Women During Partition: Rebuilding Lives

“My grandmother was extremely ill. She could barely stand, let alone walk. We somehow managed to arrange a charpoy from a nearby village to carry her with us," Ms. Bano recounts. Her ailing grandmother passed away on the second day of their journey. Ms. Bano and the rest of her family were picked up by military trucks that took them to the refugee camp at Walton cantonment in Lahore.

Ms. Bano resumed teaching in 1948 and joined the Nusrat Girls High School at Rabwah where she taught Urdu and Islamiat for six years. She also wrote columns for Mashriq Daily, a Peshawar-based Urdu newspaper, and several other notable Urdu publications.

Ms. Bano took on the responsibility of bringing up her children after her husband Syed Mubarak Ali passed away in 1963. She also took charge of her husband’s institution, Victory College. She taught at Victory College/Kinnaird High School for Girls for several decades and retired in 1992.

Mrs. Krishnavanti's family luckily found a military truck on the street, which took them to a refugee camp in Amritsar. They then migrated to Delhi. The gold they had hidden under their clothes became their main source of income for many months to come.

When Mrs. Krishnavanti’s mother lost her mental balance, her grandmother took over leadership of the family. Mrs. Krishnavanti was educated through grade eight in Delhi. She wanted to continue, but the family had little money. She supported her family by selling necklaces she made herself.

To escape the increasing violence in their region, Dr. Akhtar's family too decided to migrate to Pakistan. The family first reached Ranbeer Singh Pura, located a few miles away from the border. They learned that the best time to cross the border undetected was between 10 AM and 2 PM. During those hours, the entire family ran to cross the border. Dr. Akhtar remembers that all the women were crying, and her father and uncle were telling them to save their tears for later and to just run. Dr. Akhtar carried her one-year-old sister as she ran. Along the way, they drank dirty pond water to survive.

Her family eventually settled in Sargodha in Pakistan, where they were given a villa in exchange for their lost property and homes.

Dr. Akhtar went on to complete medical school, with an emphasis in gynecology and surgery. She opened her own clinic in Karachi and mentions that she was the first female doctor in a ten-mile radius in that region.

The tragic murder of Shafi Ahmed prompted his wife Anis Kidwai and their three children, including Amina Kidwai, to move to Delhi to stay with relatives. Anis Kidwai started working with rehabilitating refugees at the Purana Qila refugee camp. This journey is captured in Anis Kidwai’s memoirs, Azaadi ki Chhaon Mein. These memoirs have been translated by Amina Kidwai’s daughter under the title In Freedom’s Shade.

In her memoir, Anis Kidwai describes the Purana Qila refugee camp in Delhi:

"From the hospital, one had a vantage view of the entire camp. As far as the eye could see, tents and tin-roofed shelters were crowded together. In their midst was a ceaseless traffic of naked children, disheveled women, bareheaded girls and men burning in defiance and humiliation."

- Anis Kidwai, In Freedom's Shade

Amina Kidwai recounts seeing the fire rising from Connaught Place in Delhi, rioting mobs, and being house-bound due to the fear of violence in the city. Her father’s house was always full of refugees, each recounting stories of great tragedy.

The stories of the women were the most troubling for her to hear. Through whispered conversations, she heard stories of women who had suffered sexual abuse and that their captors had tattooed symbols and the name of their abductors onto their skin.

Mrs. Husain's family was in Hyderabad in Sindh, Pakistan at the time of Partition. She recalls huge numbers of refugees entering the city. Her grandmother galvanized many families to provide succour to the refugees.

"It was edifying to see her lead them at railway stations carrying stretchers of the sick and ailing,” she remembers. In 2011, Mrs. Husain published a collection of her grandmother's memoirs titled, Footprints in Time: Reminiscences of a Sindhi Matriarch.

In 1965, Rasheeda Husain became part of the Family Planning Association of Pakistan, where she worked for several years. She has executed several women’s development projects in rural areas of Sindh and is one of the founding directors of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF).

Mrs. Baveja recalls that there was a large influx of migrants into Ludhiana, many of whom had faced violence in the towns they had come from. Mrs. Baveja’s mother would make food and deliver it to them at the refugee camps where they were staying before they moved into the vacated homes.

Mrs. Baveja’s husband was also a migrant. His family members had disguised themselves to avoid possible harassment before they migrated across the border.

Mrs. Qureshi remembers that women became very politically active in Lahore in the weeks after Partition.

“One of the most significant protests was by the women who led procession marches against the burqa and the veil under the leadership of Begum Shah Nawaz. It was a compulsion on the Muslim women to wear the burqa but after a series of processions and protests, gradually, the women in the streets could be seen without a burqa,” she says.

After Partition, Mrs. Khurana worked to promote female musicians. In 1959, she began studying with Ustad Mushtaq Hussain Khan, who remained her instructor until his passing in 1964. Mrs. Khurana received her PhD in music and musicology and conducted extensive studies on Rajasthani folk music. She was awarded the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan awards in 1991 and 2006, respectively.