to you about how storytelling is
reshaping the memory of the 1947
partition so let me start by my personal
story when I was growing up I spent all
my summers in a tiny little town in
North India called fourth chord we were
so close to the border between India and
Pakistan that I grew up watching two
state-controlled television channels
while most in India and Pakistan in the
1980s only had one so we watched Indira
Gandhi and benazir bhutto in those days
outside our homes there was a civil
conflict that was also raging on curfews
were becoming the norm and suspicion and
uncertainty were in the air as the
government forces were seeking the Sikh
separatists amongst us this is in Punjab
meanwhile in the comfort of our home we
mostly did not notice a lot of the
communal tensions that were going on
outside life continued on as usual mass
blackouts in those days were normal in
the small towns as summer nights are
mostly devoid of electricity so we spent
them outside under billions of stars on
our rooftop watching tiny little
satellites as they crept across the sky
we dosed off to our grandparents telling
us stories about ancient kings and
queens that used to rule that part of
the world and about lions and about
snakes and about fascinating visitors
from other places that used to visit
bring their goods and so on every now
and then reality would creep in and we
would hear stories about the
disappearances of so-called terrorists
that were living amongst us stories from
those days sometimes tick out to me more
than the lessons from my textbooks in
school in the years that followed and in
fact some of those stories inspired my
love for nature so much so that I got a
PhD in physics some of those stories
also sparked my interest in human
conflict since I was surrounded by
as a kid so much so that it led to the
work that I’m doing today that I’m going
to talk to you about
so storytelling as it turns out if
there’s a reason that it’s so powerful
so I’m a scientist and neuroscience
tells us that our brains are actually
wired to learn from storytelling in fact
one on one storytelling between two
people creates a bond that is so vital
for our minds that we crave it
after once we’ve experienced it once for
the first time so it was in this manner
that I first learned about the story of
partition about my own families my own
family’s personal connection to
partition so my per turn Allah
grandmother sat me down I was living in
the u.s. at this point so it was a few
years later she sat me down she told me
the story of how she took her three
little children across the border how
she fled the violence there were times
where their jeep had to run over dead
bodies when I heard this story it
sounded really surreal to me it sounded
almost unreal it was hard to believe I
wanted to learn more so I began to dig
deeper but as I dug more I learned that
the story the narratives of partition
mostly surrounded was was mostly about
politicians and political motivations
and so on and I learned about very big
numbers with lots of zeros so 10 million
perhaps 15 million people migrated at
the time of partition and that number
goes up to about 20 million if you look
into the 1950s because the displacements
continued on these were very big numbers
and in terms of the number of women that
were that were abducted it seems like
the number could be as high as a hundred
thousand in terms of the number of
children that disappeared we don’t even
know because nobody kept count and the
number of children that were orphaned in
terms of the number of people who died
during the violence that number is also
contested today so we don’t have exact
we don’t have an exact number for that
that everybody agrees upon so that was
the public memory of partition it was a
story of ice-cold numbers and contested
accounts by political leaders those
numbers did not account for the human
toll and they did not they did not
capture hearts yet we were so read to
narratives that they had led to a lot of
cross-border tensions I wanted to know
more I wanted to know who those people
were that my grandmother’s Jeep may have
ran over who are the people that helped
her survive who were those other ten to
14 to 15 million people I felt that the
story of partition was actually a
tapestry that combined stories of the
millions of people who had actually
experienced and witnessed it yet the
stories were largely unknown and I
wanted to do something about that there
was a fear that if we did not record our
history we would build our future on a
faulty and less understood history and a
faulty sense of identity and so I wanted
to do something about it I just didn’t
know what these are just some images
from the time of partition that show you
some of these ten to fifteen million
people that were migrating so the aha
moment for me came in 2008 when I was
doing a part of my PhD in Japan I took a
trip down to Hiroshima and before I went
to Hiroshima
I had read books about the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how that
affected the people there I had watched
movies on the subject but nothing hit me
quite like the testimonies of survivors
that I saw at the memorial those stories
were incredibly powerful and they hit me
to the core one of the things that I
learned was that those who survived
those who managed to survive the atomic
bomb they struggled for the rest of
their life they had trouble finding
marriage partners they had trouble
finding jobs because people thought that
they were contaminated so nobody would
hire them and nobody would marry them
