The Great Migration

The Great Migration began inside individual homes: with rumours brought by relatives, hurried conversations between neighbours, and families trying to decide whether the danger outside was temporary. It began with people packing a few possessions and then unpacking them, unwilling to accept that they might truly have to leave. It began with questions for which no one had reliable answers.

Would the violence reach their village? Would the army restore order? Which country would their district enter? If they left, where would they go? If they remained, who would protect them?

Most importantly, did leaving mean escaping for a few days - or abandoning home forever?

Note: This post discusses notions some readers may find disturbing - forced displacement, violence, abduction and other human experiences during the Partition of Punjab. Reader discretion is advised.

Before the Border

The movement of Punjab’s people had begun before the border between India and Pakistan was formally defined.

The violence of March 1947 had already displaced tens of thousands, particularly in the Rawalpindi Division, where Sikh and Hindu villages were attacked and survivors gathered in camps or moved towards safer districts. Violence in Lahore, Amritsar and other parts of Punjab also pushed families out of mixed neighbourhoods and into areas dominated by their own communities. It’s estimated that 40,000 Punjabis were left homeless during this earlier wave of unrest; but these movements were not initially understood as the beginning of such a large migration.

There was no provision in the June 3rd Plan requiring minority groups to leave certain regions. Political leaders publicly assured minorities that they would be protected. Many Punjabis had lived as religious minorities for generations and saw no reason why independence should automatically make their continued presence impossible.

Those with money, transport or relatives elsewhere sometimes sent women and children away as a precaution. Wealthier families were generally better positioned to leave early by car or train, while government officials transferring their service from one dominion to the other could sometimes receive organised transportation. However, most ordinary Punjabis did not have such security.

Farmers could not easily abandon ripening crops, animals, equipment and land upon which their livelihoods depended. Shopkeepers could not carry businesses accumulated over decades. Labourers had no income waiting for them somewhere else. Elderly people could not imagine beginning again in a place they had never seen. Many families therefore remained, not because they were unaware of the danger, but because migration itself appeared almost impossible.

Independence Without a Border

Pakistan came into existence on 14 August 1947. India became independent the following day.

Punjab, however, still did not officially know where the border was.

The Radcliffe Award - the definitive borderline was not published until 17 August 1947. During the intervening days, people celebrated independence, lowered one flag and raised another, or sheltered from violence without knowing which nation their district would belong to. Rumours moved faster than official information. Some correctly anticipated the result. Others prepared for an outcome that never came.

When the borderline was finally announced, administrative decisions became personal verdicts.

Lahore belonged to Pakistan. Amritsar belonged to India. Most of Gurdaspur district went to India, while Shakargarh was placed in Pakistan. Ferozepore remained in India. Railway lines, canals, roads and villages were divided between the two nations.

Some minority families still believed the disturbances would pass. Others were assured by neighbours that they would be protected. Some stayed because an elderly parent could not travel, because a relative had gone missing in the prior unrest, or because leaving would mean surrendering everything they owned. There were families who had survived earlier episodes of unrest and believed they could survive this one as well.

Others saw the announcement as their final warning.

Across East Punjab and its princely states, Muslims began moving towards Pakistan. Across West Punjab, Hindus and Sikhs moved towards India. Some departed by choice. Others were ordered out, attacked, driven from their homes or escorted away after the communities around them had already disappeared.

What followed was not a planned population transfer. It was a series of local expulsions, precautionary departures, panicked escapes and organised evacuations that eventually merged into one immense movement across Punjab.

The Decision to Leave

For every family, there was a final moment at which uncertainty became departure.

Sometimes it came after an attack on a nearby village. Sometimes a relative arrived carrying news of violence elsewhere. Sometimes local officials warned minorities that they could no longer guarantee their safety. In other places, armed groups issued direct threats or ordered families to leave. A train arriving with wounded passengers could frighten an entire region. So could the rumour of a train that had not arrived at all.

People rarely had enough time or transport to take everything.

Clothes, food, water, jewellery, money, religious texts, family photographs and property documents were bundled together. Parents had to carry young children. Space had to be found for elderly, disabled, or injured relatives. Cattle, buffaloes and horses were taken where possible because they represented food, transport and the possibility of earning a living later.

Many people locked their doors before leaving.

