indichawla
SPNer
- Sep 20, 2025
- 5
- 2
- 62
Every year, around this time, my 92-year-old mother’s voice becomes a time machine, carrying me across a border that once didn’t exist, not into a hostile land, but into the warm embrace of her childhood in what is now Pakistan. She paints it the same, as if afraid to let time alter a single hue: rivers so clean they mirrored the sky, ghee so pure it shone like molten gold, and fields that rolled on forever in a green so lush it felt like a promise. She remembers neighbours, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, who celebrated each other’s festivals, shared the same bread, drank from the same well, and held one another through grief. Back then, “family” was not written in blood, but in kindness.
And then came 1947.
It was the year the earth itself seemed to shudder. The most shameful chapter in our shared history, a season when love dried up, when humanity melted away like wax under a cruel flame. Neighbours who once exchanged sweets began to exchange blows. Smiles that once blessed the morning now hid knives in their shadows. In those months, it did not matter if you were Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh; the summer sun burned away reason, and ordinary men became executioners.
Partition did not create heroes. It only created graves and left the survivors to spend a lifetime burying their joy.
It is for this reason that I decided to write the articles on that fateful train from Lahore to Wagah, a journey stained with the unspeakable horrors and tragedies of our subcontinent. For my generation, and those after, it is difficult to truly grasp the weight of those days, the smell of fear, the silence of loss. But perhaps, in revisiting those pages of our lives, we can pause to reckon with a question that should haunt us all: are we really any different from the people who walked this land in 1947?
The partition of India in 1947 was one of the most violent and traumatic events in modern history. The British had drawn their cursed line; India was torn in two. Millions became refugees overnight, clutching their children, their meagre belongings, and their fading hope. And then, there were the trains. As the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were uprooted from their homes, forced to migrate across newly drawn borders. Amid the chaos, trains became both symbols of hope and vessels of unimaginable horror.
When the partition was announced, millions of refugees boarded trains, believing they would find safety on the other side. Families packed into overcrowded compartments, clutching whatever belongings they could carry, hoping to escape the riots and massacres erupting across Punjab and Bengal. But for most of them, the journey turned into a nightmare
The stations are where chaos incarnate. Women wailed, men shouted, children clung to their mothers as if their tiny hands could stop the world from crumbling. At Lahore Junction, a Hindu mother pressed her daughter's face into her sari folds. "Don't look," she whispered, as men with cleavers paced the platform like jackals. The 7:15 to Amritsar was their only hope; its rusting sides were already pockmarked with bullet holes from previous runs. Refugees boarded trains, believing they would find safety on the other side. Families packed into overcrowded compartments, clutching whatever belongings they could carry, hoping to escape the riots and massacres erupting across Punjab and Bengal. But fate had other plans.
But for many, the journey turned into a nightmare. The station clock struck midnight when the last refugee train pulled out of Lahore. Its whistle cut through the August heat like a widow's wail. The lucky ones squeezed into overcrowded compartments, their hearts pounding with the desperate prayer: "Just let us reach the other side alive." A bloodthirsty mob swarmed the tracks, their eyes wild, their blades glinting in the sun. They didn’t see people inside, only enemies. Only prey.
The steel beasts came shrieking into stations, their whistles screaming like widows in the night. But these were no ordinary trains. These were the butcher's blocks of Partition, carriages of carnage where the very air curdled with the stench of split bowels and iron-rich blood. Trains that left Pakistan for India, and vice versa, often arrived at their destinations carrying only corpses. Mobs armed with swords, knives, and guns ambushed trains, slaughtering passengers based on their religion.
The "Death Trains" of Punjab. One of the most infamous incidents was the arrival of a train from Pakistan to Amritsar in September 1947. When the train pulled into the station, it was eerily silent. Every single passenger, men, women, and children, had been butchered. Similar trains arrived in Lahore and other cities, filled with mutilated bodies. Some who lived through these attacks described how they hid under piles of corpses, pretending to be dead until the killers left. Others jumped from moving trains, risking death to escape the carnage. Each massacre sparked revenge attacks. When a train full of slaughtered Hindus arrived in India, mobs targeted Muslims fleeing to Pakistan. The cycle of bloodshed seemed endless.
