Anita Rani I discovered my grandfather’s secret
The trauma of Partition 70 years ago was felt by many. TV presenter Anita Rani only recently discovered how badly her family was affected
Earlier this year, my mother and I made a journey to a basic house in a small village in Pakistan. Its furnishings were sparse and its contents few. The bare concrete of the walls and floor were rough and unadorned. This was the house where my grandfather lived.
Like many British Asians, my grandparents lived through Partition in 1947. But when I was growing up in Bradford in the Eighties, my family rarely spoke about the past, and I had no idea how much it had affected our history. It was not until two years ago, when I was invited to appear on the BBC One show Who Do You Think You Are?, that I uncovered the deeply personal and moving story of my maternal grandfather, Sant Singh, and the family he lost in that time, when India declared independence from the British Empire and split to create Pakistan and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.
I never met this grandfather, but my mum’s adoring stories about him painted a vivid picture. I’d always known he had been married to another woman before he married my grandmother, and that he’d had a child from this first marriage. I knew that he later married my grandmother in an arranged marriage when she came over from Burma in the Fifties, and that together they had four daughters, among them my mum. I knew that neither his first wife, nor their child, had survived Partition. But he had never spoken about the horrific violence surrounding their death.
His silence was not uncommon. There was, it seems, almost a collective unspoken decision among the generation who experienced the events of 1947 not to talk about what they’d been through. It had been a barbaric period that left 1 million dead and 15million displaced. People who had lived side by side for generations as friends and neighbours turned on each other in the most brutal fashion, and thousands of women were abducted, from all sides – Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. But in many cases the trauma was repressed.
Only now are third generation descendants like me beginning to explore their family’s tragic history. My own journey of discovery started two years ago, when I learned that while my grandfather was serving in the British Indian Army near Pune, more than 1,000 miles from Punjab where his family lived, all of them – his father, wife and two children (as it turned out) – died. Nobody knew what had happened to my grandfather’s wife, Pritam Kaur, her son Raj, and six-year-old daughter Mahrinda, whose existence I had never even known about. It was likely, I was told, that the son was slaughtered alongside my great-grandfather, and that Pritam joined thousands of Indian women who jumped into the village well with their daughters to avoid being raped, murdered or abducted. Yet this appalling litany of horrors still left gaps in my family history. And so, to mark the 70th anniversary of Partition this year, I decided to find out more by visiting my grandfather’s village, in what is now Pakistan.
The trip is documented in the BBC programme My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947, which airs next week. In it, accompanied by mum, I find out the truth behind the death of my grandfather’s first family. Our arrival in Pakistan felt momentous: we were the first members of our family to set foot on this side of the border in 70 years. For so long I’d wanted to come here, yet I never had. From Lahore we travelled to Punjab, and into the area then known as Montgomery District and now called Sahiwal. After leaving the noise of the city, we found ourselves driving past fields of corn, where men and women laboured in the heat, until we arrived in the dusty village, which is now entirely Muslim, and where visitors like me and my mother are few and far between. The welcome, however, was warm.
The story I learned from speaking to people here was painful, and far more brutal than I’d realised. The village at the time was predominantly Muslim, and when Partition was decreed, the Muslim villagers grouped together to attack the Sikhs and Hindus.
When the fighting broke out, 1,500 Sikhs and Hindus barricaded themselves in a house owned by a wealthy Sikh man in a neighbouring village. There followed a three-day stand-off but, eventually, all were slaughtered. It’s likely my greatgrandfather and uncle died in that house, but a lot of women were abducted, so Pritam Kaur could have been among them. I’ll never really know what happened to her. Perhaps she did jump into a well with her daughter; or perhaps that was just a story people shared as it was a more “honourable” death than being kidnapped and raped. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that some parts of my family’s history are consigned to the past. My mother and I were lucky enough to speak to somebody who had been to school with my grandfather. His words will always stay with me. “The pain and suffering is something
‘Friends and neighbours turned on each other in the most brutal fashion’
‘I hope others will finally ask their grandparents what happened’
you’ll never understand,” he told me. “Only we know the loss of friendship.”
I can’t help but feel he’s right: for within two generations, life has changed drastically for women. I’m the first in a long line to have choice about my life, and I value my independence greatly. It’s because of the sacrifices made by my ancestors that I now live this life of privilege. We have come a long way since the time when it was normal for families to kill their women rather than let them be kidnapped and raped. The plight of these women affected me more than anything.
As for my grandfather, he lived through this but went on to be liberal and forward-thinking. He wrote a memoir in the Army – rare when men were typically stoic and reserved.
Fortunately such reserve is receding today. The silence surrounding heartbreaking histories of Partition is slowly being broken. Other British Asians have contacted me about my story, and confessed how little they knew about this bloody time. Many had similar stories. Now we are finding out the truth – or the truth as far as we can know it. I hope the conversation continues; that other families, who have struggled to talk about such things, will finally ask their grandparents what happened.
The story of Partition is not just mine; it’s the story of millions. It’s not just India’s and Pakistan’s story, it’s Britain’s – not only because of our involvement in the Raj, but because many of the ancestors of those who died there are here today.
My story is everyone’s story. It’s a stain on everyone’s history.
As told to Radhika Sanghani My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947 is on BBC One on Aug 9 and 16 at 9pm