Those Were The Days: The Post-Partition Refugee Life
In the town of Jagadhri in modern-day Haryana, where my family and many other refugees reached in the days after the Partition, resilience and fortitude showed the way.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
History3 hours ago
The recent announcement that the Partition Museum at Dara Shikoh Library Building at Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi is scheduled for inauguration later this year triggered mixed childhood memories of families uprooted from their homes after the cataclysmic Partition and of settling in the little-known north Indian town of Jagadhri.
Located between Ambala, in modern day Haryana, and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, sleepy Jagadhri, 190 km northwest of New Delhi, was an unlikely destination for hordes fleeing from the newly-created territory of Pakistan in August 1947. But like numerous other cities and towns across India, Jagadhri, then in Punjab and later in Haryana after 1966, became home to hundreds of directionless refugees fleeing the mindless butchery that the Partition sparked.