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00:00:001947. The British are leaving India. Exhausted by the war, overwhelmed by
00:00:10insurrection, Britain needs an exit strategy. But how do you get out of a
00:00:16subcontinent you've ruled for 150 years? Especially when long-buried
00:00:21arguments burst violently into the open. The man sent to India to close down the
00:00:27British Raj and keep order was Lord Louie Mountbatten. No year of British rule in
00:00:32India would produce more bloodshed than the last.
00:00:49I am under no illusion about the difficulty of my task. I shall need the
00:00:55greatest, the greatest goodwill. The greatest goodwill, Charles.
00:01:05I shall need the greatest goodwill of the greatest possible number.
00:01:13Popinjay. Yes, but a rather splendid Popinjay.
00:01:23I think Mountbatten brought with him all the, well, all the background. I mean, when you think he was seven years old when he visited the Tsar of Russia.
00:01:36From a small child, he'd had this sense of occasion.
00:01:43War hero and cousin of the King, Lord Mountbatten had liberated Burma from the Japanese.
00:01:49With his wife Edwina, the millionairess who had once blazed in London society, the Mountbatten's were a striking choice to end British rule in India.
00:01:57We had this tremendous feeling that they would work in tandem. You had this feeling that they were a couple.
00:02:09In March 1947, the couple arrived in Delhi with a reputation for speed of action and a most un-British sympathy for Indian independence.
00:02:18I think everyone felt this is it. I think there was a tremendous sense that this is the beginning of something which is going to be successful.
00:02:28British India was a country of 400 million people belonging to many religions.
00:02:34Two groups stood out. The Hindus, who were the clear majority, and the Muslims.
00:02:39For centuries under the British, they lived side by side in peace.
00:02:48Mountbatten's challenge was to end British rule and prepare for a smooth transfer of power to this gigantic and diverse nation.
00:02:55He had just 18 months to complete it.
00:02:59For the last time in history, a viceroy begins his term of office as Lord Mountbatten takes the oath of allegiance from the Lord Chief Justice of India, Sir Patrick Spence.
00:03:08This is not a normal viceroy on which I am embarking.
00:03:13His Majesty's government is resolved to transfer power by June 1948.
00:03:19This means the solution must be reached within the next few months.
00:03:24I am under no illusion of the difficulty of my task.
00:03:29I shall need the greatest goodwill of the greatest possible number.
00:03:38Today, I am asking India for that goodwill.
00:03:47The objective was very clearly stated.
00:03:53And it was, in fact, brutally stated.
00:03:56So whatever happens, we leave this country on such and such date.
00:04:00In a country that's really rather laid back and...
00:04:06I mean, none of us had worked that hard.
00:04:09He made his ADCs work.
00:04:11He made his staff work.
00:04:13The Indian office work.
00:04:15Even the domestic servants had to be on their toes.
00:04:25People will say that's not the way the last viceroy did things.
00:04:28Nor the one before.
00:04:29Or the one before that.
00:04:30Viceroy's door opener.
00:04:31Viceroy's chicken plucker.
00:04:33Viceroy's cushion puffer.
00:04:34You see?
00:04:35We need to cut down on stuff.
00:04:36And the number of bankers.
00:04:38It's quite obscene the way we're expected to gorge ourselves
00:04:41while there's a famine in Bengal.
00:04:45Yes, I see.
00:04:48You know there is much to be said here for continuity.
00:04:51Oh, I don't think so.
00:04:53I always found continuity to be the most overrated virtue in the Navy.
00:04:59They were extremely different from people who'd gone before
00:05:03and made a very special effort, I think,
00:05:07to do all this on a basis of friendship and understanding.
00:05:12I know who I must meet first, Mountbatten told his staff.
00:05:17This was the man previous viceroys had come to see
00:05:20as their most dangerous enemy.
00:05:25Mahatma Gandhi had embraced the poverty of his countrymen
00:05:28and dedicated his life, much of it as a political prisoner,
00:05:31to getting rid of the British.
00:05:37In March 1947, he came to Mountbatten with the vision
00:05:41that Hindus and Muslims would now rule India together.
00:05:50They said I would find you out here.
00:05:52Edwina, Mountbatten.
00:05:54I could have waited in the cool hall,
00:05:57but I was curious to see your Mughal garden.
00:06:00It's your garden, Mr. Gandhi.
00:06:02We are merely the trustees.
00:06:04You know, for the Mughals, the garden was a glimpse of heaven.
00:06:09They drew inspiration from Holy Quran, modifying and adapting what was found
00:06:19to make a paradise on earth.
00:06:22All elements perfectly blended.
00:06:26The gentlemen of the press are here and would like us to pose for photographs.
00:06:30Oh, then we must show them our best faces.
00:06:40The extent of Hindu-Muslim distrust was referred to by Gandhi throughout his life.
00:06:47He called it the question of questions.
00:06:49It's very hard to deal.
00:06:51But he felt that this was a question that had to be tackled
00:06:54because Hindus and Muslims had to live next to each other.
00:06:58They were neighbours in hundreds of thousands of Indian villages.
00:07:02There was no way out except some kind of coexistence.
00:07:07Gandhi's commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity was one that Mountbatten shared.
00:07:12But in 1947, that unity was under enormous stress.
00:07:20That is the time when the Muslims began to fear.
00:07:23They said, as long as the British were here, we were all the same.
00:07:27But now, if this is going to happen and it's going to be a democracy,
00:07:30then we will be a permanent minority.
00:07:33And what protection do we have?
00:07:36At that point, they couldn't trust the Hindu.
00:07:39The man who took this Muslim fear of the Hindu and made it respectable
00:07:42was Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
00:07:44described to Mountbatten as the most difficult man in India.
00:07:47Jinnah was almost a reverse image of Gandhi.
00:07:50He had embraced a Western lifestyle
00:07:52and he thought Muslim-Hindu unity to be a fantasy.
00:08:00We are two nations, Muslim and Hindu.
00:08:04What we have in common is the British yoke.
00:08:08But that is about to be lifted.
00:08:11And then we must go our separate ways.
00:08:13That is why we ask for Pakistan.
00:08:16Sir, there are some who say you want to create a nation...
00:08:19Without ruining the crease in my trousers.
00:08:22Ask me, what is it like in a British prison?
00:08:25I couldn't tell you.
00:08:27I would have to refer you to Mr. Gandhi.
00:08:28Here is a man, totally Westernized, in Western clothes.
00:08:33And of course, he was a tremendous charisma.