when I was watching those stories I
noticed that it was a combination of
their body language their facial
expressions and their words that made
their stories very real for me and I
could relate to them suddenly the events
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became very
real and I could relate to them as a
human and I realized that those stories
of the witnesses gave those events
legitimacy they gave them importance
they inspired research they inspired
people to dig deeper and in that moment
I realized that that’s what was missing
for partition it was a disappearing
history despite the fact that it
affected us so tremendously it was such
a massive 20th century event not just
for South Asia but the whole world but
it was a disappearing history and one of
the biggest reasons in my opinion was
that we did not have the witness voices
and so that realization led to sort of a
mad rush to collect oral histories of
partition witnesses so in those early
days we realized that one or two or a
few of us could not do this work there
were simply far too many people and they
were spread out across the world and we
wanted to record all their stories and
so what we did is we devised a workshop
together with experts from UC Berkeley
which is where I was at the time and
Stanford University and we devised an
oral history workshop so we could rally
people from around the world and joining
us to record these stories and it worked
so more and more people started watching
these workshops from around the world
and they began recording stories in
their communities the idea was that
anyone anywhere could log in learn to
watch the workshop use a camera or you
know their smartphone go on in their
community record these stories upload
them to the archive and then the stories
get shared on mass media
oh sorry social media and that inspires
even more people to come forward with
their stories but it also inspires
reflection on partition at a grassroots
level and so in that way we began our
work and over time hundreds of citizen
historians from diverse backgrounds all
over the world and all sorts of
communities came together and started
uploading stories from communities that
we were just completely unaware of of
being affected by partition so let me
just go through quickly and show you
some of these stories so here’s a story
that came in from Geneva camp in taça in
Bangladesh and that’s a camp that’s been
around since 1947 so there are a number
of people there who are considered
Biharis who are still there and this
story came in back in 2011 this is for
Hana frozen citizen historian who’s
recording Muhammad honey as another
example here’s Gayatri Chakravarthy her
story came in from 24 Nagas in Bengal
she migrated from a village in
what’s now Bangladesh over to Bengal in
India and here’s some fascinating story
this story has come in from what was
formerly known as the Northwest Frontier
Province in Pakistan this is from SWAT
district and it’s in a language that’s
disappearing so in effect in addition to
preserving history the archive is also
preserving languages as a side effect so
the language is called Thor Valley and
the gentleman Abdullah Mateen is sharing
his story in Thor Valley and I think
there’s less than 3000 people now who
speak that language here’s a story
that’s coming from Jammu and Kashmir and
what’s fascinating here is that this
story is from a district called Medford
and we hear stories from that district
all over the world from survivors yet
there are no physical documents
documenting the violence that happened
there once again demonstrating the
importance of recording the people’s
memory because you get information from
people that may not have made its way
into documents and how do you check the
validity of it you simply cross check by
looking at different people’s stories
who may not know each other here’s a
story of a man named Geoffrey Langlands
who was a schoolteacher in Islamabad and
stayed behind at the time of partition
he’s over a hundred years old today
here’s a fascinating story of Daniel
Golin which was recorded in Israel and
he came from a Jewish family that
migrated from Karachi to Pune and then
eventually Bombay and then in 1948 he
was recruited to help build Israel so he
went and moved into a kibbutz as a 14
year old boy and lived in Israel here’s
a story from right here in Delhi from
Old Delhi this is mr. Mirza Chang Ghazi
being recorded by Hrithik up Oakley so
mirza cheng aziz 104 years old today and
he was one of the few people who did not
migrate over to Pakistan in 1947 from
Old Delhi here’s a story of a man
Muhammad Yosef who migrated from East
Punjab to West Punjab and it’s submitted
by Taha Shaheen who now lives in Karachi
so this is just to give you a glimpse we
have over 4300 stories in the archive
4,500 rather this just to give you a
glimpse of the diversity of stories
coming from unique places that
didn’t think were affected by partition
how many people thought that there were
partition witnesses living in Israel
today or the Northwest Frontier Province
in Pakistan so in this way hundreds and
hundreds of people came together over
the years and have submitted more than
4500 oral histories
that’s over 8,000 hours of video footage
and the stories come from 350 cities
around the world in 12 countries and in
20 and are told in 22 languages the
stories are followed by over 750,000
people on social media and shared over
10 million times just this year alone so
you can see the shift in public
perception our goal is to record 10,000
