70 years after Pakistan-India split, Sikhs search for home
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Radesh Singh’s grandfather was just 11 years old when he left his village in India’s Punjab province to move to Peshawar, in the far northwest of the country on the border with Afghanistan.
The year was 1901: The British ruled the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan wasn’t even a glimmer in the eye of its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and Peshawar held the promise of work and adventure.
Singh’s grandfather would never return to his village, not even in 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was divided into majority Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, generating one of the largest migrations in modern history and unleashing a brutality that left few untouched as mobs of Hindus and Muslims turned on each other.
Singh’s family is neither Hindu nor Muslim but Sikh, a religious minority in both countries. In the 70 years since Partition they have waged a secessionist uprising in India demanding outright independence for India’s Punjab state where they dominate. They have felt increasingly less at home on either side of the border, but particularly so in recent years in overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan as they too have become victims of local Taliban violence.