35 Extremely Rare Photos From 1947 That Show The Horror Of Partition

Akarsh Mehrotra

Staff Writer

All photos have been compiled from: India TV

After gaining independence from British Raj, India was to be divided into two separate countries (India and

Pakistan). A major population exchange happened with around 25 million people relocating to their new homes

and what followed was complete chaos. A large evil loomed over the population that was shifting to a new

country once the borders were drawn. Religious riots along with acts of oppression and cruelty marked this

huge event as a dark blot on the history of the two countries.

The horror and the magnitude of suffering was unimaginable, but here are a few photos that depict the dismay

of the people who crossed borders and the horrible state it left both the countries in:

1. Millions on a journey to restart their lives

2. Family partitioned from their son

3. A room full of tears

4. A makeshift drip for a makeshift life

5. Countless bodies being buried

6. A mother lost in thought with an infant on her lap

7. Vultures feed off the dead

8. The weak carrying the weaker

9. Sidelined from life

10. Souls turn to dust as others pass by

11. A lake of blood and tears

12. Wreckage left after millions were uprooted

13. The living dead

14. Walking towards an unknown future

15. Thousands board the Uncertainty Express

16. Carrying what's left of their lives

17. The North Western Railways carries hopes of millions

18. When life gives up on you

19. Burdened with life on their shoulders

20. Making do with what they have

21. The other side of life

22. Exhaustion brought them to their knees

23. The residue of riots plague the streets

24. Journey to a new land

25. Time went on but the tracks ran out

26. An expression that perfectly describes the chaos of the partition

28. Spitting a library in 1947

29. Mountbatten arrives at Delhi airport; received by Nehru and Liaquat Ali. March 25, 1947

30. Aug. 15, 1947 Mountbatten swears Nehru in as Prime Minister of India

31. Men, women and children who died in the rioting were cremated on a mass scale. Villagers even used

oil and kerosene when wood was scarce.

32. An aged and abandoned Muslim couple and their grand children sitting by the the roadside on this

arduous journey. The old man is dying of exhaustion. The caravan has gone on, wrote Bourke-White.

.

33. Families were cut to half as men were killed leaving women to fend for themselves

34. The street was short and narrow. Lying like the garbage across the street and in its open gutters were

bodies of the dead, writes Bourke-White's biographer Vicki Goldberg of this scene.

35.