Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri University of St Andrews

1. “All trains stop there”: Trains and Railway Lines in Narratives of the 1947 Indian/Pakistani Partition Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri University of St Andrews

4. Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White

5. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White

6. Interview with Saeed (b. 1925) And they came and knocked on the door of our compartment. We opened the door and about 24 people came in. And as they came and sat down, they all raised their hands towards Allah, and said, “Thank you, Allah – Pakistan!”

7. Interview with Zafar (b. c.1930) OK, at this time, their, I have heard, I have no proof, they had an agreement between the two, that within 40 miles of the border, if any trains or refugees were attacked, then their army could come and give protection. From Amritsar it is a matter of some 18 miles, to the border – it is a journey of 18-20 miles. So they sent a wireless message there that a train is being attacked. So after that when I regained consciousness, I heard them saying – “Throw out the bodies, there are people who have fallen underneath and we have to kill them as well’. They started acting on this instruction, and then from there we heard, our Jat regiment came – “Run, run, Pakistan military are here!”

8. Interview with Rafique (b. 1927) There is another important thing, I think it is important to mention, that those refugees who used to come – all looted and beaten up. When the train stopped at the station, they would get off the compartments and immediately, there was this uniform practice, they would fall to the ground to thank Allah and after I would often ask – we are thanking Allah, that we were beaten, whatever happened, we have been attacked, but we are in His place now and no one can attack us again. A sigh of relief.

12. Interview with Zafar (b. c.1930) First they started firing, then they had these long bamboos, and they used them as spears and then used swords, then they came inside. We were hungry and thirsty for two days – no one could resist, we had nothing with which to resist. The train compartments at the time, they were like this – with this compartment, there were straight benches like this, with partitions in the middle. With their back to it, one man would sit facing this side, and another facing that side – that was the type of compartment. I was standing in the middle row – and when they thrust a spear, I grabbed it and pulled it towards me, while he was pulling it towards him. As a result, ok, one of my feet was on this seat, and one on the back seat, like this. When he pulled it suddenly, it cut through my fingers and I was unbalanced. Someone else hit me with a spear from behind and I fell down unconscious, and dead bodies kept falling on me.

13. So then my elder brother, he has a diarrhoea or cholera – he was affected by cholera so he was in bad shape. So they asked us to ride on the train, the goods train. Actually my father put us, all of us. So when he saw my elder brother's state is not well, he ask us to come down, so we came down. Oh, that was horrible, that was horrible. It was like you are putting the goods inside. Standing, it’s open, people were I don't know how they went up to Lyallpur, it must be five hour journey, five to six, and there’s no, you cannot breathe. Standing, nobody was sitting. That's why when my father he pushed us, all of us were inside, then he felt that we will be suffocated. Interview with Gaffar (b. 1942)

14. Interview with Jogesh (b. c.1945) A few days after we moved to this country, my grandparents, their three sons and one daughter, my aunt came to this side. They were living in Sealdah station and while there, my aunt developed cholera. In such circumstances, to come and live on Sealdah station, it was unbearable. They weren’t right in the head either. I mean, what to eat, what to do – that was always an issue. And the rest of us hadn't even received this news.

15. Interview with Saeed (b. 1925) When we got to Amritsar, there was absolute hell broken loose at the railway station – women, men, children crying, noise – pandemonium. When we reached Lahore, there was pandemonium at Lahore railway station. Only it was the other way round. There were nine bodies of Sikhs lying on the platform full of blood.

17. Interview with Sakina (b. 1920) And of course, it was a very – I mean, nothing happened but it was a very hair-raising ride because there was a Punjabi man and his son and all the way he was just talking about no Muslim women or children even should be spared. They used to do that, they used to pick up children and throw them out of moving trains. So you can imagine what was my state. And since the children were coming from school, everything had names on them. Everything had to be named, even the straps. And the name is Khan, so you can't do anything– all the time just hiding the names. And my son, the youngest one, was named Ali. Ali can't be anything but a Muslim, so my elder daughter kept calling him Alan and he was getting very angry.

18. Interview with Sushanto (b. 1934) • We had to go to Sealdah station in the morning. The refugees who used to come their – had a border slip. We used to see the border slip and enlist their names. Then they were kept. Then the Assistant Rehabilitation Officer used to come, he used to be given the list, he entered them in and Sealdah station has a shed, next to Platform 5, they used to be there. They were given temporary dole, money to eat.

22. Interview with K.S. (b. 1933) There is a very famous, in Punjab, there is a very famous canal, it would be called a big river here, it’s very wide. And it’s called Sarhand canal, it takes origin from river Sutlej. And there is a railway bridge which connects to a very famous station called Duraha – and all trains stop there, and when trains used to go to Pakistan, we were told that they used to stop the train on that bridge, because it’s right over the canal. They used to kill people and throw their corpses into the canal. I remember people going, you see, groups of people, ten, twelve people, and going to this particular area to kill people like that. And these were grown up people, you see, and their purpose was to take revenge and stop the train and massacre as many Muslims as they could.

