For many Indians, 15 August is a day of celebration but for some, it’s a reminder of the atrocities that were committed during the lead-up to the “stroke of midnight”. I’m one of them. My father was not even 12 when he saw a brutal murder in his village in the north-east district of Jalandhar.
It was late 1946, only a few months before India was to gain independence. People – Hindus and Muslims – had got wind of Lord Mountbatten’s plans to partition the country. The two-nation theory that had been a rallying call for Indian Muslims such as Muhammad Ali Jinnah was now becoming an inevitable reality.
