Exploring The Different Tattoos of Partition
Words by Ahsun Zafar
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In 1947, the subcontinent became independent from the British Empire but their victory celebrations were cut short. Over 10 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs ended up abandoning their homes and scrambling to get to the right side of the new borders. Hindus and Sikhs escaped to India; Muslims to Pakistan. It is considered one of the largest mass migration in human history. The exact toll is still unknown, but many estimate that two or three million people died in the carnage. Witnesses who were children in 1947 are now in their seventies and eighties, meaning that these memories are fading but the horrors of the pasts are often with us, in this case, in the form of faded and blurred tattoos.