00:08:36And all the time, whether he was talking to us
00:08:39or talking to the people,
00:08:41we saw a great lawyer presenting his case.
00:08:44The partition of India will be done amicably, by discussion.
00:08:49In an atmosphere of reason.
00:08:51The British will not?
00:08:52The British will accept partition.
00:08:54They always do.
00:08:55It worked in Ireland.
00:08:56It will work in Palestine.
00:08:57It will work here.
00:09:01Jinnah's radical idea was partition.
00:09:04India's Muslims would be given a state in the North East and West of the country.
00:09:08In the areas where they already formed the majority.
00:09:10This would be Pakistan.
00:09:13The rest of British India would be left of the Hindus,
00:09:15which Jinnah called Hindustan.
00:09:20We thought that unless we have our own country,
00:09:23we cannot really have our own government
00:09:26and run the way we like and live the way we like.
00:09:30Because we knew that the British were going.
00:09:32It was a matter of time.
00:09:34To India's most powerful politician,
00:09:36the idea of a separate Muslim homeland was an abomination.
00:09:42A disciple of Gandhi,
00:09:44Jawaharlal Nehru,
00:09:45the leader of the Congress party,
00:09:47spoke not of Hindus or Muslims,
00:09:49but simply of Indians.
00:09:51You won't achieve anything, Mountbatten was told,
00:09:53without this man's agreement.
00:09:54I don't want you to think of me as the last Viceroy winding up the British Raj.
00:10:02But it's the first to lead the way to the new India.
00:10:06I shall of course be speaking to Mr. Jinnah.
00:10:09Pakistan.
00:10:11Pakistan.
00:10:15Where does this fantastic idea come from?
00:10:21Who knows what it really means?
00:10:28A separate Muslim nation in India is absurd.
00:10:32He's actually medieval.
00:10:38Pakistan.
00:10:41A concoction of Mr. Jinnah and his typewriter.
00:10:50I don't think Mr. Jinnah could have understood India.
00:10:53It was a cultural unity and had been for thousands of years.
00:11:00A plural society.
00:11:02A place of many religions and languages.
00:11:06All of that had passed him by.
00:11:16In 1947, Jinnah's ideas have started to take root amongst India's Muslims.
00:11:20Hindus and Muslims are two separate cultures.
00:11:26They don't pray together.
00:11:29They don't dine together.
00:11:31Their festivals are different.
00:11:33Their cultures are different.
00:11:35Their dresses are different.
00:11:37How could you?
00:11:39You can't amalgamate yourself into their culture
00:11:42or into their habits
00:11:44as they cannot amalgamate themselves into our culture.
00:11:48They are two different nations.
00:11:51Pakistan! Pakistan!
00:11:53Pakistan!
00:11:55We were actually the poor people.
00:11:56Masses were poor Muslims.
00:11:58And shopkeepers and bankers and all these,
00:12:02they were Hindus mostly.
00:12:04Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan!
00:12:07Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan!
00:12:09Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan! Pakistan!
00:12:11Pakistan! Pakistan!
00:12:18By the time Mountbatten arrived in India,
00:12:20the concept of Pakistan had a mass organisation behind it,
00:12:24and Mr Jinnah was riding high.
00:12:25It is clear, Mountbatten wrote,
00:12:36that this is the man who holds the key to the whole situation.
00:12:39People tell me Pakistan cannot be defined.
00:12:49I hope, Mr Jinnah, you might help me understand it.
00:12:54I have written many times on the subject.
00:12:57Without explaining how this new nation will come about.
00:13:01Where will its borders lie?
00:13:02What will its relationship be to India?
00:13:06Hindustan.
00:13:08I beg your pardon?
00:13:11You said India.
00:13:13It will be called Hindustan.
00:13:19At the end of his first week in Delhi,
00:13:22Mountbatten had reached political stalemate.
00:13:23But 200 miles away, a retired school teacher called Master Tara Singh changed the terms of the debate completely.
00:13:37Our lands are about to be overrun.
00:13:41Our women dishonoured.
00:13:43Our children forced to take alien vows.
00:13:47My grandfather got emotional at that point of time,
00:13:50whereas the Muslim League was saying that long live Pakistan.
00:13:55And he raised, the Master Ji raised the slogan of death to Pakistan,
00:13:59because he didn't want Pakistan to come into existence.
00:14:02I have sounded the bugle.
00:14:07Finish the Muslim League.
00:14:11Death to Pakistan.
00:14:13Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, had just 18 months to end British rule in India.
00:14:31But India was falling apart.
00:14:34Nowhere was the tension greater than in the northern province of the Punjab,
00:14:38with its volatile mix of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.
00:14:48On April the 3rd, 1947, a week after Mountbatten arrived in India,
00:14:53his governor in the province, Sir Evan Jenkins, sent a storm signal to the Viceroy.
00:14:57There is little doubt that some of the Sikh leaders are circulating grossly exaggerated accounts of Muslim atrocities.
00:15:07I pointed this out to one Sikh leader.
00:15:13This is Master Tara Singh.
00:15:16Yes. Retired school teacher. Taken to rattling his kirpan.
00:15:20I said that propaganda of this kind gave the impression that they were about to attack the Muslims.
00:15:29He laughed heartily at this and said the Sikhs would do no such thing until the British had left India.
00:15:40Jenkins' telegram made one thing clear to Mountbatten.
00:15:43The question of how to withdraw from India had turned into the question of what to do about the Punjab.
00:15:50The Punjab, with its capital Lahore, was home to 25 million Muslims.
00:15:55If partition happened, Pakistan would be based here.
00:15:59So thought Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim League.
00:16:02But it was the worst place for Jinnah to stake a claim for a Muslim homeland.
00:16:06For the Sikhs saw the Punjab as their home too.
00:16:11Master Tara Singh's incendiary speech had raised the stakes for everybody.
00:16:16Master Tara Singh had taken out his kirpan, the sword, and he said this will decide whether the Muslims rule Punjab or the Sikhs rule Punjab.
00:16:25And that was stunning. We were so depressed and upset.
00:16:30Some were obviously angry also.
00:16:32Once Master Tara Singh very clearly came out against partition, then his home district was the first one which was attacked by the Muslim mobs.
00:16:50We started having these people coming in from the villages with terrible knife wounds.
00:17:06It was mostly Sikhs at that time.
00:17:09And they would walk in from the village to Lahore and all our hospitals were then full of wounded Sikhs.
