A few tears and a lot of cheers for families torn apart by Partition

Ironically, just three days after Begum’s death her family was finally traced. “We finally found her family, but it was too late by then. News of her death was heart breaking for all of us,” said Nasir.

As per details, Sultana Begum was born two-years after the partition. Her mother, Shagina Begum, was visiting her parents’ house in India, when the country was hastily divided by the British as they looked to leave the
country.

Sultana’s mother, Shagina, managed to return to Pakistan in 1948, only to find that her husband had married another woman by then. A heavily pregnant Shagina later returned to her brother in Patiala, where she gave birth to Sultana. Later Sultana was raised by Pandit Churanjilal, a friend of her grandfather. “We traced the family of Sultana Begum’s father in Pakistan three days after her death. They were found to be living in Pattoki in Kasur district,” said Nasir, who managed to talk to Sultana on her last trip to Pakistan earlier this year.

The other story is that of Preetam Khan, 80, who died two days before his passport was finally granted by Indian authorities for him to go meet his family members in Pakistan.

Preetam — who lived at Poot village in Samrala tehsil of Punjab’s Ludhiana at the time of his death — was around 6-years-old in 1947 when the country was partitioned. His father and brothers went to Pakistan after the Partition, while his mother died in the bloody violence that followed.

Ever since being separated, Preetam had been making desperate attempts to find out about his blood relatives, with his efforts finally bearing fruit in June 2022 after YouTuber Nasir Dhillon uploaded an video about a man from Pakistan searching for his relatives in India.

The man featured in that video was none other than Preetam’s nephew, who along with his other relatives, lived in in Chak 95 in Faisalabad. A relieved and elated Preetam, who never married, next planned to meet his relatives at Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib and applied for a passport. Two days before his passport was delivered to them, however, Preetam Khan passed away at his Poot village home.

Some stories, however, did have happy endings, a case in point being that of Abdul Khaliq. Born as Mohan Singh, his whole family was killed in the riots that broke out after the Partition. Mohan was subsequently adopted and taken care of by the family of Mohammad Din, who gave him the name of Abdul Khaliq and raised him as his son.

Khaliq’s sister, Nirmal Kaur, was living with their uncle Sarwan Singh at the time of Partition and had managed to flee to India despite the violence that broke out.

In the years that followed the Partition, Sarwan had somehow managed to learn that his nephew Mohan Singh aka Abdul Khaliq, had survived the horrors. Sarwan later undertook a trip to Pakistan in search for Abdul, but in vain.
Years of anticipated wait later, a bunch of YouTubers finally traced Abdul Khaliq back to Burewala in Pakistan in 2020 and a meeting was arranged between the families at Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib in January 2022. Khaliq’s sister Nirmal Kaur, flew in from Canada to meet him. The most iconic reunion of this year was however that of Sikka Khan.

Seventy-five years after the border split the two Punjabs, leaving Sikka and his mother on one side and his elder brother Sadiq Khan and his father in the Pakistani part – never to be together again – all it took for the search to end was a video shared on social media in 2019. A day after a YouTuber Nasir Dhillon, uploaded Sadiq’s appeal, he got a call from a rural medical practitioner from Sikka’s village. It took two more years though for the brothers to finally meet, after overcoming the paperwork.

The brothers first met in-person at Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib for a few hours in January, 2022. A few months later, Sikka Khan’s wait to reunite with his brother finally ended in March this year when he crossed Attari-Wagah border to enter into Pakistan to go live with his brother, Sadiq Khan for a few months.