Harking Back: Forgotten Walton Refugee Camp and the great exodus

On the 14th of August every year we celebrate ‘Independence Day’. While we go crazy with celebratory happiness, we all forget, perhaps care less is a better description, that on this day 74 years ago refugees had filled up the Walton Refugee Camp outside Lahore.

In this piece it makes sense to dwell on two things only. First when exactly was ‘Independence Day’ and, secondly, what happened to the refugees, almost 20 million of them. So first the day. Let me reproduce the exact script of the ‘Indian Independence Act, 1947’ as passed by the British House of Commons and approved by the House of Lords and signed by His Majesty the King of Great Britain and Overseas Territories and Colonies, on the 11th of July, 1947.

“1. (i) As from the 15th day of August, 1947, two independent Dominions shall be set up in Dominions, to be known respectively as India and Pakistan.”

It goes on to state that:“the said fifteenth day of August is, hereafter, in this Act referred to as “the Appointed day”.

The above correct legal position means that our true ‘Independence Day’ is on the 15th of August, just like our neighbour. To claim otherwise is to start off on a false premise. We should not twist history, and just because the 14th was the last Friday of Ramazan, why ignore reality.

In Islam the truth comes first. The first commemorative postal stamp released in July, 1948, states the 15th of August as Independence Day. Jinnah died 393 days after the country was ‘free’, and he refuted the suggestion that just because the 14th was ‘Jumatul Wida’ it should be celebrated as ‘Independence Day’. Once the old man left us the communal parties, who anyway had opposed Pakistan, prevailed.

But let us ignore, for our personal safety alone, the dumping of our history and move on to what the poor of our land suffered. One also realises that speaking about the poor has its own risks, but let us take it to recall what our people went through. The Partition of 1947 produced the ‘Greatest Exodus in Human History’. It left almost half a million women, of every faith, molested, raped, stabbed, beheaded and cut to pieces depending on the degree of hate in the perpetrator. Twice that number of men were butchered. Their families, or what was left of them, merely moved on silently to a new homeland.

In total over 25 million people, many claim more, crossed over that ‘Line of Hate’ that just produced nothing but wars and tension. Societies that once lived in helpful love turned towards hate. Such has been the effect that even the once ‘secular’ India has now turned to communal hatred. Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, let alone the poor of caste-ridden poor of India, are scorned and beaten up. Not that Pakistan has fared better, but with time new laws and are having a positive effect on the misled.

But then, lastly, let us turn to the Walton Refugee Camp of August, 1947. Few know that they lasted till June 1948. Within Lahore, bureaucrats and tricksters were more concerned with ‘claims’ of imagined properties left. A majority of the traders in the walled city practised, and paid for ‘claim papers’. From the top to the bottom corruption became a way of life, a way that lives on.

At the Walton Refugee Camp of Lahore how many our readers know just what happened there? The finest collection of photographs of these suffering refugees has been captured by the late F.E. Chaudhary, who worked for ‘The Pakistan Times’ of Lahore. Most of them are unwatchable, such is their intensity. The plight of these camps bring forth the true suffering of the poor left without home and hearth, their children killed or violated. Let me provide some statistics.

In 1947 the official population of British India was approximately 390 million. The official estimate is that 60 million moved towards their new homelands. Thus nearly 17.5 per cent of the entire sub-continent was forced to migrate. No wonder it counts as the ‘Greatest Exodus in Human History’. The hatred generated resulted in inhuman experiences, especially for women, and their stories our rulers and bureaucrats are not interested in.

According to records the peak flow in one day towards this camp was 80,000 persons. Of these on the average over 6,000 people died every day of cholera and starvation. The food donated by the people of Lahore was all what they got. Most food grain markets emptied, and people from nearby villages donated wheat and rice, vegetables, cooking oil and spices in cartloads. In the end it were the poor helping the poor. That still remains the case no matter which crisis.

At Walton new graveyards started sprouting up and thousands of corpses were moved in cartloads and on bed-loads carried inverted on poles by the refugees themselves. The Red Cross of Lahore estimated that nearly 150,000 people were buried all over Lahore and in abandoned fields over two months starting the 15th of August 1947. This is in Lahore alone. Inside the walled city the Corporation carts were depositing ‘unknown corpses’ at the rate of over 750 a day and dumping them in fields along the River Ravi, mostly at Mahmood Boti. This is the place where during the famine in Mughal emperor Akbar’s days hundreds were dumped every day, earning the name ‘Moyaan de Mandi’.

The stories of what happened at Walton Refugee Camp have never emerged, even though it remains a most important part of our 74-year history. Just why Pakistan has forgotten those who sacrificed their very lives, their homes, and their means of earning to live up to the aspiration of the founders of this beautiful country. It is amazing how the millions have been betrayed so that the ‘Claim Merchants’ may prosper, as they still are in Pakistan and abroad.

The very mention of the word ‘Partition’ is no longer part of the script of the 14th of August ‘Independence Day’ celebrations. The very date has been given a communal twist - a twist few dare challenge. Walton has become a government and private housing and office complex. No traces of the ‘Greatest Exodus in Human History’ exist there. It is an apt reflection of our society today.

We would not like to forget similar, yet smaller, refugee camps that sprouted up at Kasur, Sialkot and even outside Karachi. Sadly, even those who claim after 74 years to be ‘Muhajirs’ have ignored the plight of their elders. On an official level efforts to record this gruesome history have been ignored. Proposals for even a Partition Museum in the old Bradlaugh Hall on Rattigan Road, Lahore, lie in the Punjab chief secretary’s cold storage.

What can one say that when our amazing history over the last 400 years has been dumped in an old horse stables while its rightful place should be where the chief minister uses as his 4th office near the assembly chambers. The history of the rulers, the rich and the influential finds the front seat in our descriptive pastimes. Kings, conquerors and existing rulers matter. The stories of the poor and dispossessed are not allowed inside the chambers of the rulers.

What can one say when our very start took on a communal twist, when tricksters enriched themselves with false ‘claims’, where power of the semi-literate continues to rule. Anyone defying such powers are removed from the scene. Judges interpret laws, and that is what they are supposed to do. About the laws, and the facts, and the reality of the ‘pious’ we all know about. The less said the better.