Anam Zakaria on the Footprints of Partition 

Watching from Kolkata.

Excellent

Very interesting. I am punjabi from Pakistan and I am fluent I reading and writing Gurmukhi which I learnt at my own because this is my language and I want to be able to read and wrote both scripts.

I’m Punjabi, born and brought up in Australia. I went to volunteer in Thailand as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development (supported through the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade’s former aid initiative - Australian Aid) when I was 19. It was there for the first time I came to realise by accident that so many of the Pakistani refugees we supported actually spoke Punjabi. One day at the office as I walked past the waiting room, I was taken by surprise that I could understand the conversation taking place between a woman and her husband. I rushed to my computer and did some quick Wikipedia research and that’s when I learnt that ~50 % speak Punjabi. We then connected on a much deeper level and I ended becoming the ad hoc translator. I even went to the hospital when one woman gave birth to her baby boy. Later I asked them why they didn’t list Punjabi as their language in the form, they said it was an uneducated informal language and that they didn’t realise there would be translators/people who spoke Punjabi but not Urdu from abroad. After this I noticed that every time I visited Punjab, even in India, “educated” people would not speak back to me in Punjabi even though that’s all I’d speak to them in. They preferred English or Hindi.

When you say hindu India then you are disrespecting the all Indian Muslims which is about 200 -220 millions which is much bigger than many muslim countries who are true indians. So please respect our feelings

There's a dangerous and a wrong assumption that takes place in these discussions, that of a historical Indian nation, that's just wrong and a naked lie. It was a partition of the Punjab and Bengal, NOT India. Unless we correct the underlining basic facts, we continue to feed lies.