00:17:15With Sikhs and Muslims on the brink of war over partition, Mountbatten again turned to his favourite solution.
00:17:27How to get Jinnah to drop his Pakistan demand.
00:17:30And then Gandhi came forward with a plan to achieve exactly that.
00:17:46A plan that if Jinnah accepted, would satisfy the Muslim demand for power, while not requiring Mountbatten to partition India.
00:17:53You will be daring?
00:17:54I intend to be.
00:17:55Then you should offer the government of India to Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim people.
00:17:56Mr. Jinnah?
00:17:57His prime minister?
00:17:58He would still be permitted to make his case for Pakistan.
00:17:59So long as he used reasons only and not force upon.
00:18:00What do you think Mr. Jinnah would say to such a proposal?
00:18:01If you tell him I am the author, he will reply, why Lee Ghan?
00:18:02And I presume he will be right?
00:18:03Not at all.
00:18:04I am sincere.
00:18:05I will travel lengthen to the government of India to Mr. Jinnah and the Muslim people.
00:18:06Mr. Jinnah?
00:18:07Mr. Jinnah?
00:18:08His prime minister?
00:18:09He would still be permitted to make his case for Pakistan.
00:18:12So long as he used reasons only and not force upon.
00:18:18What do you think Mr. Jinnah would say to such a proposal?
00:18:20If you tell him I am the author, he will reply, why Lee Ghan?
00:18:24And I presume he will be right?
00:18:26Not at all.
00:18:27I am sincere.
00:18:28I will travel length and breadth of India to get Hindus to accept Jinnah as their leader.
00:18:40I doubt that Gandhi would have been devious in making that offer.
00:18:45The offer, the idea should have been on the table a bit earlier.
00:18:50Because by that time, by the time Mountbatten came,
00:18:53the idea of the partition had become so much a part of the Muslim League.
00:18:59From a slogan it had become an article of faith.
00:19:07Jinnah was brilliant.
00:19:09He was dedicated.
00:19:11He did not feel he could play second fid to anybody.
00:19:17It was Gandhi's idea, wasn't it?
00:19:19Let's say it's a vision we both share.
00:19:23You know, it cost a fortune to keep him in such poverty.
00:19:27They say Mr. Jinnah travels first class.
00:19:29It's true, I do.
00:19:30And Mr. Gandhi travels third class?
00:19:32Also true.
00:19:33But everywhere he goes, his code follows.
00:19:36A hundred third class tickets?
00:19:39Suddenly, it's Mr. Jinnah who looks abstemious.
00:19:42When he talked to me, know that 80 million Muslims are listening.
00:19:47Gandhi represents no one but himself.
00:19:49Ask him to get a scheme past Nehru and the Congress before you ask me what I think of it.
00:20:04Jinnah's refusal to accept Gandhi's offer of government stripped Mountbatten of his ace.
00:20:09It left the question of partition in the hands of those on the ground.
00:20:17In the Punjab, armed Sikh militias stirred up by religious leaders went on the rampage.
00:20:22They were killing, looting and raping, raping the girls.
00:20:46Those killers came from, I don't know, from where?
00:20:55Sikh attacks prevent Muslim revises.
00:21:03Whatever they did was in self-defense.
00:21:07No Muslim, whatever he was, whatever capacity he was, whatever status he was,
00:21:14he didn't do it first. It was them who started.
00:21:19There was a sort of madness going on.
00:21:21People who lived together, unaware that it mattered at all.
00:21:25You're a Muslim, I'm a Hindu and you're jogging along together.
00:21:28We're all human beings.
00:21:31Now suddenly we are enemies, such hateful enemies.
00:21:34It was just piles of body, blood everywhere.
00:21:47The houses were burning, there was acrid smoke everywhere.
00:21:51And women and children crying, those who survived.
00:21:54And the masses of wounded people, it was very difficult to find any hospital to take them in.
00:22:03One saw so much of blood and dead bodies and children being wounded or dead or parts of people being displayed.
00:22:23All these things hardened one and one just went on with one's job.
00:22:30Not all the Punjab massacres were reported in New Delhi.
00:22:34But it was impossible to keep the unfolding nightmare completely at bay.
00:22:37Well, only people were horrified because, frankly, people hadn't expected an explosion on that scale.
00:22:47On April 15th, Mountbatten summoned his provincial governors to the capital to get their advice and to lay down his own strategy.
00:22:54Creation of Pakistan, I will resist if at all possible.
00:22:59But I do recognise that if India has to be partitioned, then Punjab and Bengal must be partitioned too.
00:23:07That will not be an easy thing.
00:23:10Not in the Punjab.
00:23:12When Jinnah talks of two nations, it sounds so clean.
00:23:16But announce partition and every village, every field, will provide a source of argument.
00:23:24To keep the peace, I'd need at least 70,000 troops.
00:23:28Well, you won't get them. We don't have anything like those reserves.
00:23:31Then we'd have little choice but to get out and leave them to it.
00:23:35The Sikhs will fight, but they'd prefer us to be out of the way first.
00:23:39And the Muslims?
00:23:40The Muslim policy is one of daring us to leave.
00:23:43Typically farsighted.
00:23:44Mr. Jinnah has declined my offer to travel to the Punjab to calm the situation.
00:23:50I don't see what good he could do there. He speaks neither Urdu nor Punjabi. Just chance relay in English.
00:23:56Be that as it may, Mr. Jinnah has agreed to issue a statement along with Gandhi calling for peace.
00:24:01Gandhi's been telling our soldiers in Bengal to meet the knives of the mob with their bare chests.
00:24:07I personally do not undervalue the Mahatma's contribution.
00:24:14And just in case you think I've been at the ghost curd, I will remind you gentlemen, I'm a soldier, not a civilian.
00:24:20And if this communal violence gets out of hand, I shall issue military orders.
00:24:23Seek kirpans, Muslim swords, Hindu, whatever their choice of weapon, shall then contest British Empire aircraft and British Empire tanks.
00:24:35His very determination defeated his longer term aim.
00:24:41Mountbatten himself also got hustled into situations by circumstances to which one contribution was his own element of his own haste.
00:24:53Everywhere in Punjab, people were now in fear of their lives.
00:25:01With militias on the loose over much of the province, one half of the population was particularly vulnerable.
00:25:10Our women cannot go out, we cannot run. They have never been outside their home.
00:25:20And if there is an attack, and if they are abducted, then what we are going to do? What should we do?
00:25:26What should we do? So they said that they have decided that they will burn their women.
