Her family fled Pakistan for India in 1947. Here’s what they left behind.
Every August, my countrymen and those of our neighbor Pakistan collectively rejoice.
After all, our shared Independence Day – testimony to the long and arduous struggle for independence from our British colonizers – is just cause for celebration. Yet, for a sizable section of the populace, this occasion is marred by the memory of the traumatic event that occurred alongside it: the brutal and reckless partition of the subcontinent into two nations, Muslim Pakistan and secular India, in August of 1947.
Growing up, I was drawn to the Partition portrayed in literature and movies. I knew millions were displaced or killed by the communal violence that erupted across the subcontinent, particularly in places like Punjab, where my family is from, which was divided
