Ghulam Bibi

Ghulam Bibi was born in 1924 to a Punjabi-speaking agrarian family at Halla village in Gurdaspur District, Punjab. She was raised with three sisters and six brothers at their three-room clay-and-mud home at Halla which was built by her maternal grandfather. Her home was among many Sikh and Muslim homes in the village near the river. In 1943, Ghulam Bibi was married. Days before Partition, Ghulam Bibi and her husband had only just returned to her husband’s home of Gurdaspur from Vehari. “All of a sudden all the villages were in a state of turmoil and panic. The next moment, we were getting ready to leave Gurdaspur again,” she says. Ghulam Bibi, along with her maternal grandmother, sisters, sister-in-law, and her paternal aunt were sent off under the supervision of her brother-in-law and men from the Sikh families at Halla, who went with them to ensure they crossed the border safely. Their convoy was shot at several times during their journey on foot to the river bank. “Our guardians at one point asked us to drop on the ground and pretend we are dead. We did as we were told. By the time we were close to reaching our raft amidst the constant firing, my maternal grandmother was shot in the stomach and died,” she recounts. After burying her at bank of the river, Ghulam Bibi’s convoy boarded the raft, which was steered by their guardians. “One of the rafters, Jaswant Singh, was shot in the back but he survived,” she says. After crossing the river, Ghulam Bibi’s convoy was escorted to the migrant camp at Dhariwal where they spent the night. “The camp was full of migrants and there was a lot of hostility and confusion in the air. I even saw some women hiding knives underneath their burqas,” she recalls.

From the migrant camp, Ghulam Bibi’s convoy was taken to the Dhariwal railway station and boarded the train to Amritsar. “We saw Amritsar burning from inside the train. With the exception of a minaret of a mosque faraway, everything else was in fumes. There were men with swords all over the station but no one harmed us,” she says. After stopping at the Amritsar railway station for a few hours, they were boarded on the train to Vehari. “We bid farewell to our escorts and were on our way to Vehari early the next morning, reaching it just before midnight,” Ghulam Bibi says. “I had fallen sick and had a raging fever. We spent the night at the passenger lounge of the railway station. My brother-in-law went to our village in Vehari and managed to get horse carts for us. Finally, we were able to go home and be with our parents, who had already arrived in Vehari in another convoy. Our father joined us a day later. He had in fact gone all the way to Wagah and Ganda Wala Singh borders looking for me and thought that I didn’t survive the journey. He was in tears when he returned and found me alive and well,” she says. Ghulam Bibi was reunited with her husband four days later. “My paternal uncle who was part of his convoy was also killed, and my husband was the only one who knew and conveyed the bad news,” she says.

Recalling sights at Vehari, Ghulam Bibi says, “The village landscape had changed drastically. All the Sikh families we knew there were gone but there was no news of any violent uprisings in our village. We’d only heard that they had left the villages quietly with whatever belongings they could take with them,” she recounts. After reuniting with their families and spending time with them, Ghulam Bibi and her husband moved to Beriwala Chak to live with his relative for a few weeks. “He gave us food to eat, clothes, and furniture for our home. I was finally taken to the doctor for treatment of my fever,” she says.

Ghulam Bibi’s family was allotted about 75 acres of agricultural lands in Faisalabad and Toba Tek Singh. “My family sold those lands and bought lands at our village in Vehari with that money,” she says. Ghulam Bibi and her husband had two sons and six daughters after Partition.