Vice President Partition Remembrance Day Du Seminar 1947 History

The India-Pakistan partition marked one of the most tragic and dehumanising chapters in the country’s history, Vice-President C P Radhakrishnan said on Friday stressing that the Partition Horrors Remembrance Day was not meant to “reopen old wounds with bitterness” but to remind the country of the suffering and sacrifices that accompanied Independence. He made the remarks at a national seminar organised to mark the day by the Centre for Independence and Partition Studies (CIPS), University of Delhi, in collaboration with the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR).

“Our children deserve to know the truth of Partition,” said V-P Radhakrishnan, who is also the DU Chancellor, adding, “The catastrophe of such magnitude could not be reduced to a few lines in a textbook.”

In his address as the chief guest, Radhakrishnan paid tribute to Partition survivors present at the seminar and said, “The country must pause, on the eve of Independence Day, to remember those who endured the violence, displacement and suffering of 1947…Freedom has not come to us without any cost, without any sufferings, without any sacrifice. This type of horror should never happen again in our motherland,” he said as he felicitated 15 Partition survivors during the event.

The Partition, he added, resulted in one of the largest mass migrations in human history, with more than one crore people uprooted. “Families were torn apart. Neighbourhoods that stood for centuries were emptied overnight,” he said, adding that countless men, women and children lost their lives.

The Vice-President also spoke about the suffering of women during Partition, referring to accounts of abduction, assault, forced marriage and conversion. He said some fathers had taken the lives of their own daughters rather than see them subjected to such violence. “It is most impossible for us sitting here in safety to fully imagine the depth of this despair,” he said, adding that for many survivors the loss of their homes had also permanently affected their sense of identity and belonging.

The University of Delhi’s Centre for Independence and Partition Studies, established in 2023, had recorded the testimonies of more than 100 Partition survivors in a short period, he said. The centre, he said, was also reaching out to young students through lectures, archives and public events.

“Time will heal everything. Time will fade everything but certain history should not fade…,” he underlined, stressing that the experiences of those who lived through Partition must remain part of the collective memory.

Radhakrishnan said the hurried redrawing of borders had created disputes whose consequences continued to be felt, including in India’s defence policy, national security and relations with neighbouring countries.

“Partition did much more than redrawing our borders. Partition cut through our ancient civilisation that has stood whole for thousands and thousands of years,” he said.

He referred to several sites and symbols of shared civilisational heritage that were left on the other side of the new border, including the Sindhu river, Kartarpur Sahib, Nankana Sahib, ancient Shaktipeeths and the archaeological sites of Harappa, Mohenjodaro and Takshashila. He also mentioned shared languages, court music, festivals and shrines that had formed part of the region’s common heritage.

He urged people to place national unity above narrower identities, saying, “No caste, no religion, no region is more important than the nation.”