For those who survived, the memories never faded. Many lost entire families in a single journey. The trains, meant to be a means of escape, became rolling coffins. Even today, the partition remains an open wound for millions. The blood-stained trains stand as a grim reminder of how hatred and political decisions can lead to unspeakable human suffering. The partition trains were more than just transport; they were witnesses to one of history’s darkest chapters. As we remember the victims, we must ask ourselves: How could humanity fail so terribly? And how can we ensure such horrors are never repeated?
The trains brought not just people, but the weight of a broken nation.
The Amritsar Train Massacre (September 1947) A train from Lahore to Amritsar arrived at its destination with every passenger dead. A bloodthirsty mob swarmed the tracks, their eyes wild, their blades glinting in the sun. They didn’t see people inside, only enemies. Only prey. Bishen Singh, a Sikh farmer, would never forget the sound; the hacking of metal against flesh, the gurgling cries of the dying. He played dead, lying beneath the warm, sticky weight of his butchered neighbours, praying the killers wouldn’t stab again to make sure. When the train finally crawled into Amritsar, the station master collapsed at the sight. Every window dripped red. The floors were slick with blood. And the silence
On a train to Lahore, Hafiza clutched her infant son to her chest. Outside, the mob roared. Flames licked at the wooden carriages. She knew what came next. With tears scalding her cheeks, she kissed her baby one last time and hurled him out the window into the tall grass. "Live", she whispered, as the fire swallowed her whole as described in Urvashi Butalia, in “The Other Side of Silence”. News travelled fast. When the slaughtered Hindus arrived in Delhi, the city exploded. A train from Jalandhar to Lahore was stopped, its Muslim passengers dragged out and butchered in the fields. One survivor, Munshi Abdul Rehman, a Muslim refugee, would later say, "The children’s bodies were so small. They stacked them like firewood.
Margaret Bourke-White, a Life magazine photographer, documented the aftermath, writing: "The compartments were a charnel house… limbs, torsos, and heads scattered like broken dolls”. The stations were chaos incarnate. Women wailed, men shouted, children clung to their mothers as if their tiny hands could stop the world from crumbling. The lucky ones squeezed into overcrowded compartments, their hearts pounding with the desperate prayer: "Just let us reach the other side alive."
A train from Sialkot to Gurdaspur was set on fire after being attacked. Surjit Kaur, a survivor, later testified before the Punjab Riots Inquiry Committee that she saw Sikh men jumping into rivers to escape, only to be shot by armed mobs on the banks. Each massacre fuelled retaliatory violence. When a train full of butchered Hindus arrived in Delhi, enraged mobs attacked Muslims fleeing to Pakistan. At Lahore Junction, a Hindu mother pressed her daughter's face into her sari folds. "Don't look," she whispered, as men with cleavers paced the platform like jackals. The 7:15 to Amritsar was their only hope - its rusting sides already pockmarked with bullet holes from previous runs. Further down, a Sikh granthi clutched his gutted scriptures, the pages fluttering like dying birds where Muslim rioters had stabbed through the holy book into his belly.
When the mob struck at the Wagah border, it wasn't war. It was slaughterhouse work. Khushwant Singh would later write of finding a train where "babies still suckled at their dead mothers' breasts, their tiny mouths working automatically though the milk had long since curdled with death." In Carriage B-12, a college professor watched in silent horror as a Pathan tribesman methodically sawed through his students' necks with a blunt kirpan. "Allah hu Akbar," the killer chanted, while the professor counted: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen...
The 7:15 PM Frontier Mail became a death train... at Wagah, they stopped us and the slaughter began."(Survivor testimony, Punjab Boundary Commission Archives). When the 7:15 finally wheezed into Amritsar, the British station master took one look at the crimson waterfalls cascading from carriage gutters and put his service revolver in his mouth. Rescuers would discover, A bride's red wedding bangles still circling wrist stumps, A Muslim child's tongue nailed to the First Class headrest, A stack of severed heads arranged like coconuts at a temple offering
The station clock struck midnight when the last refugee train pulled out of Lahore. Its whistle cut through the August heat like the sound documented in District Magistrate's Report No. 1372: "High-pitched and unnatural, like an animal in distress."
