Partition, memory and trauma: Voices of Punjabi refugee migrants in Lahore and Amritsar

Abstract

The article draws on first-hand accounts of the violence, migration and resettlement which accompanied the 1947 division of the subcontinent. The testimonies were provided by members of refugee families in the neighbouring Pakistani and Indian cities of Lahore and Amritsar. These former ‘twin cities’ were demographically and culturally transformed by the drawing of the Punjab boundary line between them. The interviews which were conducted in Punjabi and English are supported by documentary sources from this period. The oral testimonies reveal the common experiences, hopes and fears of all communities caught up in the upheaval which accompanied the division of the subcontinent. The determination to start afresh, despite unconscionable loss, is a feature of many of the accounts. They also reveal ambivalence regarding the role of the state in the resettlement process. Finally, there are hints of the differential class and gender-based experience of uprooting.