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I-Day Special: How Partition reshaped Delhi
In August 1947, writer and playwright Bhisham Sahni boarded a train from Rawalpindi to Delhi – not to relocate, but to witness history. Jawaharlal Nehru was to speak in Delhi at the stroke of midnight as India became free. Sahni's plan was always to return home to Rawalpindi, where he lived with his parents, wife and their one-year-old daughter, Kalpana. The 1941 census recorded Delhi's population at 917,939. By 1951, after the influx of Hindu and Sikh refugees and the departure of many Muslims, it had nearly doubled to 1.74 million. (Wikimedia Commons/Photo division)
'He stayed in Delhi for a few days, but when he decided to return, he realised that he had missed the final train to Pakistan. Riots had erupted everywhere; communication and rail services had collapsed. Our relatives lived in Delhi, on what is now known as Amrita Shergill Marg; they put charpoys around the house for displaced friends and family and people stayed there briefly, including my father,' recalled Kalpana.
And just like that, rather reluctantly, Delhi became Sahni's home.
It was an accident shared by millions of others who fled newly-formed Pakistan, often believing the move was temporary. Some, like the grandfather of this author, believed it was only a temporary measure – so all furniture in his home in Dera Ismail Khan was covered with sheets so dust wouldn't settle before they came back from Delhi – a strange city where no one spoke their language. They never returned.
A city bursting at seams
While Partition shaped the subcontinent, redefining global geopolitics, it also transformed Delhi, the new capital of free India. 'As refugees reached Delhi, the city was bursting at its seams… Delhi was larger than the city. Shahjahanabad was the city, then there was Lutyens' Delhi, and the rest were villages,' said oral historian Aanchal Malhotra, author of Remnants of a Separation.
The 1941 census recorded Delhi's population at 917,939. By 1951, after the influx of Hindu and Sikh refugees and the departure of many Muslims, it had nearly doubled to 1.74 million.
'Delhi's villages were dominated by agricultural land-owning families. But after 1947, demography and landscape changed… As my grandparents always said, 'The Punjabis had taken over Delhi!'' said Ekta Chauhan, an assistant professor at Jindal School of Art and Architecture, whose book Sheher Mein Gaon looks at Delhi's urban villages, and also explores how 1947 changed it.
Her grandfather, from a now-forgotten village called Dhakka near Kingsway recalled how refugee camps came up there, how Khirkee mosque sheltered riot-hit Hindus and Muslims, and how colonies like Malviya Nagar, Rajendra Nagar, and Lajpat Nagar began to take shape.
Camps, mosques, monuments turned homes
City chronicler Sohail Hashmi recalls that Delhi's response to the refugee crisis was improvised and desperate.
'The elite got plots as compensation for property lost in Pakistan, but most came with nothing. People lived wherever they could—Humayun's Tomb, Feroz Shah Kotla, Purana Qila, even the arches of Kashmere Gate.'
Official orders from the Prime Minister's office in 1947 stated that the 'task of accommodating refugees was to be treated with the gravity of a national emergency.'
By 1950, 21 colonies had been built, including Azadpur, Patel Nagar, Shakti Nagar, Geeta Colony, and Sheikh Sarai – most of them U-shaped neighbourhoods with a park in the centre.
By the early 1950s, Sahni's father finally accepted Delhi as home, buying land in Patel Nagar. 'My mother cycled from there to her job at All India Radio,' said Kalpana.
By the end of the decade, 3,000 acres had been allotted to 300,000 refugees, split between abandoned houses and new one- or two-storey dwellings. The Delhi Development Authority, created in 1957, aimed to provide affordable modern housing for the growing middle class.
What also emerged in the late '50s and '60s were neighbourhoods named after places left behind: Multan Dhanda in Paharganj, Mianwali Nagar in the west, Gujranwala Town and Kohat Enclave in the north., while several Sindhi families settled in N-Block, Rajinder Nagar.
SK Gulati and Vijay Adlakha, heads of the All-India Mianwali District Association, remember the stories they heard from their families. 'They lost money, land, jewellery, people. In 1966, we were allotted plots in what became Mianwali Nagar – so far away, no roads, no amenities. Only 70 families moved in at first. I was scared there might be snakes!' Over time, it became home.
Markets of the displaced
Refugees didn't just build homes – they also built markets. Janpath, Lajpat Nagar, and Khan Market all emerged in this period. In his book India After Gandhi, historian Ramachandra Guha describes Connaught Place in 1948-49 , lined with makeshift stalls and pushcarts.
'Had (RT) Russell (who designed the shopping arcade) ever seen what became of his creation, he would perhaps have been 'spinning in his grave like a dervish',' wrote Guha.
Malhotra's grandparents met in a refugee camp, married in 1955, and moved to a cramped one-room quarter in Haqeeqat Nagar, shared with a dozen relatives. Her grandmother's job at the relief ministry eventually brought them to Netaji Subhash Nagar, then just a deserted field. 'By then, my grandfather had set up Bahrisons Booksellers in Khan Market and he would cycle to work there,' recalled Malhotra.
Sanjiv Mehra, president of the Khan Market Traders Association, recalls his father being allotted a shop there for ₹6,556 in 1950 – two years after his family moved to Delhi from Lahore and then Amritsar. 'Before it became a refugee market, it had army barracks' shops. By the early '60s, it had department stores, tent houses, bookstores, a Chinese-run shoe shop, and Alfina, a Mughlai-Continental restaurant. These shops were allotted to people from Jhang, Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan among others and the market really picked up when people started living in Defence Colony and Nizamuddin areas,' he reminisced. Nearby, two neighbourhood markets—Meherchand (1960) and Khanna (1954)—were named after relief minister Meher Chand Khanna.
Refugee businesses supported each other, Malhotra said. 'Refugees sought out other refugee businesses – there was a shared past. My grandfather, for instance, loved eating at Pindi in Pandara Road, because that too was built by a refugee. It brought him solace,' she said.
A transformed culture
As business boomed and the city underwent a cultural shift, the changes impacted the agricultural land-owning populace that had not expected such a churn.
'Suddenly my village saw people who didn't look or speak like them. The women were more visible in public; the men didn't depend on farming,' said Chauhan. 'My grandparents told me that the Punjabis brought with them the culture of taking flour and sugar to local bakeries to turn them into biscuits; they popularised the tandoor; they had covers for blankets, which my grandparents found absurd.'
There was a marked shift. 'The refugees were all culturally different, they spoke a different language, they were hustlers who set up businesses, and were entrepreneurial,' said Malhotra.
Once the refugees realised that permanent houses will take time, makeshift schools and markets sprang up in and around the refugee camps. 'In the early 1940s, Salwan Public School came up in Peshawar and one of the founding members was Meherchand Khanna, who became India's relief and rehabilitation minister. The Salwans too moved to Delhi and restarted the school from a refugee camp. It ran in two shifts – morning for girls, evening for boys,' said Malhotra.
Memories that refuse to fade
As refugees added to the pot their own flavours, dealt with the trauma and grief of losing home and people, the city evolved – once again. But the scars of the Partition never truly left. Sahni went on to write the Partition epic Tamas, which dealt with the communal fires that had been stoked in the nation, as well as Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai , a short story on the horrors a group of refugees witnessed on their journey.
Some, like the author's great-grandmother, spent every spare rupee looking for her younger brother, from 1947 to 1990. He didn't board the train from Pakistan. While others remembered what was once home till their last breath.
'A few years ago, I inquired about my neighbour in Patel Nagar, and found out that he had slipped into dementia and would often walk out of the house looking for camels. It was then that I found out that his family reared camels back in Pakistan,' said Kalpana.
