The Punjab Partition Forum

- Ramanjit Singh The Radcliffe line was the boundary drawn by the British to demarcate the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Punjab province. I was curious as to how the line was drawn over populations, villages, districts, canals, railways, the economic infrastructure of one of the most populous province of British India. I was also curious as to the type of maps that were made available to Cyril Radcliffe in 1947 as he started to draw the boundaries. What thought if any

- By Ramanjit Singh In India's Punjab, the once vibrant symbols of the Islamic history and culture in the form of buildings, forts,...

- Ramanjit Singh I'm writing this blog to highlight the work done by Mr. Amardeep Singh who has painstakingly chronicled the history and...

- Ramanjit Singh Chak 64 RB was one of the villages in Lyallpur district that had a Sikh majority. According to the famous Punjabi poet and writer Harbhajan Singh Hundal, the news about the growing violence in both sides of Punjab was gradually trickling through the villages in his district. The village lohars were given the task of building crude weapons for protecting the villagers. The nearby Sikh village of Bharroliawala was attacked and only few survivors managed to esca

- Ramanjit Singh With the passage of time, as the year 1947 is becoming a distant memory, so is the geographic and historical awareness...

There are so many stories that remain embedded in one's mind and the following story told by Kirpal Singh (Part 1 and Part 2) about what he saw in Narowal and Gurdaspur is probably one of the most heart wrenching stories that highlights the scale of violence that was taking place in Punjab in August 1947. Kirpal Singh's village was Chandiawala in Narowal and his family had to leave the village on August 20th, 1947. Coming towards Ghanike Bet (in Gurdaspur) he saw large scale

- Ramanjit Singh On June 3rd 1947, the British put forth a notional boundary to partition Punjab based on the 1941 census and as most of the districts or tehsils touching rivers Sutlej and Beas were Muslim majority districts, the approach of how to split Punjab with any semblance of logic became next to impossible. Here is the notional boundary as outlined in June, 1947. You can read the logic behind the boundary decision in Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed's article here " Wavell’s rea

- Ramanjit Singh Never before in South Asian history did so few decide the fate of so many and rarely did so few ignore the sentiments of...

What happened in Punjab during 1947 was outright genocide.

- Ramanjit Singh It has been 70 years after India's partition and its affects still linger in our political and social domains. These 70 years has seen a lot of changes in both India and Pakistan. Both countries are still trying to formulate their identity based on its majority community's constructed reality. One has already established itself into an Islamic state and the other is moving unpretentiously towards a non-secular identity. Whether we like it or not, the British