First Class, Compartment 3. The Englishman in the pressed linen suit didn't look up. Please, “sahib," she whispered, pressing her back against the wood panelling. "They're killing everyone at the next stop." Outside, the rhythmic clack of wheels counted down the seconds. Then, silence. The train had stopped. The Englishman finally met her gaze. His hand moved toward his briefcase. Not for a weapon. For his stamped evacuation papers. He looked away. When the mob came, they dragged her out by her hair. The Englishman adjusted his cuffs and turned the page
Outside, the rhythmic clack of wheels counted down the seconds. Then, silence. The train had stopped at the exact location marked in Colonel Dewey's Survey Map as "Vulnerable Point Gamma."
Third Class, General Compartment: The air tasted of gunpowder, and Gurdwara Committee records would later confirm why: "Sikh refugees reported ammunition crates left on platforms by retreating British troops." The smell hit first, sweat and iron and shit. Fifty bodies pressed together like cattle. A Sikh grandmother rocked back and forth, her lips moving in silent prayer. Suddenly, a thud against the window. Then another. Rocks? No. Shoes. Dozens of leather chappals are hitting the glass, ripped from the feet of the dead at the last station. A warning. A promise. The baby started crying. Its mother stuffed her sari in its mouth. Exactly as Major Walsh's Field Notes described: "Mob ritual: removing footwear before killing, then throwing them at the next train.”
The Guard's Cabin. Old Ahmed had worked this route for thirty years. He knew every bend, every crossing. Now he watched through his cracked window as shadows swarmed the tracks ahead. His hand hovered over the emergency brake. Then he thought of his daughter-in-law, waiting in Karachi. Of the Hindu mobs on the Delhi line. He lit a cigarette. The train plunged into the darkness. Service Ledger lay open on the desk, its last entry reading: "Monsoon delay, 2 hrs 17 min." His hand hovered over the brake lever that LNWR Maintenance Records show had been faulty since June. The Platform at Dawn - The stationmaster's report (filed under Punjab Archives Ref. X-442) noted: "Arrived: 5:47 AM. Cargo: 87% human remains (per attached inventory). Special Instructions: Lime requisition for platform sanitation. Behind him, a single child's shoe - size matching the UNHCR 1948 Missing Children Register entry #4471 - lay overturned. Still warm.
The Boundary Commission's Secret Addendum put it best: "Railways ceased being transport. Became a mobile killing ground. Recommend line closures and..." But walk those tracks today, and the Geological Survey's 2001 Acoustic Report confirms: "Persistent 40Hz frequency detected at 11:47 PM nightly - consistent with mass human vocalisation." The documents don't lie. The trains won't let us forget.
For survivors, the memories never faded. Saadat Hasan Manto, the famed Urdu writer, captured the madness in his short story "Toba Tek Singh", where a lunatic refuses to accept the new borders, mirroring the absurdity of Partition. ” Where does my village go? Tell me, where?” No one answered. Even today, the partition remains an open wound. The blood-stained trains stand as a grim reminder of how hatred and political decisions can lead to unspeakable suffering.
Today, those trains are gone. But if you stand on the platform at Amritsar or Lahore at midnight, some say you can still hear them, the distant whistle, the muffled screams, the sobbing of a million souls who never made it home. The partition didn’t just divide a country. It turned humanity into monsters. And the trains? They were the chariots of death. The partition trains were more than just transport; they were witnesses to one of history’s darkest chapters. As we remember the victims, we must ask: How could humanity fail so terribly? And how can we ensure such horrors are never repeated?
For years afterwards, railway workers whispered of phantom trains that still ran on August nights, their ghostly passengers forever suspended between countries that didn't want them, their silent screams louder than any whistle. And if you press your ear to the tracks near Attari even today, you might hear the truth Partition tried to bury: that when civilisation cracks, it's always the innocent who get ground between the gears, their ghostly passengers forever suspended between countries that didn't want them, their silent screams louder than any whistle.
The final death toll? No one knows. But ask any survivor and they'll tell you: the real number isn't in the ledgers. It's in the way an entire subcontinent still startles at train whistles, how we all inherited that twitch at the back of the neck when carriages grow too quiet. For we didn't just lose people in those blood-soaked compartments. We lost our very soul.
Somewhere between Lahore and Amritsar, the train jerked to a stop. Silence. Then; screams.
.
And then came 1947.
It was the year the earth itself seemed to shudder. The most shameful chapter in our shared history, a season when love dried up, when humanity melted away like wax under a cruel flame. Neighbours who once exchanged sweets began to exchange blows. Smiles that once blessed the morning now hid knives in their shadows. In those months, it did not matter if you were Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh; the summer sun burned away reason, and ordinary men became executioners.