They handed keys to neighbours, buried valuables or asked someone they trusted to watch their animals and land. Some carried keys and title deeds across the border because they expected to return when order was restored.

People may have understood that the political border was permanent without accepting that their own exile would be.

Those Who Tried to Stay

Not everyone responded to danger by leaving.

Some Punjabis remained because neighbours of another religion promised to protect them. These promises were not always broken. Across the province, Muslims sheltered Sikhs and Hindus, while Sikhs and Hindus sheltered Muslims. People concealed families inside their homes, guarded neighbours’ property, negotiated with armed groups or arranged safe passage out of villages.

There were also places where local leadership prevented the removal of minorities. Malerkotla became the most prominent example. Although surrounded by regions experiencing extensive violence and displacement, it retained a significant Muslim population after Partition.

Other people survived by attempting to conceal who they were. Religious clothing and visible markers were changed or removed. People changed their names, avoided speaking in front of strangers, hid in homes belonging to another community or passed themselves off as members of the majority. Some converted to survive. For some, conversion was a desperate personal decision; for others, it was imposed under threat.

Interfaith couples, converts, domestic workers living with families of another religion and children born into religiously mixed circumstances did not fit neatly into the new division. The border assumed that religious identity could determine where a person belonged. Punjabi lives were often more complicated than the categories created for them.

Some families delayed leaving for as long as possible. They moved into a camp or a religious compound but remained on their own side of the border. They waited for missing relatives, for an organised convoy or for proof that returning home was no longer possible.

Staying, hiding and waiting were all part of the migration. They show how strongly people resisted accepting that they had become unwanted in their ancestral land.

The Difficult Choice

For some, every possible choice appeared to lead towards violence.

Migration meant travelling along exposed roads, entering crowded railway stations and passing through territories controlled by armed groups. Remaining meant waiting in a village or neighbourhood that might soon be attacked.

Under those conditions, some people took their own lives - by jumping into nearby wells, or consuming poison. Often, women were most vulnerable, some made their own decision to leave and face the uncertainty or to give up their lives. Others acted under intense pressure from their families and communities. Some had no choice.

This was not separate from the migration. It occurred because, for those trapped between violence at home and uncertainty on the road, migration no longer appeared to offer a safe route to survival.

Who Could Make the Journey?

Migration demanded a body capable of movement.

An able-bodied adult may have been able to trek, sleep outdoors and continue after food and water had run out. Infants, women, elderly people, the injured, the chronically ill, and people with disabilities could not endure the same conditions.

Families made room for vulnerable relatives on bullock carts, carried children and supported those who struggled to walk. Possessions were discarded to create space for people. When carts broke, animals died or roads became impassable, the family’s ability to remain together could collapse.

The elderly faced particularly painful decisions.

Some refused to leave. Their connection to their home was not abstract: it was the house in which they had raised children, the land inherited from their parents, the place where their relatives were buried or cremated, and the community that had known them for most of their lives. The division of Punjab was a new political reality; their village was the world they actually understood.

Others wanted to leave but could not complete the journey without assistance. They slowed groups that were moving under threat. Some died from extreme stress, exhaustion, thirst, exposure or illness. Some became separated from relatives or were left in hospitals and camps. In the worst circumstances, families were forced to choose between remaining with someone who could no longer continue and moving the rest of the household towards safety.

There were also elderly people who survived because former neighbours remained with them after the rest of their community had gone.

One of the most overlooked groups in the migration were disabled refugees. They were counted as evacuees if they reached a camp and often disappeared from records if they did not. Yet they faced one of the most severe forms of exclusion: an emergency response constructed around moving millions of people offered very little accommodation to those who could not move themselves.

Punjab on Foot

At first, families left in small groups. On the roads, those groups joined neighbours, relatives and people from nearby villages. Small parties became convoys; containing tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

These were not anonymous crowds. Entire villages attempted to travel together. Extended families remained close to each other. People walked beside bullock carts carrying children, elderly relatives and whatever possessions had survived the departure. Animals were driven alongside because they remained essential to rural life.

The movement occurred in both directions.

Muslim groups travelled west from Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ferozepore, Ambala and the eastern princely states. Hindu and Sikh groups travelled east from Lahore, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Lyallpur, Montgomery, Multan and other parts of West Punjab.

At times, groups moving in opposite directions passed one another. Each contained people leaving homes similar to those the other group had just abandoned. Both were moving towards countries presented as places of safety. Both were leaving the Punjab they actually knew.

