Transcending Borders through Oral History
Pictured: The 1952 passport issued to Anil Kumar Kundu. Image courtesy Sumallya Mukhopadhyay by Sumallya Mukhopadhyay It is a well-established fact that the 1947 Partition of South Asia displaced a huge number of individuals and families who, after the redrawing of the cartographic map, sought refuge in regions where their co-religionists were the […]
Sisterhood in the Storm: Women’s Solidarity and Resistance During Partition
Student researcher Deepika Rani discovers surprising findings on the experiences of women during Partition, which challenge mainstream narratives. She also makes intriguing comparisons to her own journey as an immigrant South Asian women who left home at a young age. Recently, she connected with Fahad Nahvi, our Digital Public Histories Curator, to answer […]
Syed Babar Ali
Story: One and one don’t make two, but 11. Hence if we are together, we can be much greater than two. We, the people of South Asia, especially India and Pakistan, can be 11 if we have the right attitude towards each other. I was born in Lahore in 1926 to Syed Maratib Ali and […]
Tarlochan Singh
Story: I was born in 1933, in the village Dhudial, then in District Jhelum, (about 80 kilometres from the modern city of Islamabad), with a 5% Sikh population. Former Indian Prime Ministers, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral, were also from the same district. My father’s name was Sardar Balwant Singh and my […]
Ajit Jaswant Singh
Story: I was born in 1926 in Mianwali Bangla, Daska Tehsil, in the Sialkot District of West Punjab. My father, Tarlok Singh, was an accounting officer in Lahore, and my mother, Balwant Kaur, was a homemaker. I have two sisters and a brother. I completed my high school education in a government school in Lahore, […]
Patrick Nicholas Sequeire
Story: I was also called Patty and was born in 1926 on Sumsay Estate, Connoor, Mysore (now Mysuru). My family members were tea makers, and I spent my childhood in the tea and coffee estates. I never saw myself working in the tea estate. I recall the process of collecting tea leaves and sending them […]
Maryam Babar
Story: I was born in 1941 in Hyderabad to a Scottish-Indian family, and named Maryam Haqqani. I was called Munni at home by my family when I was little. My father was a powerful landlord, the cousin of Laiq Ali, the Prime Minister of Hyderabad at the time. My mother, Eva Matthew Watt, was a […]
Narinder Singh Kapany
Story: I was born in 1926 to Sardar Sunder Singh and Kundan Kaur in my mother’s village of Moga in Punjab. I grew up in Dehradun, where I attended Presbyterian School until college. In 1951 I went to England for a Ph.D. in the field of solid state physics, where I coined the term “fiber […]
Naseem Mirza Changezi
Story: I was born in 1910 in my ancestral home at Pahari Imli, near Churi Walan in Jama Masjid, Old Delhi. I was a freedom fighter and fought alongside my contemporaries, such as Bhagat Singh and Rajguru, against colonial powers. I have been profiled and documented numerous times by leading scholars and academics for my […]
Feroza Khatun
Story: My name is Feroza Khatun and I was born in 1934 in the village of Ghono Shyampur near the town of Godagari, in Rajshahi District. The house I lived in was large. My father was a rich farmer and my family’s expenses were paid by the land. My family practiced Islam, and we had […]