00:25:33It was the women, both Sikh and Muslim, who suffered most.
00:25:37The dishonor of rape was enough for fathers and brothers to kill their own.
00:25:41They will put their women in a room, put kerosene oil on them, light them, burn them.
00:25:53And then they will be free to fight with the attackers, and there will be no danger of their women being abducted.
00:26:01I even bought a tin of kerosene oil to burn my sister then.
00:26:16But when I came home from the meeting and saw my nephew and nieces and my sisters, I said, no, I can't do this.
00:26:24I can't do this.
00:26:32With people being defined by their religion and killed because of it, Gandhi appealed for reason.
00:26:42You have heard his account, 58 of his companions killed because they were Hindus.
00:26:49And you have heard others call for revenge.
00:26:58It is a human response.
00:27:01But it is a mistake.
00:27:04We always viewed such things of Mr. Gandhi as hypocritical.
00:27:09Because at that stage, when things had already been out of your hands,
00:27:13to go ahead and to say, we are trying to stop it.
00:27:15I mean, it's just nonsensical.
00:27:18Because you could have avoided it, not to let it happen.
00:27:21Then once it starts, then to move and to say, well, I am trying to stop it.
00:27:26It is just sheer hypocrisy.
00:27:28I have said many times, an eye for an eye will make the world blind.
00:27:36He was caught in an impossible contradiction.
00:27:42He could not enlist the Hindus without proclaiming his Hindu-ness.
00:27:49And he could not proclaim his Hindu-ness without alienating many Muslims.
00:27:54With Gandhi out of the equation, Mountbatten turned to the one man who could reach the Muslims.
00:28:03A final attempt was made to seduce Jinnah from the Pakistan demand.
00:28:07I heard that you used to be an actor, Mr. Jinnah.
00:28:13No, I used to read Shakespeare to entertain my London friends.
00:28:17News got around, Jinnah reads well.
00:28:22What a piece of work is man.
00:28:23He didn't seem to fit his cause, as it were.
00:28:27He was not an orthodox Muslim.
00:28:29He was a highly westernized person who lived a very westernized life in a very cosmopolitan city, Bombay.
00:28:37In apprehension of God.
00:28:40All of that didn't fit in with this fanatic outlook that, you know, religion was something that decided nationality.
00:28:50I signed up with a theatre company and I wrote to my father in Bombay to tell him the good news.
00:28:57How marvellous. He must have been delighted.
00:28:59Madam, he was not delighted.
00:29:02He wrote back, do not be a traitor to the family.
00:29:07Well, we lost a great actor.
00:29:09But gained a great statesman.
00:29:15You know, India has never been a true nation.
00:29:18It only looks that way on the map.
00:29:24You see, the cow I want to eat, the Hindu stops me killing.
00:29:31Every time I shake hands with a Hindu, he has to wash his hands.
00:29:35The only thing we Muslims have in common with the Hindu is our slavery to the British.
00:29:45No, it's hardly slavery anymore.
00:29:48And already the violence starts, you see.
00:29:51That is why the map you take back to London will not be of India.
00:29:56But two separate nations, Hindustan and Pakistan.
00:30:02If I follow your logic and recommend the partition of India, I am bound, am I not, to partition the Punjab too?
00:30:13Certainly not.
00:30:15Punjab is a unity.
00:30:18It has its own identity, its own history.
00:30:21It has been like this for generations.
00:30:23So is India.
00:30:25You cannot split Punjab.
00:30:27By the same token, you cannot split India.
00:30:29Pakistan needs Punjab.
00:30:31And India needs what you call Pakistan.
00:30:33This is just a game.
00:30:38I cannot play this game.
00:30:43I assure you, Mr. Jinnah.
00:30:46It is not a game.
00:30:57With his failure to shift Jinnah even an inch,
00:30:59Mountbatten went to see for himself the area fought over by Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.
00:31:05In North-West Frontier Province, he learned the Muslim League had organised a show of strength for Pakistan.
00:31:13They are Bataan tribesmen mainly.
00:31:16About 100,000 we believe.
00:31:18They are in a pretty ugly mood, sir.
00:31:22What I mean to say is, they are armed.
00:31:25Are you all right, darling?
00:31:28Ruined.
00:31:30Pulling out the damned ashtrays on that plane.
00:31:34It was known to be a very menacing visit to go.
00:31:38It was a very brave thing to do.
00:31:40And very sensible to do it right at the beginning.
00:31:43Because, I mean, Mountbatten was setting the tone, you see.
00:31:47Setting the tone of how things would go forward.
00:31:50I'll need to make up my mind.
00:31:52I'll wait to make up my mind.
00:31:55We'll be able to see you from up there, sir.
00:31:58I'm coming, too.
00:32:02King 2.
00:32:32King 3.
00:32:33King 3.
00:32:34King 3.
00:32:35King 3.
00:32:36King 4.
00:32:37King 4.
00:32:38King 4.
00:32:39King 5.
00:32:40King 5.
00:32:41King 5.
00:32:42King 5.
00:32:43King 5.
00:32:44King 5.
00:32:45King 5.
00:32:46King 5.
00:32:47King 5.
00:32:48King 5.
00:32:49They faced this huge, great, hostile crowd of people.
00:32:52And, you know, it was a sense that things would go either way.
00:32:57And they stood there, and they just, well, they just, the whole people just can't
00:33:02calm down.
00:33:23Mountbatten realised that Jinnah's call for Pakistan was moving millions.
00:33:30The tour of the Punjab had brought home to Mountbatten the depth of religious hatred between Muslim and Sikh. It was, he said, like walking into the middle of a civil war.
00:33:46At that point of time it was more a question of survival. Because the Sikhs were a minority then, Sikhs are a minority even now, and for a minority community to survive, it's very difficult.
00:34:00Partition, the Muslim League policy for India, Mountbatten had opposed, but it now looked like it was happening anyway through the sheer force of violence.
00:34:14If it did happen, Mountbatten knew that he would have to sacrifice the Sikh minority who opposed it.
00:34:23We will never again be able to live in peace with the Muslim. Not with so many killed in cold blood, or turned at knife point into accepting Islam.
00:34:34But you will have to live with them unless the Punjab is partitioned.
00:34:37You must not partition the Punjab. It must remain as the Sikh homeland. Who built the Punjab? Ask your own officers. Who are the best farmers? They will tell you that the Sikhs are the best farmers. Everywhere in this land we have our holy places.
