Lost & found, after 77 years
Along the Radcliffe Line drawn in August 1947 lie buried many hidden stories of Punjab’s Partition that are part of the living histories of South Asia. Some have been told, others remain untold. One incredible story — of violence, loss and final reunion — revealed itself recently in the remote border village of Bandala in Ferozepur. In this village, on the Tarn Taran road, en route to the Attari-Wagah border, lives Mahinder Singh Gill, a calm 87-year-old man with a troubled, silenced history, whom I met a few months ago.
Surrounded by affectionate granddaughters, he came across as a kind and restrained Sikh gentleman. Gradually, in subsequent meetings, Gill opened up about the horrors of 1947 and the ensuing trauma and dislocation that he experienced. He revealed that in the September 1947 carnage, he, a young boy, was separated from his Muslim family, his parents, four brothers and a sister, from the village of Bulloke in Zira tehsil of Ferozepur district. He disclosed that his father’s name was Chiragh Din, a village headman (nambardar) of two villages belonging to the Bhatti Rajputs, and his mother’s name was Fatima. Gill was 10 years old in 1947.
During the turmoil, he recalled, he was brutally separated from his beloved and protective father, who was holding his hand, while he saw his younger sister drown in the canal. The young lad was brought to Bandala village on the Punjab border, where he was raised by Sikh parents. Gill revealed unequivocally that his original name was Muhammad Shafi. His new parents named him Mahinder Singh Gill. And after that, he quietly settled into a new life in the eastern Punjab borderlands.
The separated family could never meet. After September 1947, there was no trace, no information. Seventy-seven years passed by. Gill wasn’t sure if his family was still alive, he told me. His memory was razor sharp, his emotions raw and palpable. For weeks and months, the story kept repeating itself in my head. Muhammad Shafi or Mahinder Singh Gill? Or just plain Mahinder Shafi, as he often laughingly called himself.
Punjab’s Partition story is not the story of 1947 alone. It is also the long-lasting, erasing and excruciating impact of the Radcliffe Line, hastily drawn by the British judge Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who completed his work in 36 days. While the Award was discussed at the Partition Council meeting on August 16, 1947, the gazette notification was made only on August 17, when it became officially known as the Radcliffe Award. This was two days after India’s Independence.
The public announcement of the Radcliffe Award on August 17 triggered another spiral of relentless and altogether different violence in Punjab. On both sides of the newly created border, many were still not sure whether to leave their pind (village), home, or watan. The finality of the line between India and Pakistan, even though officially announced, had not fully sunk in. Uncertainty, fear and doubt stalked the region for six to eight months. While procedures for evacuation and rehabilitation of refugees were being put in place by the respective countries, the ground reality was different. Ordinary people’s lives lay in the eye of the storm of changing boundaries.
The all-too-sudden boundary displacements and movements were completely unplanned, undecided and unrecorded. Many didn’t even know which side of the border their pind or thana (police station) was located until disaster and death struck. They were caught in the horrific storm of uncertainty that led to the sudden and fearful carnage and exodus in the Punjab border region.
In the late monsoon and early winter months of 1947, unprecedented violence struck East and West Punjab. This period of frenzy and mayhem led to many people crossing the border, while others were unable or unwilling to do so. Muhammad Shafi’s life, like that of many others, was completely ravaged during this time of border creation and turmoil.
The chaotic effect of the August 1947 Boundary Commission Award is well illustrated by the fate of the Ferozepur and Zira tehsils. Earlier said to be allocated to Pakistan, Ferozepur came to India in the final award and became a border district of East Punjab.. This part of the official history is well known. But the fact that these new cartographies left people utterly confused in September 1947 and thereafter is probably not fully recognised. The dismantling of the bonds of family, community and village in the months to follow was unparalleled. Mahinder Singh Gill’s testimony is one among several forgotten stories of cartographic violence following the Radcliffe Award. The month of September has special significance in Mahinder Singh Gill’s life. It’s an auspicious month of Assu (the seventh month of the desi Punjabi calendar) and marks Sangrand, the beginning of a new month, a time of gratitude and devotion among Punjabis. But this was also the month when the young Mahinder Singh, then Muhammad Shafi, was separated from his family during the horrific mass migration of 1947. From August that year and more so from September onwards, lakhs of people crossed the border from East Punjab to West Punjab, and vice versa.