Partition did not create heroes. It only created graves and left the survivors to spend a lifetime burying their joy.
It is for this reason that I decided to write the articles on that fateful train from Lahore to Wagah, a journey stained with the unspeakable horrors and tragedies of our subcontinent. For my generation, and those after, it is difficult to truly grasp the weight of those days, the smell of fear, the silence of loss. But perhaps, in revisiting those pages of our lives, we can pause to reckon with a question that should haunt us all: are we really any different from the people who walked this land in 1947?
The partition of India in 1947 was one of the most violent and traumatic events in modern history. The British had drawn their cursed line; India was torn in two. Millions became refugees overnight, clutching their children, their meagre belongings, and their fading hope. And then, there were the trains. As the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan, millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were uprooted from their homes, forced to migrate across newly drawn borders. Amid the chaos, trains became both symbols of hope and vessels of unimaginable horror.
When the partition was announced, millions of refugees boarded trains, believing they would find safety on the other side. Families packed into overcrowded compartments, clutching whatever belongings they could carry, hoping to escape the riots and massacres erupting across Punjab and Bengal. But for most of them, the journey turned into a nightmare
The stations are where chaos incarnate. Women wailed, men shouted, children clung to their mothers as if their tiny hands could stop the world from crumbling. At Lahore Junction, a Hindu mother pressed her daughter's face into her sari folds. "Don't look," she whispered, as men with cleavers paced the platform like jackals. The 7:15 to Amritsar was their only hope; its rusting sides were already pockmarked with bullet holes from previous runs. Refugees boarded trains, believing they would find safety on the other side. Families packed into overcrowded compartments, clutching whatever belongings they could carry, hoping to escape the riots and massacres erupting across Punjab and Bengal. But fate had other plans.
But for many, the journey turned into a nightmare. The station clock struck midnight when the last refugee train pulled out of Lahore. Its whistle cut through the August heat like a widow's wail. The lucky ones squeezed into overcrowded compartments, their hearts pounding with the desperate prayer: "Just let us reach the other side alive." A bloodthirsty mob swarmed the tracks, their eyes wild, their blades glinting in the sun. They didn’t see people inside, only enemies. Only prey.
The steel beasts came shrieking into stations, their whistles screaming like widows in the night. But these were no ordinary trains. These were the butcher's blocks of Partition, carriages of carnage where the very air curdled with the stench of split bowels and iron-rich blood. Trains that left Pakistan for India, and vice versa, often arrived at their destinations carrying only corpses. Mobs armed with swords, knives, and guns ambushed trains, slaughtering passengers based on their religion.
The "Death Trains" of Punjab. One of the most infamous incidents was the arrival of a train from Pakistan to Amritsar in September 1947. When the train pulled into the station, it was eerily silent. Every single passenger, men, women, and children, had been butchered. Similar trains arrived in Lahore and other cities, filled with mutilated bodies. Some who lived through these attacks described how they hid under piles of corpses, pretending to be dead until the killers left. Others jumped from moving trains, risking death to escape the carnage. Each massacre sparked revenge attacks. When a train full of slaughtered Hindus arrived in India, mobs targeted Muslims fleeing to Pakistan. The cycle of bloodshed seemed endless.
For those who survived, the memories never faded. Many lost entire families in a single journey. The trains, meant to be a means of escape, became rolling coffins. Even today, the partition remains an open wound for millions. The blood-stained trains stand as a grim reminder of how hatred and political decisions can lead to unspeakable human suffering. The partition trains were more than just transport; they were witnesses to one of history’s darkest chapters. As we remember the victims, we must ask ourselves: How could humanity fail so terribly? And how can we ensure such horrors are never repeated?
The trains brought not just people, but the weight of a broken nation.