00:34:58The Sikhs, so proud and so martial and so confident that the British would not let them down, felt betrayed. Felt nothing was there now for them.
00:35:13According to the census, the Muslims have a majority in Mahal.
00:35:18Head count. One, two, three, four. Why count the insects when you can count the horses? We are the horses.
00:35:28There is a saying in this country that the Hindus always see the storm when it is still at a great distance. The Muslim sees it when it comes over him and the Sikhs see it when it is passed.
00:35:56So apparently they, of course, thought of what should be done after the storm has passed.
00:36:14It's a revenge attack. A hospital.
00:36:18They are saying the Sikhs started it. They attacked the mosque.
00:36:25And the children?
00:36:41And the children?
00:36:42How can we let this happen? Where are the soldiers?
00:36:54She had an enormous perceptive grasp of what we were going through. And she knew that the feeling that if you haven't been displaced, you don't really understand this, what it feels like to know that you will never go home again.
00:37:12Mountbatten's visit to the Punjab had taught him one thing, that the vision of a united India was in tatters.
00:37:21My God, if it carries on like this, they will be all like civil war.
00:37:27Isn't it one already, Dickie?
00:37:30Astonishingly, Nehru and the Congress party had come to the same momentous conclusion.
00:37:43I think there was extreme anguish, extreme sorrow and sort of feeling of despair almost that this was happening. And at that point, how to stop it?
00:37:58Surrendering his beloved vision, it was Nehru who now told India that he would accept partition.
00:38:06For generations, we have dreamt and struggled for a free, independent and united India.
00:38:17Free fourths of India was available to them to develop the way they wanted. So they finally saw virtue in the plan that they earlier had opposed so much.
00:38:29It is painful for any of us to contemplate partition, but we recognise that a united India cannot be based on compulsion.
00:38:41The India of geography, of history and tradition, the India of our minds and hearts cannot change.
00:38:50With Nehru agreed to partition and the creation of Pakistan, Mountbatten returned to London to get the policy approved by the British government.
00:39:07On achieving this, his final hurdle was to get Jinnah to accept that Pakistan would only get half of the Punjab.
00:39:13You have what you want, Mr. Jinnah.
00:39:21And Punjab?
00:39:22I don't think Nehru will give you that.
00:39:25The Muslim League will never accept a Pakistan without Punjab.
00:39:28Yes, I read your article in the newspaper.
00:39:31All of it.
00:39:36It's good tactics to retreat while sounding the charge.
00:39:39Because retreat you must, and then everybody can start to compromise.
00:39:49You believe me with a moth-eaten Pakistan?
00:39:52There is still time to stop my recommended partition, Mr. Jinnah.
00:39:58No need to divide Punjab.
00:40:01No need to reduce Lahore.
00:40:03Guarantees for the Muslim people built into the constitution.
00:40:07You, a father of that constitution.
00:40:10India, unpartitioned with its United Army and Navy.
00:40:13We are talking about what would surely be the greatest power in Asia.
00:40:18You are talking about it.
00:40:20Not me.
00:40:24He was a superb tactician.
00:40:25Of course, helped a great deal by his knowledge that Britain is in a hurry.
00:40:30Therefore, now is the time to strike a deal.
00:40:36On June 3rd, Mountbatten gathered the Indian leaders for one last push.
00:40:40What he needed from them all was both an agreement to partition India, and an agreement to split the Punjab between them.
00:41:02Most importantly, they needed to agree to this in front of each other.
00:41:15The decisions we make this morning will affect one fifth of the human race.
00:41:20And for that reason, we must put our vanities and our appetites to one side.
00:41:26I would raise the possibility, even now, of the prospect of a united India.
00:41:31If I thought it had the slightest possible chance of being accepted.
00:41:36And so consequently, we must turn our minds to how best we divide this great nation.
00:41:45Jinnah wanted Pakistan, and Nehru wanted independence,
00:41:50and Lord Mountbatten wanted to get the job done.
00:41:52That was his primary concern.
00:41:55That's what he came out to do, and that's what he did.
00:41:58This is the plan agreed by his majesty's government in London two days ago.
00:42:05How do you separate all the Muslims in India into another state?
00:42:11Muslims are all over India.
00:42:13We have a huge Muslim population who have lived thousands of years in every part of India.
00:42:20So, did they want all these people to move into another region?
00:42:28A corridor?
00:42:29A corridor?
00:42:30From where exactly?
00:42:31To Calcutta to Lahore.
00:42:33If you are given Calcutta, if you are given Lahore!
00:42:37Hindustan can tolerate a narrow corridor!
00:42:40Hindustan? Hindustan? India!
00:42:43You're not India!
00:42:44We are India!
00:42:45It is you who choose to secede from it!
00:42:47I'm not seceding from anyone!
00:42:50The British are granting independence to two separate nations, Pakistan and Hindustan!
00:42:54India!
00:42:55Gentlemen!
00:42:56Gentlemen! This is not the House of Commons!
00:42:59I will not continue until I see a row of smiling faces in front of me.
00:43:04As the Mahatma says, happy is the country with no history.
00:43:08It is not the past, but the future we must contend with.
00:43:18Railway stock. The army, the air force, the civil service, libraries and art collections, and the national debt.
00:43:30All to be divided between the two new nations.
00:43:35These are merely the guidelines.
00:43:37All I require now is your agreement to the basic principle to partition India.
00:43:43India.
00:43:47I speak for the Congress.
00:43:50Although we have points of detail and there could be others, you have our assent.
00:43:56Mr. Singh, will you agree on behalf of the Sikhs?
00:43:59I am second.
00:44:01Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:03I must first consult with my executive committee.
00:44:05Mr. Jinnah, if you delay, then the Hindus and Sikhs will delay and chaos will follow.
00:44:10Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:11That is not my responsibility.
00:44:12Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:13Then it is mine.
00:44:15Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:16I cannot accept.
00:44:19Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:20Then I will accept for you.
00:44:23Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:24All I need is for you to nod your head.
00:44:34Mr. Jinnah.
00:44:35The June the third meeting was a triumph for Mambatton.
00:44:40Nehru had agreed to partition India.
00:44:45Jinnah to partition the Punjab.
00:44:47Now there was only one man in the way.
00:44:50Gandhi went on saying he didn't believe that the partition was a good idea.
00:44:53But I think he realised somewhere in the summer of 1947 that he wasn't able, not going to be able to hold out so he retreated into silence.
00:45:05I have taken a vow of silence.
00:45:22Oh.
00:45:24But you can still talk to me.
