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Journalism of Courage
On the face of it, “26, Mansingh Road, Jaisalmer House” is just another Lutyens’ Delhi address. But for lakhs of refugees of Partition who fled across the border from Pakistan in 1947, this was ‘Lahore Shed’. Broken and homeless, they queued up at the bungalow that housed the Settlement Commission, where they submitted their claims for land and compensation, hoping to start their lives afresh in a new land.
For decades, the records of these claims — 12 lakh files held together by stories and struggles of countless families — remained forgotten, gathering dust at Lahore Shed. In recent years, however, these records have been transferred by the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Ministry of Culture, where a painstaking process of conservation and digitisation is on. Now, all these files are indexed and accessible, ready to serve the descendants of those who once fought for their rightful compensation.
While the index of claimants is complete, the records are being preserved and will be made available online in the coming years, officials told The Indian Express. Until then, those who may want to access these documents can send a request to the National Archives of India (NAI).
Ranjan Mishra, Assistant Director of Archives, who has been entrusted with organising the records and indexing them, said more than a lakh such Partition-era claims are still under litigation, while lakhs of other families seek these records to settle land and family disputes. Every month, he said, they get requests from four to five descendants of the original claimants, who approach the Archives through the MHA or the courts. “There are still some cases where claims were awarded but the compensation is still awaited,” he said, adding that most of these requests come from district courts in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, through the MHA.
Mishra said the indexing will help those looking for records. “So now, if someone asks for a record pertaining to their family, we can search and revert if the records indeed exist among the 12 lakh files housed in Lahore Shed,” he said.
To these people and others, including researchers and historians, the conservation efforts of the Archives will help open a door to the past, allowing them to uncover family histories, resolve legal disputes, and connect with a chapter of history that shaped modern India.
For almost a decade after the events of August 14, 1947, the road outside Lahore Shed is said to have been teeming with refugee families, who camped with food and water as they waited to submit their claims. In fact, the settlement of some of these claims gave birth to several refugee colonies in Delhi, including the now-thriving Lajpat Nagar. Officials said the compensation given to the refugees included agricultural land, shops, houses and even cash in some cases.
Pradeep Kumar, another Assistant Director of the Archives, who is among those overseeing the project, said that it was in 2010 that they were tasked by the MHA to appraise the rehabilitation files housed in the dilapidated Lahore Shed. As part of the appraisal, officials from the government departments concerned and Archives sat together to assess which of these records could be declassified and preserved.
“Between 2010 and 2015, almost 3.37 lakh records were appraised and transferred from Lahore Shed to the NAI campus on Janpath,” said Kumar. In 2014, the MHA transferred the remaining records along with the building itself to the Archives.
The MHA order on the transfer of the documents said that in addition to the claims and compensation files, “the records of the-then Ministry of Rehabilitation, and a large number of unlisted non-current records/files… kept in 102 wooden/steel almirahs, 1,045 steel racks and two big wooden racks”, were transferred to the Archives.
Describing the condition of the records, an official said they received the papers as cloth potlis (bundles), each containing around 5 kg of papers and no less than “two kg of dust”. The double-storeyed building itself was in bad shape, infested with rats, monkeys and even snakes, officials said.
The files at the Lahore Shed are now neatly arranged on racks, categorised under different cities and states where the refugees were resettled – mostly Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Delhi, but also as far as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Until the recent conservation exercise, there was no way of tracing or pulling out a Partition-era claim record from the many dusty boxes in Lahore Shed. “People would keep trying in vain… some even filed RTI requests. But now, with the entire index being uploaded on the Archives website, people can check in advance if their records are available with us, and send us a request,” explained Arun Singhal, Director-General of the Archives. “Once the records are all digitised and put up online, people don’t have to come to us, they can simply download their records,” he added.