The journey could take days or weeks. People often ran out of food and drinkable water. Wells became dangerously overcrowded or inaccessible. Families slept in fields and beside roads. Children wandered away in large gatherings. Relatives who stopped to search for someone risked losing the rest of their group.

Late September and early October brought further disaster when post monsoon flooding affected central Punjab. Roads and bridges were damaged, land was swamped, and already exhausted refugees became stranded. Military engineers constructed temporary bridges, while aircrafts dropped food to people cut off by floodwaters.
The migration was shaped not only by violence, but also by heat, rain, disease, hunger and the physical geography of Punjab.

Children Who Did Not Understand

Children had no control over whether their families stayed or left.

The youngest understood Partition through changes in the behaviour of adults: whispered conversations, sudden packing, locked doors and instructions not to ask questions. Some were told that they were going on a journey. Others knew only that they had to walk and that they could not return for forgotten belongings.

Infants depended entirely upon mothers who were themselves hungry, exhausted or injured. Toddlers had to be carried when they could no longer walk. Older children carried bundles, watched younger siblings and tried to keep pace with adults. Adolescents were often treated as if they were already grown: boys might be expected to help defend or guide the family, while girls faced heightened fears of abduction and targeted violence.

Some children saw parents or siblings disappear during attacks. Others became separated at railway stations, along roads or inside camps. A child who could not clearly state a village name, parent’s name or destination could be almost impossible to reunite with family.

Orphaned and abandoned children entered relief camps and charitable institutions. Some were adopted or taken into unrelated households. Others were kidnapped. Disease and malnutrition affected many children who were already vulnerable to the journey. 

After the initial conflict passed, recovery and efforts to reunite missing children with their families meant that they were taken from families or shelters that had cared for them during the peak of the uncertainty. For children who did not understand, this often meant another removal.

Women on the Road

Women travelled without reliable medical care. Mothers had to feed infants while lacking food and clean water themselves. Personal struggles had to be managed without privacy, sanitation or supplies. Women were forced by circumstance to be in close proximity to strangers in railway carriages and camps, sometimes after spending their previous lives within far more private domestic and social environments.

When husbands, fathers or sons had been lost or separated from the family, women became heads of households without warning. They had to secure transport, collect rations, identify missing relatives and negotiate with officials. Widows arrived in unfamiliar places carrying responsibility for children and elderly family members while possessing few documents or independent financial resources.

Poverty, Caste and the Unequal Journey

Not every Punjabi entered the migration with the same resources.

Wealthier families could sometimes leave before the worst violence, hire transport or rely upon relatives in another city. Senior officials transferring across the borderline might travel by organised train or aircraft and arrive with employment awaiting them. Poor rural and working-class families were more likely to leave late, travel on foot and depend upon overcrowded camps.

For landowners and business owners, property documents could later support claims for compensation. Landless labourers possessed fewer documents because their survival had depended upon wages, customary relationships and access to village resources rather than property they legally owned.

Some initially believed that the conflict between the larger religious communities did not involve them. Others lacked the money, transport and political connections required to leave. Some were encouraged to remain because their agricultural, sanitation and artisanal labour was considered essential. Their usefulness to the local economy could be valued more highly than their freedom to migrate.

Religious identity determined which direction many people were expected to travel. Caste and class helped determine how safely they travelled, how long they remained displaced and what assistance awaited them after arrival.

The Refugee Trains

For urban Punjabis and those gathered in large camps, railways offered the possibility of crossing the border more quickly.

Stations filled with people carrying bundles, searching for relatives and waiting for special refugee services. Carriages were packed beyond ordinary capacity. People travelled in luggage spaces, between compartments and on carriage roofs. However, a place on a train did not guarantee that the train would depart, follow its expected route, or arrive safely.

Railways had once connected Punjab’s cities and carried its soldiers, produce, traders, and families. In 1947, those same lines became routes of evacuation.

But they also became targets.

Trains were stopped or attacked. Passengers were targeted, injured or abducted. News of attacks spread rapidly, and stories of trains arriving with few or no survivors intensified panic on both sides. Railway workers, military escorts and volunteers attempted to keep services operating while stations and tracks were surrounded by violence.

For children, the elderly and those unable to walk, a train could be the only realistic means of escape. For that reason, families continued boarding them despite the danger.