00:45:26I want to say how sorry I am it has come to this, but ultimately it is impossible to enforce a united India against the will of any one community.
00:45:40I hope that when it is announced you can give your blessing to partition.
00:45:48Have I said one word against you in my speeches?
00:45:57No, I don't believe you have.
00:46:01I do not need to give my blessing.
00:46:07But I will not oppose you.
00:46:19I could see his anguish.
00:46:22But then anguish was not his constant emotion.
00:46:25He was cracking jokes.
00:46:27He was laughing.
00:46:29He had that capacity to absorb deep agony and summon some great reserves of resources in himself.
00:46:40With the road now clear, Mambatton slammed his foot down.
00:46:43To the amazement of everybody, he announced that Britain would leave India ten months ahead of schedule, on August 15, 1947.
00:46:53I said, why did you do that?
00:46:55Because we were caught unprepared.
00:46:58He said he couldn't hold the country together, so he had to do it.
00:47:01It did seem that haste overpowered his judgement, because I think the hastening of the date created problems which might have been less severe if it had not been a case of tearing a date off his calendar.
00:47:17In June, the process of splitting India's assets in two began, an heroic task made into a desperate one by Mountbaton's new deadline.
00:47:29Everything from library books to infrastructure was divided.
00:47:33Men of the same battalion had to choose which country to serve.
00:47:37The cadets were given an option. Those who wished to migrate to Pakistan could do so, and those who wanted to remain in India could give their certificate accordingly.
00:47:52We were 66, including some Christian colleagues who had opted for Pakistan.
00:47:59And even then we were told, you can still change your mind.
00:48:04If you wish to stay here, if you want to go, you go.
00:48:08India.
00:48:11Pakistan.
00:48:14Pakistan.
00:48:17Pakistan.
00:48:19India.
00:48:20Pakistan.
00:48:23The battalion commanders, or the company commanders, they were there.
00:48:27And they said, gentlemen, I'm sorry to inform you that those cadets who had opted for Pakistan, they are supposed to leave tonight.
00:48:39India.
00:48:41Parting was very emotional.
00:48:45Very emotional.
00:48:46Except, I mean, we didn't cry loudly, but our hearts were aching.
00:48:52And the same was the other side.
00:48:56Where was the other side?
00:48:58To answer that question, Mountbaton was supplied with a civil servant who would draw the line between India and Pakistan.
00:49:04Sir Cyril Radcliffe.
00:49:05Sir Cyril Radcliffe.
00:49:07I'm very keen to see Shimla and the old English churches there.
00:49:11There's a quite magnificent Anglican altar.
00:49:15Very similar to Bath, I'm told.
00:49:17Yes, Shimla is very lucky.
00:49:20The streets are named after British mountains, you know.
00:49:23Snowdon, Ben Nevis and so on.
00:49:26Yes, and you can see the Himalayas in the distance.
00:49:29It's where Kipling learned to write, Shimla.
00:49:32Very much looking forward to seeing it.
00:49:34I think it's quite difficult to get someone prepared to take it on.
00:49:39Because, I mean, you know, no thanks really.
00:49:42Nothing but brick packs, don't you think?
00:49:45Sir Cyril, is this really your first time in India?
00:49:50Never before been east of Gibraltar.
00:49:51Radcliffe had just 36 days to divide the subcontinent.
00:50:06India, 1947.
00:50:08Six weeks to go before independence.
00:50:11Six weeks to go before the creation of Pakistan.
00:50:14The man charged with drawing the borderline between the two new states was Sir Cyril Radcliffe.
00:50:19He was actually put into some house all by himself.
00:50:25No one was allowed to speak to him.
00:50:27In case we had to be clear that nobody had influenced him.
00:50:31Radcliffe had just 36 days to divide India.
00:50:36So I asked him, how did you really go about this thing?
00:50:41He said he had no time.
00:50:43So he had to do it in a hurry.
00:50:45Radcliffe's line through the Punjab would decide which cities, villages and religious shrines would belong to India and which to Pakistan.
00:50:55He drew it knowing a civil war was already raging.
00:50:58We are very slightly changed from the semi-apes who ranged India's pre-historic clay.
00:51:09But he that drew the longest bow ran his brother down, you know.
00:51:15As we run men down today.
00:51:21Kipling.
00:51:23Radjad Kipling.
00:51:25The poet.
00:51:26The uncertainty over where the line would fall was creating panic, especially in the disputed city of Lahore.
00:51:35We thought Lahore would be on the Indian side because the majority of people in Lahore were Hindus who owned urban property.
00:51:44Whereas most of the Punjab, of course, was Muslim.
00:51:48But they were landed people and the urban people, which was Lahore, we were quite sure would come to the Indian side of the border.
00:51:57We got scared about this partition part because we didn't know what it meant.
00:52:02What will happen?
00:52:04Will we be separated from our friends forever?
00:52:06And that's very important for all of us.
00:52:09That, you know, they would imagine Lahore without Sikhs.
00:52:13Imagine Lahore without our Hindu friends.
00:52:16Imagine this thing becoming only Muslim.
00:52:19So it was a bit frightening.
00:52:21Across the Punjab, thousands were now making their own guesses as to where India might end and Pakistan start.
00:52:28Muslims heading in one direction, Hindus and Sikhs in the other.
00:52:31Each train would take a thousand persons and I made certain they went by villages.
00:52:38Everybody knew everybody and that worked quite well.
00:52:41But the problems, of course, were the attacks on the trains as they went through the countryside.
00:52:46Armed vigilantes were ambushing trains and slaughtering passengers on the basis of religion.
00:52:52Many people from the villages, they came out with axes and big knives
00:52:58because the Hindus and Sikhs, most of the Hindus and Sikhs were travelling on there.
00:53:05And they killed most of them.
00:53:07They killed them.
00:53:09But we were wearing burqas, they knew we were Muslims.
00:53:13So they spared us.
00:53:15We're producing a fearful butcher's bill, Mountbatten was told by his governor in the Punjab, Evan Jenkins.
00:53:22There must be someone there trying to steady things.
00:53:28A train came into Lahore station this morning.
00:53:31A thousand Muslim passengers.
00:53:33The only man alive was the engineer.
00:53:35You can't keep that secret.
00:53:38What's the situation with our own people?
00:53:41The Europeans.
00:53:43We're the untouchables.
00:53:46Is there anything I can do to help you?
00:53:51I need to know where Rackle's frontier will fall.
00:53:54What's Lahore?
