Partition

Right now, in India you cannot listen to some of Talha Anjum’s song anymore. It’s such a trivial thing not being able to listen to Abdul Hannan or Umair’s songs in India right now post-Pahalgam. Most listeners were simply unaware of their favourite artist’s country of origin until they Lost being able to listen to them. With all the bigger, heavier things happening, it feels almost silly to complain about this. Is it really that far-fetched to trace it back to Partition? That one event drew a line so deep that even now, decades later, we feel it in the smallest ways, in music, in access, in silence. This is not about songs being unavailable. It's about how that old wound never really healed.

 

Partition is understood as a large political event, shaped by leaders like Nehru, Jinnah, and Gandhi, and marked by riots, refugee trains, and lines drawn on maps. These images are all part of the story, however what this essay want to explore is how partition affected not just politics but daily life, how it left behind traces in food, clothes, language, city names, and personal memories that are still today, even when the people and places have changed. What Partition tried to do with pens and politics, people kept undoing in kitchens, bazaars, bedrooms, and memory.

 

Partition was not something that most expected. People suddenly found themselves in the “wrong” country overnight. The British were leaving, and the country was to be divided into India and Pakistan. A line was drawn by a British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, who had never been to India before. He had just a few weeks to decide which areas would go to India and which to Pakistan. The line cut not just through farms and villages, but sometimes even Individual homes as seen in Chhanbey Village. The decision left millions confused about where they belonged. Around 10 to 15 million people crossed borders in both directions. Many did it because of fear or because they had no choice. Saadat Hasan Manto was one such person.

 

Google the legends name and he is presented to you as a Pakistani Writer, but that label is just false if one ever would read his work. He never utterly understood himself as Pakistani or hindustani, this consciousness of his own self was imposed on him and not his own. He was born in Ludhiana, grew up in Amritsar, and worked in Bombay. He only moved to Lahore in 1948, after Partition, and even then, it was not because he wanted to be part of Pakistan. He had been struggling with his mental health and money problems, and because of growing tensions in India, he made the move. But in his writing, he never really settled in Pakistan. He missed Bombay’s cafés, sea breeze, and lively debates. In one of his letters, he wrote, “I still feel as if I left my soul behind in Bombay.”  His stories from this time like Toba Tek Singh and Thanda Gosht are full of confusion and sadness. They are not just stories about Partition violence; they are about how hard it is to belong when everything familiar is gone. Manto did not think in terms of nations. He wrote in Urdu, a language shared across both countries, and he spoke for people who had been left behind by history. To call him just a “Pakistani writer” is to forget the entire world he lost.

 

Partition also affected things we do not always notice like food. Kundan Lal Gujral ran a restaurant in Peshawar before Partition. After moving to Delhi as a refugee, he reopened his place in Daryaganj. Food supplies were limited, and nothing could go to waste. He had leftover tandoori chicken, which would go dry if kept too long. So, he made a tomato-and-cream gravy to soften it. That is how butter chicken was born, not as a rich dish, but as a solution during troublesome times. The dish became famous later, but its origins are about migration, adjustment, and making do. Like many things after Partition, butter chicken became Indian, but its roots lie in a journey that crossed a broken border.

The same kind of story can be seen in textiles. In pre-Partition Punjab and Sindh, many women used to weave a cloth called Khes. It was thick cotton, used as bedding or shawls, often made at home. After 1947, the people who made khes were split. Muslim weavers moved to Pakistan, where the craft continued in villages. Hindu and Sikh families who came to India often carried khes with them as part of their dowries or family luggage. But in India, the craft didn’t survive as strongly. Today, khes is rarely made or seen in India, but in Pakistan, it is still found in parts of Sindh and southern Punjab. Exhibitions at the Partition Museum in Amritsar have shown khes pieces brought over during migration. They are simple fabrics, but they carry stories of home and displacement. khes crossed the border with its makers but didn’t return in shared recognition. It shows how even a simple item like a blanket can reflect the deeper story of cultural loss and shift in who preserves which traditions. Another example is Phulkari, the beautiful floral embroidery of Punjab. Before 1947, Phulkari was practiced across both East and West Punjab, by women stitching on handwoven khaddar cloth using bright silk threads. After Partition, this ecosystem broke. In India, many Phulkari styles and stitches were lost. In Pakistan, it survived in pockets but was no longer part of mainstream culture. Today, when Phulkari is sold in Indian markets or displayed in fashion shows, it is usually described as “Indian heritage.” But in truth, it belongs to both sides of Punjab. The fact that it is now claimed by one side reflects how Partition didn’t just divide people, it also divided ownership of memory and culture. Some stitches disappeared, some were renamed, and others were absorbed into national identities that never existed before 1947.

The Point the essay tries to make is How we do not give a second thought when told Manto was pakistani or phulkari Indian, and mostly rightly so however My attempt was to trace them back to their roots to pinpoint how flawed the binary of belonging to either India or Pakistan sometimes is. While both crafts were once part of everyday life in Punjab, Partition left them with very different afterlives.

