India-Pakistan Partition in pictures- a hard core reality!

Indo-pak Partition...Rare Pictures of a Historic Tragedy



Millions left for their promised new homeland with smiles on their faces as trains left both India and Pakistan.

This is a train to Pakistan being given a warm send-off.

In 1947, the border between India and its new neighbour Pakistan became a river of blood, as the exodus erupted into rioting.

These pictures are by Margaret Bourke-White from Khushwant Singh's book Train to Pakistan, Roli Books.

Over 10 million people were uprooted from their homeland and travelled on foot, bullock carts and trains to their promised new home.

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.

In a couple of months in the summer of 1947, a million people were slaughtered on both sides in the religious rioting.

Here, bodies of the victims of rioting are picked up from a city street.

The massive exchange of population that took place in the summer of 1947 was unprecedented.

It left behind a trail of death and destruction. The Indian map was slashed to make way for a new country - Pakistan.

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

With the tragic legacy of an uncertain future, a young refugee sits on the walls of Purana Qila, transformed into a vast refugee camp in Delhi.

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.