00:53:55Are we in India or are we in Pakistan?
00:53:58I don't know.
00:54:00Sir Cyril won't report until after the transfer of power.
00:54:04I'm sorry.
00:54:07Goodbye.
00:54:16Dead bodies came in that train.
00:54:19There was just a driver left to drive them.
00:54:22And anyone who happened to have survived because he fell under somebody.
00:54:25And crawled out afterwards.
00:54:28Carriage after carriage after carriage.
00:54:31Of dead bodies.
00:54:34On either side.
00:54:37Private armies of religious fanatics now set about cleansing Lahore of their enemies.
00:54:44We used to climb up onto the second floor.
00:54:47And we could see the city burning.
00:54:52The inside city.
00:54:53The old city.
00:54:56I can still cry.
00:55:04Order had collapsed in the city.
00:55:06Even the police were fighting each other.
00:55:07We did not know what was happening for nearly two months.
00:55:17And every night we thought this might be the last night of our existence.
00:55:21We killed 65 members of my family.
00:55:34One day.
00:55:36No fault.
00:55:38No fault of us.
00:55:40My mother was killed.
00:55:42My father was killed.
00:55:44My two sisters, three sisters, two brothers.
00:55:57My grandfather.
00:55:59My grandmother.
00:56:03Grandmother on the maternal side.
00:56:06Her daughters.
00:56:07Her children.
00:56:08Every one of them was killed.
00:56:09No fault.
00:56:11I'm sorry, but the boundary force is not the solution.
00:56:15In Delhi, it seemed to both Nehru and Jinnah that the British authorities had stopped even trying to govern.
00:56:21You're telling me that the men who defeated the Wehrmacht now find a Punjabi rabble too hot to handle?
00:56:29Why can't you men take control?
00:56:31It's proving all too easy to set fire to a Punjab village.
00:56:35Narrow alleys.
00:56:37Wooden structures.
00:56:38Abundant arsonists.
00:56:40Not to mention the moral incendiaries.
00:56:42Excellency.
00:56:44If you will not allow us to govern, then you must make a firmer grip yourself.
00:56:47One thing you could do, both of you, is to make some concessions to calm people.
00:56:52Could Congress waive its claim to Lahore?
00:56:55What do you mean?
00:56:56The signs are that Sir Cyril will award Lahore to Pakistan.
00:57:00Beat him to it. Gain the goodwill.
00:57:03You have a direct line to Radcliffe?
00:57:05No, of course he doesn't.
00:57:07You should declare Marshal Yor.
00:57:09He can't do that.
00:57:11Well, you could, when it was in Britain's interest to do so.
00:57:14That is unfair.
00:57:15I don't care whether you shoot Muslims or not.
00:57:18This must be stopped.
00:57:20Do you think the police are obeying me?
00:57:22They all know that in ten days' time I will be gone.
00:57:26I have policemen hiding in their own cells to protect themselves.
00:57:30Others who are only too happy to run with the mob.
00:57:33The Punjab police is no more.
00:57:36People aren't waiting for Radcliffe to report.
00:57:39They're drawing the boundary line for themselves.
00:57:42With less than ten days to go to partition, the capital, Delhi, was hit by the mobs.
00:57:51As with the Punjab, the police seem to have gone.
00:57:56I blame the British also because they were in command.
00:58:02They had all the positions of command at the time through 1946-47.
00:58:08And had they had the will to do so, they could have put down rioting.
00:58:12They thought we are leaving anyway.
00:58:13So let them have fun.
00:58:14Let them kill each other.
00:58:15We tried to save, we tried to unify the country.
00:58:18We kept this country together.
00:58:19We gave them law.
00:58:20We gave them culture.
00:58:21We gave them modern education.
00:58:22And now, of course, they are fighting.
00:58:23They are at throats of one another.
00:58:24Let them fight it out.
00:58:25You ruled the country for such a long time.
00:58:26You had some obligation to help us out.
00:58:27You ruled the country for such a long time.
00:58:28You had some obligation to help us out.
00:58:31You ruled the country for such a long time.
00:58:36You had some obligation to help us out.
00:58:39they are at throats of one another, let them fight it out.
00:58:48You ruled the country for such a long time, you had some obligation to help us out.
00:59:01I would have thought, we found this place in a mess, and we're leaving it in a mess.
00:59:06Don't be like that, darling.
00:59:10Maybe it's true, without us the Indians get a seed.
00:59:13You know that's nonsense.
00:59:15Well, have they learned nothing from us?
00:59:20I am eternally surprised they can even begin to forgive us.
00:59:27Well, it's very easy for all of us to say the British have to be blamed, but not necessarily.
00:59:32I'm sorry, I don't all fully agree with that.
00:59:36I might say that they were careless and not bothering what's going to happen to us afterwards.
00:59:41But all these killings took place because of our own fault and our own feelings and our own inhibitions.
00:59:48And we must also recognise, not only what the Congress did or did not do, not only what Gandhi did or did not do, not only what the British did and did not do, but what the Hindu extremists and what the Muslim extremists did right from the 20s.
01:00:07QUIGE
01:00:18With less than a week to go to partition, a tidal wave of refugees from the Punjab broke on Delhi itself.
01:00:29I don't think that Mr Nehru ever thought there would be the kind of massacre that ensued
01:00:39and Mountbatten listened to him.
01:00:43I don't blame him.
01:00:45You listen to the people of the country.
01:00:49To Nehru, who long ago had imagined the triumphal scenes accompanying independence, the catastrophe
01:00:55came at a personal cost.
01:00:58I'm fairly thick-skinned, but I'm finding this more than I can bear.
01:01:19During the war, I remember, at a morgue, they lined the dead up in rows.
01:01:28Just like pheasants.
01:01:30It's not the dead.
01:01:34It's the savages that kill them.
01:01:39They're worse than animals.
01:01:48I think I'm losing faith in my own people.
01:01:55She was well aware of the tragedy that had befallen.
01:02:01Three quarters of a million people had died, and many millions had been displaced.
01:02:06And she knew that.
01:02:07And she never stopped working on that.
01:02:13The scale of the tragedy was also acknowledged by Mr Chinna.
01:02:20I hope you're not blaming me for that.
01:02:21Well, I can't stop thinking of your two nations theory.
01:02:23I said only what was already on the mind of Congress.
01:02:27I'm not sure if Nehru or Gandhi would agree with that.
01:02:28Let me ask you, who first brought religion into Indian politics?
