Re-reading history to 'bridge' the Partition

He was only 18 years old when he was forced to summarily pack up his life in Lahore and cross over to India during Partition in 1947. It has now been 63 years and he leads a comfortable life in Mumbai but his tired eyes can still vividly recall the day at Bhatinda station where he saw Hindu rioters attacking truckloads of Muslims travelling to the other side of the border-he pleaded with fellow Hindus to spare two aged Muslim men who were bleeding but the rioters did not relent. They had already stripped the ailing men off and had found out that they were Muslims, so they "could not be allowed to go".

Such heartrending personal accounts of the Partition are being documented by a group of students of Cathedral and John Connon School, J B Petit, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, H R College and Jai Hind College in Mumbai  to help the youth have an unbiased understanding of the historical event. "We belong to the second post-Independence generation. We aren't directly affected by Partition but are suffering its after-effects in the form of wars and insurgency. Most young people are limited by the scope of their history textbooks," says Ria Mirchandani, who along with friends Zara Rustomji, Kunal Mehta, Niyati Mahimtura, Raghav Sawhney and Shawn Wadia, hopes to generate an unpartisan view of the tragedy.

Full report here Times of India