It has been seven decades since the British colonial rulers left India and partitioned the country into two, displacing 10 to 15 million people, splitting families and prompting refugees to migrate all over the world.
The two independent countries of India and Pakistan – the former majority Hindu, the latter the world’s first Islamic republic – were established at midnight on 14 August 1947. “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom,” announced Nehru, India’s first prime minister.
Violence broke out among the chaos of the mass migration as millions of Muslims moved from areas marked inside India’s boundaries to west and east Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and millions of Hindus moved from those areas to India.
“Foot caravans of destitute refugees fleeing the violence stretched for 50 miles and more,” wrote Nisid Hajari, author of Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition. “As the peasants trudged along wearily, mounted guerrillas burst out of the tall crops that lined the road and culled them like sheep.”
Share your memories
We would like to hear the stories of those affected by the partition in order to gain a sense of what happened during that time. Share your family memories, letters and photographs in the form below, anonymously if you prefer – and we will feature some of them in our reporting. If you would like to send documents or several photographs you can do so by emailing guardian.witness@theguardian.com