Establishment of mental asylum in Amritsar necessitated by Partition

Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 14

While recounting the tales of horror and “madness” during the Partition of the country in 1947, comes up the plight of psychiatric patients at various hospital. These patients, who were later divided on religious lines, do not find mention in the history books and public discourses.

Bishen Singh, a fictional character of a short story Toba Tek Singh, written by Saadat Hasan Manto, is one such person who died on the “no man’s land” while being shifted to Amritsar. “Trauma of displacement” would be the term how psychiatrists would define his fear. Singh did not want to leave his birth place in Pakistan.

While Manto immortalised his character’s pain and agony in his iconic story, not many would know that a total of 450 mentally challenged persons were shifted from the Punjab Mental Hospital in Lahore to what was then a building of Department of Criminal Tribes here.

At present, the place is known as Vidya Sagar Institute of Mental Health, a premier institute for psychiatric patients in North India.

Of these persons, 317 were repatriated from Mental Hospital in Lahore and 133 from Sindh and Peshawar. Of the total 450, 282 Punjabi patients were admitted to the Amritsar Mental Hospital, the necessity of which was felt by the likes of Mountbatten even before India attained freedom.

On July 31, 1947, Mountbatten in his daily diary wrote, “One of the few institutions that will not be partitioned immediately is the Punjab Mental Hospital. It will continue to be shared for some years. Some Hindu inmates of the asylum have protested against being left behind in Pakistan. They have been assured that their fears are imaginary.”

During the first three years following the August 15, 1947, only 317 out of the total 650 inmates at the mental asylum managed to survive. While the Sikh and Hindu employees of the Lahore hospital left in 1947 as per the new political boundaries, sick patients had no such choice. As per reports, 210 of these patients died due to various diseases in the year 1947.

The official records reveal that of the total 450 patients shifted to Amritsar by 1950, except for 282 Punjabis rest were shifted to Ranchi.