After being divided by Partition in 1947, Indian Sika Khan finally got to meet his Pakistani brother, and tears of pleasure poured down his aged cheeks.
When Britain divided the subcontinent at the end of colonial rule, Sika, a Sikh laborer, and his older brother Sadiq Khan were torn away at the age of six months.
This year is the 75th anniversary of Partition, a period of sectarian violence that may have resulted in the deaths of over a million people, the severing of families like Sika’s, and the founding of Pakistan and India as independent countries.
In communal killings, Sika’s father and sister died, but Sadiq, who was only 10 years old, was able to escape and get to Pakistan.
In Bhatinda, a district in the Punjab state of western India, which took the brunt of Partition violence, Sika said at his basic brick home, “My mother could not endure the trauma and jumped into the river and killed herself.”
I was abandoned and raised by some relatives and the villagers. Sika had always been interested about his brother, the sole surviving member of his family, ever since he was a young boy. However, he was unable to advance until a nearby doctor offered to assist him three years ago.
Sika was reunited with Sadiq after multiple phone calls and help from Pakistani YouTuber Nasir Dhillon. The brothers eventually came together in January at the elusive Kartarpur corridor, a border crossing that enables Indian Sikh pilgrims to travel to a Pakistani temple without a visa.
Even though there are still active hostilities between the two countries, the corridor, which opened in 2019, has come to represent harmony and reconciliation for estranged families.
“I am from India and he is from Pakistan, but we have so much love for each other,” said Sika, clutching a faded and framed family photograph.
“We hugged and cried so much when we met for the first time. The countries can keep on fighting. We don’t care about India-Pakistan politics.”
Pakistani farmer and real estate agent Dhillon, 38, a Muslim, says he has helped reunite about 300 families through his YouTube channel together with his friend Bhupinder Singh, a Pakistani Sikh.
“This is not how I make a living. It is my deep love and desire, said Dhillon to AFP. I believe that these are my own tales or the stories of my grandparents, therefore by aiding these elders, I feel as though I am carrying out their wishes.
He claimed to have been greatly moved by the Khan brothers and to have taken all necessary steps to achieve their reunion.
He told AFP in Faisalabad, Pakistan, “When they were reunited at the Kartarpur, not just me but almost 600 people at the compound wept so much seeing the brothers being reunited.”
It is estimated that millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims fled as British rulers started to dismantle their empire in 1947.
One million people are estimated to have been killed, though some put the toll at double this figure. Hindus and Sikhs fled to India, while Muslims fled in the opposite direction.
Tens of thousands of women and girls were raped and trains carrying refugees between the two new nations arrived full of corpses.
The legacy of Partition has endured to this day, resulting in a bitter rivalry between the nuclear-armed neighbors despite their cultural and linguistic links.
However, there is hope of love transcending boundaries. For Sikhs Baldev and Gurmukh Singh, there was no hesitation in embracing their half-sister Mumtaz Bibi, who was raised Muslim in Pakistan.
During the riots, she was discovered as an infant next to her deceased mother and was later adopted by a Muslim couple.
As was customary, their father married his wife’s sister after pretending his wife and daughter were deceased.
With the use of Dhillon’s channel and a chance phone call to a shopkeeper in Pakistan, the Singh brothers were able to learn that their sister was still alive.
The siblings were able to see each other for the first time ever when they finally met in the Kartarpur corridor earlier this year. They sobbed as they did so. “Our joy had no boundaries when we first saw her,” said Baldev Singh, 65, to AFP. “What does it matter if our sister is a Muslim? Her veins are filled with the exact same blood. Mumtaz Bibi was equally ecstatic when an AFP team met her in the city of Sheikhupura in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