01:02:34Who inflamed the masses of this country?
01:02:35You must remember, they did.
01:02:41Well, now we see, those masses are human beings, not saints.
01:02:48Mr Chinna had come from a very sophisticated Bombay society, where they were sophisticated people.
01:03:14They talked of law and order and this and that.
01:03:17But the real people, real people, they were partitioned.
01:03:22Their hearts were partitioned.
01:03:24Their minds were partitioned.
01:03:27Perhaps only Gandhi, now fasting for peace, understood what had happened.
01:03:34I remember your beautiful words when we first met in the garden.
01:03:39How everything had been blended to perfection.
01:03:42That was a garden.
01:03:43That was a garden.
01:03:44Not a wilderness.
01:03:45Took skill and devotion and love.
01:03:49It's I who am fasting, not you.
01:03:50Please.
01:03:51I want you to know that we wholeheartedly support what you are doing.
01:03:56God is humbling my pride.
01:03:57I am being severely tested.
01:04:03Still my heart is full of joy.
01:04:04He was a realist.
01:04:10His fasts unto death were always meant to influence people who loved him.
01:04:17The Pakistan demand was voiced by Muslims who at that time did not love him.
01:04:18They distrusted him.
01:04:19They distrusted him.
01:04:44did not love him. They distrusted him. There was no way in which a fast unto death resulting
01:04:52in his death would have averted Pakistan.
01:04:59On August the 14th, Pakistan, the world's first Islamic state, came into existence.
01:05:05In just 10 years, Mr. Jinnah had taken the fanciful idea of a Muslim homeland and turned
01:05:10it into a nation.
01:05:15It was a happy day. We had attained whatever we wanted, you see.
01:05:4012 hours later, India followed to become the world's largest democracy.
01:05:55On August the 15th, Jawaharlal Nehru made his first speech as Prime Minister at the stroke
01:06:03of midnight.
01:06:09Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny. And now the time comes when we shall redeem
01:06:16our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the
01:06:26midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
01:06:38A moment comes which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when
01:06:46an age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.
01:06:56We are a free and sovereign people today and have rid ourselves of the burden of the past.
01:07:05We look at the world with clear and friendly eyes, and at the future with faith and confidence.
01:07:17The hall is empty, half empty. The buildings are burning. So this sort of freedom I didn't
01:07:24visualize. Maybe the others did, and they didn't mind. But I didn't feel the freedom at all.
01:07:31British rule ended in India on August the 15th, 1947.
01:07:38There was this wonderful feeling, you know, I was not born free. And for me to realize suddenly
01:07:47that now I'm free, it was a very wonderful feeling.
01:07:52And then there was the tragedy, that my country, my beloved country, has been partitioned.
01:08:07But as the last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, transferred power, the 400 million people of the subcontinent
01:08:13did not know where the borderline was that divided India from the new state of Pakistan.
01:08:26Only after Independence Day was Sir Cyril Radcliffe's award published, a line driven through the
01:08:32Punjab that pleased neither Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs.
01:08:37Against his instincts, Mountbatten had been forced to split the country in two, but the
01:08:42timetable was his. He failed completely to foresee the human consequences of partition and
01:08:49failed to prepare for the chaos and upheaval that followed.
01:09:04I was in a long term misery and I saw amongst these people who came, crying, where's my, will
01:09:12my child come? I left my child near Satana's place, will somebody go and fed their child?
01:09:18I don't know where my husband went, was he killed? I as a young woman thought no, why did
01:09:26we do all this and kill each other when we had lived for hundreds and hundreds of years together?
01:09:35It seemed in the aftermath of Independence that the whole of the Punjab had taken to the
01:09:40road looking for safety.
01:09:43My job was to take an estimated number of 40,000 civilians on foot across 250 miles into Pakistan.
01:09:53The noises the camels were making would be quite extraordinary, the grinding of the wheels
01:10:00and the dust, dust, dust everywhere.
01:10:07All the time I've seen women with swollen eyes, all the time they were crying.
01:10:15Their children were killed, their brothers were killed, their husbands were killed.
01:10:20I've seen people crying and crying and crying.
01:10:27They were praying and hoping that they should cross the border, they should cross the border.
01:10:32If they cross the border, they will be left alive.
01:10:37The one and only doctor we had was reporting that he had seen a hundred people dying every day,
01:10:50and between 80 and 100 children dying and being buried as well.
01:10:55It was really a terrible mess. We didn't have time to do anything about it.
01:11:10A month after Independence, Nehru and the Mountbatons took a journey over the Punjab
01:11:14to see the situation for themselves.
01:11:29The pilot says that this particular caravan is at least 150 miles long.
01:11:35Which way are they going? I can't tell.
01:11:49And you?
01:11:55To Pakistan.
01:12:05There's another coming the other way.
01:12:10Can you see?
01:12:13Yes.
01:12:17Now darling, can you see the caravans? They're going to meet.
01:12:22God help us.
01:12:27This shouldn't be happening.
01:12:28Not like this.
01:12:31Not like this.
01:12:4920 million people were displaced by partition, never to see home again.
01:12:54One million died because they belonged to the wrong group.
01:12:57One million died because they belonged to the wrong group.
01:13:09We'd grown up in India.
01:13:12This was one country.
01:13:14I, even today, when I think of Bangladesh or Pakistan,
01:13:19I think of all of us as one culturally.
01:13:24I wouldn't have mind if I had been killed because there were survivors, my survivors.
01:13:38They would think that I am a martyr.
01:13:41Those who have gone are martyrs.
01:13:45They died for a cause.
01:13:54It happened in history, it has happened.
01:14:03But not like this.
01:14:05Not like this.
01:14:07The suffering was too much.
01:14:10This killing was too much.
01:14:14For years, 1947 was seen as a strange eruption of medieval barbarism into the modern world,
01:14:20where neighbour killed neighbour.
01:14:22But now, partition and the primitive sectarian violence it caused seem less a relic of the past than a premonition of wars that were to come.
01:14:35It is the feeling of emptiness without the other communities being there.
01:14:44Because all our lives we lived in those communities.
01:14:47That was the feeling.
01:14:49And that was my feeling, age 17.
01:14:51There was no more or less medicine.
01:14:58I was just saying there was no more or less medicine in that moment.
01:15:04I'm not a woman.
01:15:06I've never been learned enough for years.
01:15:08I'm a child for years, I don't believe in the past few years.
01:15:10But I've been learning back in life.
01:15:11To be continued...
01:15:41To be continued...
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