stories through the end of next year so
let me give you an example of what’s
happening with so many people recording
and sharing stories there’s a sort of
critical mass that’s starting to build
up so when we first started this work in
2010 there was a lot of fear and
uncertainty sometimes people would talk
to us several times before they would
agree to share their story they wanted
to know are you from the government why
do you want this story why does anybody
care but there’s been a huge shift after
so many people have shared their stories
and they’ve gone viral on social media
over the last seven or eight years since
we began this work today in fact there
are entire neighborhoods as some of our
story collectors in West Bengal complain
where everybody has shared their story
with the archive and there are no more
stories left to record so the stories
also challenge some of our most
closely-held beliefs and these include
beliefs about identity about culture
about our apparent enemies and about our
past so one of the one of the
interesting things that comes about in
the stories is when you record stories
from what were former kingdoms and there
were over 500 of them in South Asia
prior to 1947 you see that people’s
identities were tied with their kingdoms
they had not heard of India or Pakistan
until 1947 same with many of the
villages we’ve recorded many people who
were from villages in Bengal and Punjab
and they think of themselves as Bengali
or Punjabi and they had never heard of
India or Pakistan until 1947 so that
becomes really fascinating
specially when you consider our modern
very you know deep ties to those
identities also another fascinating
thing that we find from the stories I
mean there’s a lot of fascinating things
but I’m just giving you a few examples
is how economics changed across the
countryside in South Asia you used to
have villages before that were
completely closed economic units so
clothing oil food everything almost
everything that they needed almost
everything that they needed was produced
right there in the village but what
happened during partition is because
caste and religion and profession in
some villages was so closely tied that
you had entire professions disappear
from villages you had villages where all
the farmers left or he had villages
where all the artisans left and suddenly
there was a need for goods that were no
longer being produced locally and all of
these villages were thrust into the
global economy so massive economic
shifts happened during partition that
aren’t really understood to this day
also there was a great loss of knowledge
that we have not quite acknowledged we
hear of stories over and over again
where huge libraries full of
one-of-a-kind books went up in flames
and were burnt down another thing that
comes out from the stories that you
don’t find in documents is the origin of
the violence this is a big question for
everyone why didn’t a bird start killing
neighbors well one of the things that we
find from stories is that well it
doesn’t make sense why would neighbors
kill neighbors and the stories tell us
that neighbors in fact didn’t really
kill neighbors in fact most of the times
neighbors protected neighbors we find
both from interviewing people who
contributed to the violence and who were
victims that people did not attack
people that they knew so victims often
did not recognize their attackers and
attackers would attack in places where
they did not know anybody and the
motivation quite often for the violence
was loot and so it turns out that the
violence seems to be mostly economically
so that’s just something that oral
histories help us dig deeper into but
obviously it needs a lot more research
so I hope I’ve given you plenty of
examples of how oral histories
compliment documents and you know the
information that you find in government
archives and libraries another a curious
little fact that I’ll mention before the
end of my talk is something that I
encountered when I personally was
recording stories in the Punjabi
countryside I would go from one village
to the next and the first thing I would
get asked is what village are your
grandparents from and you know what’s
your last name and so on when I would
give them this information a lot of
times people would go back 200 300 years
and connect how my ancestors somehow
knew their ancestors and so it was okay
I was okay and I was allowed to go into
their village and record their stories
and from this process I discovered that
up until about one or two generations
ago a lot of elders a lot of people were
memorizing the last 30 40 50 generations
of their ancestors a practice which has
pretty much disappeared I don’t know too
many people my age who know even more
than their last 2 or 3 generations of
ancestors so those are some fascinating
examples of knowledge that’s
disappearing so I’m gonna quickly play a
segment of a video for you
from an interview before I end this talk
then when I was 12 year old then my life
changed I met my friend with him I found
that I belonged to somebody and I was
not alone anymore what my friend taught
me I forgive to the even people who
killed my family my own way of thinking
is that just love everyone hit no one
that’s why I look at it so I just wanted
to leave off on that note especially the
way he ended his story it’s about
forgiveness and it’s about empathy
across the borders and I think that’s
another important thing that the stories
can help us do they can help us see the
other
as just as human as ourselves thank you [Applause]