Miss Rani learns the family, who were Sikhs, lived in an area of the Punjab which found itself in the newly-created Muslim Pakistan.
This meant they were at the epicentre of the bloody religious rivalry which characterised the end of British rule in India. Singh was a soldier in the Anglo-Indian army and powerless to defend his family as he was stationed 1,000 miles away.
In one harrowing scene, Rani speaks with an 84year-old survivor who recalls watching his own father behead his sisters, rather than have them violated by Muslim neighbours.
He also recalls how 86 women took their lives by throwing themselves in a well.
Fighting back tears and switching between English and Hindi, she says: ‘It’s so cruel. I’m horrified.’