75 years later, the vanished ghosts of the bloody partition of India

AMRITSAR, India — For seven decades, Sudarshana Rani has been anxious to learn the fate of her younger brother. She was just a child when the communal bloodshed that surrounded Britain's partition of India in 1947 wiped out almost her entire extended family. But in the rice paddies that had become places of execution, there was a body she did not find: that of her 5-year-old brother, Mulk Raj.

Mrs. Rani, a Hindu, and an older brother were taken in by the family of a Muslim classmate before abandoning their home near Lahore, which has become part of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. In India, they built new. The brother, Piara Lal Duggal, retired as a senior Indian state bank executive. Mrs. Rani raised children who are now doctors and bankers.

Yet her spirit remained with the brother left behind. Did Mulk Raj get away and survive? She imagined him seeking her; she saw him everywhere and in everything. Even a family movie outing a few years ago became part of his long, quiet search.

"I thought maybe it was my brother they made the movie about him," she said of the 2013 biopic of Milkha Singh, the star sprinter who overcame the massacre of his own family during partition. "I walked around the field, saw everyone - not him," she said of that day in the rice fields. "Maybe he told his story."

ImageSudarshana Rani, 83, who fled what became Pakistan during partition.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

ImageThe Golden Temple in Amritsar, in the Punjab region, is the holiest of Sikh spiritual sites.Credit... Atul Loke for The New York Times