Kafila: A Jhangi Family’s Partition Memoir

The partition of the country in 1947 continues to be a festering sore even close to eighty years after the cataclysmic events. Its effects influence the political and social discourse in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh even today, often violently. Though reams have been written on what has been called the biggest and most brutal human migration in history, involving an exchange of population on a scale unprecedented, what is often lost in the bigger picture is the fine print. Every individual who went through the trials and tribulations of that summer of discontent, every family that experienced the trauma, has its own unique tale to narrate.

Sumant Batra introduces us to one such Punjabi Khatri family from Jhang – the Dasses of RoduSultan, starting with Tulsi Dass, Sumant’s great- grandfather. As the British seem in a hurry to leave, and the Congress and the Muslim League spar over the spoils of freedom, everyone in Jhang is more or less left to his own device. Overnight, the Dass family has to prepare to leave the lands that their ancestors had made their own for centuries. What follows is a harrowing journey filled with danger and deprivation at every step as they make their way, first, to Delhi and then to Hisar where the Indian government allocated land to those who had made their way from Jhang.

However, the ordeal is far from over. Uprooted from their home and hearth, starting out all over again on land that, unlike what they had left behind in Rodu Sultan, is not conducive to irrigation, the Dasses have their work cut out. Then there’s the psychological toll of the migration that is to haunt everyone all their lives, not least of all being called ‘refugees’ in their own country. Yet, drawing upon every reserve of fortitude and resilience, the family not only overcomes the vicissitudes of fate but also makes it good, with successive generations creating a successful life from the ruins of 1947.

Sumant Batra offers a heartrending account of the travails of a family thrown into the cauldron of the partition. At the same time, it is also universal in the way he provides a bird’s-eye view of the era and its politics that shaped the nation. It is also a call to the younger generation to provide the long-overdue closure to a dark chapter of our history. And a meditation on the power of love and its ability to heal.