Remembering India’s Partition, one act of courage at a time
As a survivor of Partition – the chaotic and violent cleaving in August 1947 of British colonial India into two independent states – Nirmal Singh might be excused or even pitied if he were bitter, or sad, or still traumatized today by events he says came close to snuffing out his young life.
But as Hindu-majority India and mostly Muslim Pakistan prepare to mark the 75th anniversary of Partition on Aug. 15, the nonagenarian retired Indian army colonel is spending time in his New Delhi home remembering – and cherishing – the moments that convinced him as a 16-year-old Sikh boy of “humanity’s goodness.”
Above them all is the memory of the Hindu woman who put her own family in great danger by hiding Mr. Singh and his siblings in her second-class compartment on a train headed from the Pakistani to the Indian side of the new border.
When Mr. Singh foolishly cracked