Even place names can hold memories of Partition. In Lahore, there is a busy crossing called Laxmi Chowk, named after the Hindu goddess of wealth. Before Partition, it was a lively area with Hindu and Sikh businesses. The name came from the Laxmi Insurance Company, owned by Hindus. After 1947, most of the original residents left for India, but the name stayed. Today, Laxmi Chowk is full of cinemas and food stalls. There are no Hindu signs or temples left, but the name still marks the spot. On the other side, in Delhi, there’s a neighbourhood called Karol Bagh where many Partition refugees from Lahore settled. Some had lived near Laxmi Chowk. So now, Laxmi Chowk exists in Pakistan, where it no longer reflects its name, and Karol Bagh exists in India, filled with people who remember Lahore. No government changed the names. They were not seen as important. But they stay like quiet reminders that cities and memories do not always follow political borders.

 

Even radio, something many don’t think about, was deeply affected by Partition. Before 1947, All India Radio (AIR) had stations in all major cities including Lahore and Peshawar. When Pakistan was formed, it did not have its own radio infrastructure. So, in the beginning, AIR continued to relay programs into Pakistan, including Jinnah’s speech announcing independence. This means India’s radio helped launch Pakistan’s first broadcast. Soon after, Radio Pakistan became independent, but for a few weeks, both nations used the same equipment, scripts, and even staff. It is a small detail, but it shows how connected everything was, and how hard it was to suddenly divide systems that had been built to work as one.

Another example of this overlap is seen in Karachi’s CP & Berar Society. It was created after Partition by Muslim migrants who came from Central Provinces and Berar around Nagpur in India. Though most of the original refugee families have moved out, the area still has reminders of its past. People use old Nagpur slang like “santra” for orange and remember the clay tiles used back home. The CP & Berar Society was more than just a housing colony; it was a memory map. People recreated not just homes, but also the language, habits, and rhythms of where they had come from. Even the way people spoke, joked, or cooked reflected Nagpur, not Karachi. Over time, many families moved out, and newer groups moved in, but small clues remain: a nickname, a type of tile, a phrase. These may seem like small details, but they reveal how Partition wasn’t just about where people ended up, it was about how they tried to carry “home” with them. 

 

The Sindhi Markets of Ulhasnagar are famous, seemingly innocent of a truth however most people don't know that it used to be a refugee camp. There’s a recorded incident from the Bombay port authority files where a Sindhi merchant returning from Dubai in 1951 was asked to show his Indian passport. He said, “India didn’t accept me, Pakistan threw me out. I’m just doing business.” He reportedly carried a British Indian-era business permit, with no country name listed. Port officials, unsure what to do, let him through unofficially on the logic that, “if he can pay customs, he must belong somewhere.” Unlike Punjabi Hindus or Bengali Hindus, Sindhi Hindus had no “state” waiting for them on the Indian side of the border. When Partition happened, Sindh became part of Pakistan, and nearly the entire Hindu population of Sindh (around 1.2 million people) left, mostly between 1947 and 1951. But here’s the twist: there was no Sindh in India. No linguistic zone, no cultural homeland, no administrative support system tailored to them. They didn’t have a Delhi or a Punjab to fall back on. This made their experience different from other Hindu migrants. They were urban, mostly traders and businessmen, and they left behind thriving towns like Hyderabad (Sindh), Karachi, and Shikarpur. In India, they were scattered- Ulhasnagar near Bombay, Gandhidham in Gujarat, parts of Jaipur, Indore, and Ajmer became pockets where Sindhi culture tried to take root. The Indian government didn’t recognise “Sindhi” as a major language at first. It wasn’t included in the Constitution’s list of official languages until 1967, after years of lobbying. This shows just how culturally unmoored Sindhi Hindus felt in their new country. With time, many Sindhi families lost touch with their language. Because there was no strong region to reinforce it, younger Sindhis began to speak Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, or whatever language was local. Sindhi language and script (Perso-Arabic or Devanagari) fell out of common use. Unlike Punjabis or Bengalis, Sindhis couldn’t retreat into a homeland for cultural reinforcement. Dishes like Sai Bhaji (spinach curry), Dal Pakwan, and Sindhi Koki became symbols of identity. Many Sindhi Hindus also follow Jhulelal, a community deity linked to the Indus River another memory now cut off by the border.

Unravelling Partition does not mean solving it. Partition was a big event, but its traces live in trivial things. To see them, we do not need grand theories. We just need to pay attention to what people carried with them both in their hands and in their hearts. For many, this wasn’t a decision made from ideology it was about safety, survival, or sheer panic. That’s what makes Partition so difficult to simplify: it wasn’t always about wanting a new nation but escaping the collapse of an old one. In that mess of migration, something remarkable happened: a second history got stitched together, not in textbooks, but in leftovers, heirlooms, and silences.