A former Under Secretary in Indian Government Offices and the Executive Director of one agency in Delhi has lots of stories of linear history including politics,econimics,history and other newly emerged issues in locality.A man who was raised in Sarojini Nagar Delhi ,has been permanent resident in Nehru Place still has lots of enthuasism towards daily life.A story of a such a man who can have good analysis of realities in society as a common man.
Surinder Soni, a legend , live story the then society.I remember how we used to listen him describing the narratives about the trains to Pakistan ,how his father reached to Lahore and returned with his parents to Sarojini Nagar being locked in train like a dead corpse and brought back his parents with help of his Brigedier Fufaji.I loved the narration of Lahor city ,which had lots of gold kept in basement as security.
The province of Punjab was never a Sikh
Majority - it was a Muslim majority though, Sikhs ruled over the areas
for long time. Only Ludhiana district of Punjab had a Sikh majority.After partition - the Indian Punjab became
Hindu majority. There were Sikh movements later which led to further
division of the states - where Hindu majority areas of Haryana and
Himachal Pradesh were separated - and Punjab now having a Sikh majority.Even so, Sikhs make about 60% of the population of that state, while Hindus, Muslims, and Christians make the remaining 40%.
It is unfortunate that Lahore the seat of
Sikh empire and Nankana Sahib - birthplace of Guru Nanak ji near it had a
Muslim majority and had to go to Pakistan. I remember the sad stories for long hours during winters with tea and I loved to question him lot.His eyes to be full of tears about such problematic experience of life he know train to Pakistans .It was 1947, and the border between the new nations of India and Pakistan had just been created.His family found themselves on the Indian side of the border.
The creation of India and Pakistan
prompted the biggest mass migration in human history, as Muslims who
were scattered across India and Hindus and Sikhs who were in Pakistan
desperately tried to make it to the other side of the border.As people fled their homes, a wave of violence was unleashed with neighbors turning on each other.He describes how train stations in cities like Lahore, in the new nation of Pakistan, morphed into scenes of mass death.The platforms are literally awash with blood because a load of Hindus
waiting on the platform to travel to India have been massacred, and
another platform was covered with blood because a train had just arrived
from India full of dead Muslims.
History is itself a matter of dispute as many narratives are still to be searched but ideas of a narrator who himself had seen the disaster is the live film you want to see and realize with family albums what happen to them and their families ,how poverty became a matter to lead a good life and how the life struggle make a Delhi man in truht Delhi. Delhi is Delhi,as it collects the voices for everyone and has the space for everyone who want to be merged in Delhi.
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