25. Interview with Saleem (b. 1925) The famous writer, Khuswant Singh has written a drama – The Last Train to Pakistan [sic] in which he shows how train going, coming from Delhi to Lahore – when it arrived at Lahore it was full of dead bodies, being butchered by Muslims en-route [sic]. That’s what Khuswant Singh says, the train rode coming full dead bodies, no survivors, and the train arrived at Lahore, The Last Train to Pakistan – it’s a worthwhile … movie, not movie but TV plays.

26. Interview with Shameem (b. c.1954) Oh, it was terrible, yeah. She was saying when they were coming in the train, you know, they were stopping train in the middle of the, what they say, jungle or in the road and they were killing all the people. Luckily it was only that compartment was safe and they came, you know, other than that you know all, I mean, dead on her train though. So, sad story.

27. Interview with Nayur (b. 1975) We would go to Mosque and our Mosque teacher who would teach us Urdu, the language – she was an elderly lady and she went through partition. And we would hear snippets, when sometimes she would refer to sitting on the trains and I remember her saying that we were told to get underneath the seats when the trains would come to stop and if you saw Sikh men in turbans hide under the seats because they were coming in and chopping off people's heads and attacking women. And she said, I remember as a child coming on the train, and I didn't know what she was referring to, where she was coming from, and sometimes we would think she was a little bit barmy, to be honest, because we thought, what kind of people do that on trains?

28. Interview with Abdul Rasheed (b. 1936) Then at three o'clock or four o'clock in the evening, a train came and we were asked to sit in that train. Make a queue, we were sent in the, toward the train. Train, whichever carriage, in whichever carriage we went we, saw blood, flesh, on the seats. No seat was such where we can sit – there was blood, and fresh blood. We think that slaughter, Muslims were slaughtered in this train, and that train came to us now we don't know what will happen to us. Very fear, very – but what to do, in fear of our lives, we sat down on the bloody seats, bloody seats. Our clothes were in the blood, blood. When we came in Pakistan, our blood, our clothes were coloured with blood.

29. Interview with Gurbakhsh (b. 1935) We saw, I saw a train go slowly by our village, cos our village was just about fifty yards from the railway line. Some houses were very close. And I saw this train go very slowly, doors open, bodies hanging out of it, half-dead, slaughtered, blood everywhere. And a lady with two very small children left the train and came into our village for her safety. And she was really so distraught, I remember her sitting there and praying, saying “Allah would look after me, Allah would look after me”, two little children, saying “Don't worry, Allah would look after you” and saying it all the time and she was crying and doing that. Then my sister went and took some chapattis and sabzi for her because she said she must be hungry and she gave her some milk for the children and she was sort of saying, you know, “Allah would keep you and Allah would look after you too” saying to my sister and my sister was crying and giving her the food at the same time.

30. Interview with Harbakhsh (b. 1941) But the partition itself, after we saw, I mean, the trains that came with people from Pakistan murdered, blood covered trains, they went through the village cos the railway line goes right in the middle of the village, really, more or less, you know, and this was only I found out from Mother that my Mother's cousin was called in by Nehru at one point, so what should we do – he was just a friend. He said, look if you want something done, you have to keep out of it, you know – he says – this was after two trains of people, murdered people came across from Pakistan, and he said, you have to just keep out, not say anything to anybody. Whatever I do is not your responsibility, but you can't touch me after that, you know. And, he was quite seriously involved in that after that. Cos they sent two trains across after that, when the third one came, after two trains, they sent one train back full of people who were actually shot. They didn't do any horrific things that Pakistanis did but these people, they just went around and shot a train load of people and sent it across to Pakistan. Then the third train came and they sent another one after that, So these people that they say it was each everybody did the same thing on both side, it is not really true because we were there, they didn't do anything till after the second train came with dead people. Then they said to send a train, and after they sent a second train, the Pakistanis stopped after that cos they realised that they will get retaliation everytime they do it, you know. But it did stop the killing after that, train killing was stopped literally after that.

31. Interview with Zafar (b. c.1930) 13th, 14th, 15th, these three dates of September – this train left Delhi daily. And these three trains, the, our, what do you call them, Jat regiment, it was under their supervision that they came to Pakistan from there. And all these three trains were attacked on the way – and no one survived … Ok so we started at 9 in the morning of the 15th from here– we travelled all day, all night sometimes we stopped somewhere for water for the engine, and they [the military] used to turn off all the water taps on the platforms. We did not have permission to get off, so no one could go and bring anything to eat either. There is a place called Muzaffarnagar, at the station, some people filled cloth bundles and brought them – chick-peas and they were throwing it to us through the window – they used to beat them and turn them away – we had no water, we only ate chick-peas – and got more thirsty.

32. “All trains stop there”: Trains and Railway Lines in Narratives of the 1947 Indian/Pakistani Partition Thank you!