Indian mission in UK marks Partition Horrors Remembrance Day

London: The Indian High Commission in London commemorated Partition Horrors Remembrance Day on Monday with a special photographic exhibition and musical and poetic tributes to the sacrifices and resilience shown by people during India’s Partition in August 1947.

The solemn gathering of community leaders and Indian diaspora members recounted some of the painful memories of the past and observed a minute’s silence to commemorate the day of remembrance, a day before the 77th Independence Day celebrations.

“Our joy and our celebration in independence were always a somewhat mixed one because that independence came at a very heavy human price,” said Indian High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswami in his address to the gathering.

“It came at the price of what people of that generation could not expect, and indeed could not believe, that it would be possible that independence would happen with a division of our own homes, and that villages, towns in both the east and the west of India would celebrate freedom as refugees; as people displaced for no fault of their own except for the fact that they had miraculously become citizens on the wrong side of the border. That is a very unique and tragic story of one of the largest displacements in human history,” he said.

The High Commissioner said the mission’s Remembrance Day was conceived as a memorial exercise to reflect upon the poignant history of this mass displacement and learn some lessons with “one moment of pause” before we celebrate India’s independence.

A violin recital of ‘Vande Mataram’ and poetry renditions by British Indian filmmaker Lalit Mohan Joshi from the works of pre-Partition author Dr Gautam Sachdev was followed by some uplifting ghazal recitals by Dr Hilal Fareed of the Royal College of Surgeons.

The gathering included diaspora members now in their 90s, who were teenagers at the time of Partition, including Shakuntala Kaushal and Brij Mohan Gupta.

The memorial event, held in the Gandhi Hall of India House, concluded with the Indian National Anthem before moving to the Nehru Hall for a tour of the photographic exhibition tracing the history of the Partition.