For me, too, the month of September holds a special significance. Last month, by chance, I found a Pakistani Punjabi YouTube channel by the name of ‘Sanjhe Wele’ (The Age of Unity). To my amazement, there was a video interview with Muhammad Shafi’s lost family — his two brothers and their children — in Pakistan by Abbas Khan Lashari, entitled “Veer di Udeek” (Waiting for the Brother). The interview revealed that one Muhammad Shafi was tragically separated from his parents, Chiragh Din and Fatima, and brothers in Bulloke village in Ferozepur district in 1947. As the interview continued, the fact that the octogenarian brothers were still looking for Muhammad Shafi was enough to make me pause the video and replay it. This was unbelievable. How could it be true? The stark truth and testimony, like many other testimonies, had lain hidden all these 77 years!
I contacted Abbas Khan Lashari through his YouTube channel. He again narrated the lost brothers’ version of events, which matched Gill’s testimony. Lashari emphasised that they had been looking for Muhammad Shafi all these years!
On Friday, September 13, the historic Punjab Mail from Mumbai to Ferozepur was delayed by eight hours. Yet, I was determined to board it. The trip could not be cancelled, come what may. Another meeting with Gill was absolutely essential, and Lashari confirmed an online reunion between Gill and his long-lost family. Throughout the train journey, I was nervous. What would happen? Would I be able to make it? Would Gill meet me? How will he react to this astonishing news of his family now being finally traced?
Reaching Ferozepur after a prolonged train journey, the road trip to Bandala village the next day was long and tense. But there was excitement, too. Accompanied by Iqbal Singh, my taxi driver, I realised that Bandala was just 3 miles from the international border. But these 3 miles were too great a distance to be crossed in 77 years! Gill could never cross the nearby Amritsar-Attari border or the Hussainiwala border. The indelible Radcliffe Line drawn on the map was inviolable and irrevocable.
On reaching Bandala, the giant door to Mahinder Singh Gill’s house opened. This time, as I entered, my eyes were moist. Abbas Khan Lashari from Pakistan Punjab had arranged a Zoom meeting with Mahinder Singh Gill’s family members, presently living in Nankana Sahib (Pakistan). One brother had died, but his son was all too keen to talk to his Chacha. The younger brother was seriously ill, and the eldest brother had almost lost his hearing. The astonishing news had been broken to them. The next generation of the family was equally excited to meet their uncle Muhammad Shafi. Lashari informed me that they had been told by their fathers that Shafi got lost as a small boy in the 1947 carnage.
While seated with his family, I gave my phone to connect for the Zoom meeting. We were all prepared, and the meeting began. Mahinder Singh Gill was informed that his pre-Partition family had been traced. Lashari delivered the news to him. Gill broke down. Later, his expressions were difficult to understand. He looked shocked, but was also smiling and composed; he wanted to know more. He was jubilant and yet inconsolable. His eyes were longing, waiting. Echoes of surprise and sighs of ‘Shafi’, ‘Shafi’ from brothers and cousins across the border were loud enough to break the barbed wires of the Radcliffe Line. Tears, shouts, and laughter followed. The momentous reunion could not be captured in words. Words lost their meaning. Tears and expressions said it all. However, the full story slowly emerged, bit by bit, picking up the threads of the missing narrative of a divided family and joining the dots in the vanished, absent story. The truth, spoken and unspoken, finally came out in these broken testimonies.
We discovered that little Shafi was shifted from village to village many times. The young lad was first taken to Padhri village, near Makhu town, and eventually brought to Bandala in the border region after September 1947. His lost family made several unsuccessful attempts to locate him. “Veer di Udeek”, a sentiment poignantly captured by Lashari in ‘Sanjhe Wele’, became an integral part of their everyday existence, despite being told many times that Muhammad Shafi had died.
But history retaliates. History and memory can allow us to recapture the past. A small boy now aged 87 meeting his family via Zoom for half an hour was worth the wait of 77 years! As fate would have it, this child, whose family split up in September 1947, was going to reunite with them in September 2024. They looked forward to the second online connection the following day. Unfortunately, due to poor Internet connectivity, they could not meet.
Mahinder Singh Gill, sitting in Bandala, Ferozepur, was desperate to reach out. So was his separated family in Nankana Sahib in Pakistan Punjab. Gill just wanted to see the faces of his brothers and nephews. “Relation and blood are thicker than religion” (“Rishta rishta hi hunda hai, mazhab nahi hunda hai. Khoon, khoon hi hunda hai).” The bond of love was communicated through a universal and eternal language of peace, hope, healing, harmony, and shared feelings and emotions. Villagers on both sides of the border connected, cried and celebrated this family reunion. A physical reunion between Mahinder Singh Gill and his family in Pakistan is awaited. The Kartarpur corridor is not far. Nor is Nankana Sahib.
The writer teaches Modern Indian History at JNU, New Delhi
