Partition survivors seek closure via YouTube channel
The Punjabi Lehar YouTube channel, based in Pakistan, reunited people separated by the partition of India in 1947.
FAISALABAD, Pakistan - Nasir Dhillon, a former policeman, sells houses in a Pakistani town about 100 miles from the Indian border. His property company has four locations and he drives a Toyota SUV, a local marker of affluence.
But Mr. Dhillon, 38, is best known for his line of key: reuniting people separated from loved ones during partition, when Britain divided its large South Asian colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in August 1947.
Mr. Dhillon is the driving force behind Punjabi Lehar, a six-year-old YouTube channel that regularly posts interviews with survivors of this traumatic episode. He says it has allowed a number of Muslims and Sikhs - some of whom live in North America - to visit their ancestral villages and has led to around 100 in-person meetings.
The partition led to communal violence, mass displacement and the death of as many as two million people. Some of the young people who survived were separated from their parents or siblings.
"What did they do wrong? They were children,” Mr. Dhillon said recently in his office in the northeast city of Faisalabad. "Why can't they visit their family now?"
In a typical case, Mr. Dhillon or his business partner, Bhupinder Singh Lovely, interviews a person who wants to meet a long-lost friend or visit an ancestral home or village. The video ricochets off social media and sometimes prompts advice from the public that leads to a meeting or a campaign trip.
It's a service that governments from India and Pakistan have never offered. Neighbors have gone to war three times since the 1960s, and relations have remained locked in a deep freeze ever since, punctuated by periodic military clashes.
Many survivors partition on both sides of the border expressed a desire to cross it and reconnect with the lives and people left behind, said Anam Zakaria, author of "Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians ".
"Too many people have already died with this unfulfilled desire," she added. "In this context, the way Punjabi Lehar fosters connection and reunion offers a window of hope and closure, at a time when we are on the verge of losing the generation of the score."
The Punjabi Lehar YouTube channel, based in Pakistan, reunited people separated by the partition of India in 1947.
FAISALABAD, Pakistan - Nasir Dhillon, a former policeman, sells houses in a Pakistani town about 100 miles from the Indian border. His property company has four locations and he drives a Toyota SUV, a local marker of affluence.
But Mr. Dhillon, 38, is best known for his line of key: reuniting people separated from loved ones during partition, when Britain divided its large South Asian colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in August 1947.
Mr. Dhillon is the driving force behind Punjabi Lehar, a six-year-old YouTube channel that regularly posts interviews with survivors of this traumatic episode. He says it has allowed a number of Muslims and Sikhs - some of whom live in North America - to visit their ancestral villages and has led to around 100 in-person meetings.
The partition led to communal violence, mass displacement and the death of as many as two million people. Some of the young people who survived were separated from their parents or siblings.
"What did they do wrong? They were children,” Mr. Dhillon said recently in his office in the northeast city of Faisalabad. "Why can't they visit their family now?"
In a typical case, Mr. Dhillon or his business partner, Bhupinder Singh Lovely, interviews a person who wants to meet a long-lost friend or visit an ancestral home or village. The video ricochets off social media and sometimes prompts advice from the public that leads to a meeting or a campaign trip.
It's a service that governments from India and Pakistan have never offered. Neighbors have gone to war three times since the 1960s, and relations have remained locked in a deep freeze ever since, punctuated by periodic military clashes.
Many survivors partition on both sides of the border expressed a desire to cross it and reconnect with the lives and people left behind, said Anam Zakaria, author of "Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians ".
"Too many people have already died with this unfulfilled desire," she added. "In this context, the way Punjabi Lehar fosters connection and reunion offers a window of hope and closure, at a time when we are on the verge of losing the generation of the score."
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