Organising the Unorganisable

No government or administration created or facilitated the migration. However, by the time they attempted to control it, more than a million people had already moved.

The Punjab Boundary Force had been established to maintain order in the border districts, but the scale of the collapse was too large to control. It was disbanded on 31 August 1947.

The Military Evacuation Organisation was established at Amritsar, and a corresponding organisation to move Muslim refugees out of East Punjab was also created. Their task was to gather displaced people into camps, organise trains and motor transport, form escorted foot columns and move refugees across the border.

But evacuation imposed order only upon part of the crisis.

Officials divided territory into sectors and calculated how many people could fit onto trains, trucks and groups. Names were recorded in camp registers. Routes were selected. Armed escorts were assigned. At the border, refugees passed from the responsibility of one authority to another.

People who had understood themselves as farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, parents and residents of particular villages were now officially categorised as refugees, evacuees and displaced persons.

The Camps

Refugee camps appeared across both Punjabs - in schools, military grounds, religious buildings and open fields.

Some were intended as temporary assembly points where people would wait for transport. Others became overcrowded settlements holding tens or hundreds of thousands. Camps around Lahore, Sialkot, Lyallpur, Montgomery, Sheikhupura, Amritsar and the border crossings struggled to provide shelter, food, water and medical treatment.

Cholera, dysentery, malaria and other diseases spread through crowded camps. People who had survived attacks and long journeys died after reaching what was supposed to be safety. Medical workers treated wounds, exhaustion, dehydration and disease with limited supplies. Children were born, people perished, relatives searched camp registers, and families waited for their names to be called for the next stage of evacuation.

A camp was neither home nor destination. It was a place between the Punjab someone had lost and the Punjab into which they were being sent.

Crossing the Border

There was not always a visible line announcing the borderline.

For those travelling by train, the border might be understood through a station, an inspection or the behaviour of the escort. For those walking, it could be a checkpoint, a bridge, a military post or simply the moment someone announced that the group had crossed.

Reaching the other side brought relief, but not necessarily belonging.

A family arriving on either side of Punjab were often directed towards an abandoned property whose residents had recently made the reverse journey. One family’s place of refuge was frequently another family’s abandoned home.

People searched for relatives and attempted to discover whether anyone had remained behind. They carried keys that no longer opened a reachable door and documents describing property now located in another country. Some still believed that political negotiations would eventually allow them to return.

For many, the emotional realisation of exile came after the physical crossing.

The Scale of the Movement

The migration cannot be measured with complete precision. People crossed before registration systems existed, travelled without entering camps, perished on the road or moved several times. Figures also vary depending upon whether they refer only to divided Punjab or include neighbouring princely states and other parts of the subcontinent.

Estimated numbers state almost 5 million muslims moved from east Punjab to west Punjab in the months following the announcement of the borderline, and almost 4 million sikh/ hindus made the reverse journey.

Within months, West Punjab had lost almost its entire Hindu and Sikh population. East Punjab had lost most of its Muslims. Towns, villages and districts that had contained mosques, gurdwaras, temples, churches and shared sacred places became overwhelmingly associated with one religious population.

A Journey Believed to Be Temporary

By the end of 1947, the largest groups had crossed the border and the most intense period of movement had begun to subside. Evacuations continued into 1948. Labourers, isolated rural families, abducted women, orphaned children and people stranded in camps remained caught in the unfinished movement.

Those who had crossed the border now faced another uncertainty: how to build a life in a country that called them its own but could not return what they had lost.

Behind them were homes they had locked, crops they had left standing, businesses they had closed and relatives they had expected to see again. Some possessed nothing from their former lives. Others still carried keys, photographs and property documents as evidence that those lives had existed.

Adults had made impossible decisions with incomplete information. Elderly people had left the villages and cities that shaped their lives. Children had crossed a border they could not understand. Women had carried families through journeys while confronting dangers directed specifically at them. Men faced incredibly tough conditions to protect the people closest to them.
The poor had walked where the wealthy could ride. Some people had survived by leaving the only people and places they had ever known. Others had survived by staying, hiding, converting or trusting someone their new country had defined as an enemy. Some had concluded that neither staying nor leaving offered survival at all. Many had perished at the toughest points of the journey.

In official records, they became refugees.

In their own memories, they remained people from Punjab despite the border that now divided them.