Tears of joy flowed down her wrinkled face when Indian Sika Khan was reunited with her Pakistani older brother Sadi for the first time since the tragic Partition in 1947.
Sika was only six months old when she and her ten-year-old brother were finally separated by the British section of the subcontinent when their colonial powers were finally separated.
This year is probably the 75th anniversary of Partition, when more than a million people died in sectarian violence and entire families were torn apart by the rise of two new nations: India and Pakistan.
Sika’s father and sister died in the massacres, but Sadiq managed to escape to Pakistan.
“My mother couldn’t bear the trauma, she jumped into a river and committed suicide,” explains Sika, in her modest brick home in Bhatinda district in the Indian state of Punjab, the epicenter of the violence.
“I was at the mercy of the villagers and some relatives who raised me,” says the Sikh man who works as a mason.
Since childhood, Sika wanted to know something about her brother, who was the only surviving member of her family. But she found no leads until a neighborhood doctor offered her help three years ago.
After numerous searches and the help of Pakistani YouTuber Nasir Dhillon, Sika was able to find Sadiq.
The brothers finally reunited in January at the Kartarpur corridor, a rare visa-free pass that allows Sikh pilgrims from India to visit a temple in Pakistan.
Opened in 2019, the corridor has become a symbol of unity and reconciliation for families separated by Partition, despite the ongoing hostility between the two nations.
“I’m from India and he’s from Pakistan, but we have a lot of love for each other,” Sika said, showing a faded, framed photo of the separated family.
“When we first met, we hugged and cried a lot. Countries can keep fighting. India-Pakistan policy doesn’t worry us,” he adds.
Dhillon, a 38-year-old Muslim Pakistani farmer and real estate agent, claims to have helped unite nearly 300 families with his friend Bhupinder Singh, a Pakistani Sikh, through his YouTube channel.
“This is not my source of income. This is my inner love and passion,” Dhillon told AFP. “I feel like these stories are my own stories or my grandparents’ stories, so helping these old people makes me feel like I’m fulfilling my own grandparents’ wishes.”
When British settlers began to tear their empire apart in 1947, an estimated millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims fled their homes.
The estimated deaths reach one million people, although some believe the actual number is double.
Hindus and Sikhs fled to India, Muslims to Pakistan. Tens of thousands of women and girls were raped, and trains carrying refugees between the two countries arrived laden with corpses.
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© Agence France-Press
source: Noticias
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