The Amritsar Train Massacre (September 1947) A train from Lahore to Amritsar arrived at its destination with every passenger dead. A bloodthirsty mob swarmed the tracks, their eyes wild, their blades glinting in the sun. They didn’t see people inside, only enemies. Only prey. Bishen Singh, a Sikh farmer, would never forget the sound; the hacking of metal against flesh, the gurgling cries of the dying. He played dead, lying beneath the warm, sticky weight of his butchered neighbours, praying the killers wouldn’t stab again to make sure. When the train finally crawled into Amritsar, the station master collapsed at the sight. Every window dripped red. The floors were slick with blood. And the silence
On a train to Lahore, Hafiza clutched her infant son to her chest. Outside, the mob roared. Flames licked at the wooden carriages. She knew what came next. With tears scalding her cheeks, she kissed her baby one last time and hurled him out the window into the tall grass. "Live", she whispered, as the fire swallowed her whole as described in Urvashi Butalia, in “The Other Side of Silence”. News travelled fast. When the slaughtered Hindus arrived in Delhi, the city exploded. A train from Jalandhar to Lahore was stopped, its Muslim passengers dragged out and butchered in the fields. One survivor, Munshi Abdul Rehman, a Muslim refugee, would later say, "The children’s bodies were so small. They stacked them like firewood.
Margaret Bourke-White, a Life magazine photographer, documented the aftermath, writing: "The compartments were a charnel house… limbs, torsos, and heads scattered like broken dolls”. The stations were chaos incarnate. Women wailed, men shouted, children clung to their mothers as if their tiny hands could stop the world from crumbling. The lucky ones squeezed into overcrowded compartments, their hearts pounding with the desperate prayer: "Just let us reach the other side alive."
A train from Sialkot to Gurdaspur was set on fire after being attacked. Surjit Kaur, a survivor, later testified before the Punjab Riots Inquiry Committee that she saw Sikh men jumping into rivers to escape, only to be shot by armed mobs on the banks. Each massacre fuelled retaliatory violence. When a train full of butchered Hindus arrived in Delhi, enraged mobs attacked Muslims fleeing to Pakistan. At Lahore Junction, a Hindu mother pressed her daughter's face into her sari folds. "Don't look," she whispered, as men with cleavers paced the platform like jackals. The 7:15 to Amritsar was their only hope - its rusting sides already pockmarked with bullet holes from previous runs. Further down, a Sikh granthi clutched his gutted scriptures, the pages fluttering like dying birds where Muslim rioters had stabbed through the holy book into his belly.
When the mob struck at the Wagah border, it wasn't war. It was slaughterhouse work. Khushwant Singh would later write of finding a train where "babies still suckled at their dead mothers' breasts, their tiny mouths working automatically though the milk had long since curdled with death." In Carriage B-12, a college professor watched in silent horror as a Pathan tribesman methodically sawed through his students' necks with a blunt kirpan. "Allah hu Akbar," the killer chanted, while the professor counted: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen...
The 7:15 PM Frontier Mail became a death train... at Wagah, they stopped us and the slaughter began."(Survivor testimony, Punjab Boundary Commission Archives). When the 7:15 finally wheezed into Amritsar, the British station master took one look at the crimson waterfalls cascading from carriage gutters and put his service revolver in his mouth. Rescuers would discover, A bride's red wedding bangles still circling wrist stumps, A Muslim child's tongue nailed to the First Class headrest, A stack of severed heads arranged like coconuts at a temple offering
The station clock struck midnight when the last refugee train pulled out of Lahore. Its whistle cut through the August heat like the sound documented in District Magistrate's Report No. 1372: "High-pitched and unnatural, like an animal in distress."
First Class, Compartment 3. The Englishman in the pressed linen suit didn't look up. Please, “sahib," she whispered, pressing her back against the wood panelling. "They're killing everyone at the next stop." Outside, the rhythmic clack of wheels counted down the seconds. Then, silence. The train had stopped. The Englishman finally met her gaze. His hand moved toward his briefcase. Not for a weapon. For his stamped evacuation papers. He looked away. When the mob came, they dragged her out by her hair. The Englishman adjusted his cuffs and turned the page
Outside, the rhythmic clack of wheels counted down the seconds. Then, silence. The train had stopped at the exact location marked in Colonel Dewey's Survey Map as "Vulnerable Point Gamma."
Third Class, General Compartment: The air tasted of gunpowder, and Gurdwara Committee records would later confirm why: "Sikh refugees reported ammunition crates left on platforms by retreating British troops." The smell hit first, sweat and iron and shit. Fifty bodies pressed together like cattle. A Sikh grandmother rocked back and forth, her lips moving in silent prayer. Suddenly, a thud against the window. Then another. Rocks? No. Shoes. Dozens of leather chappals are hitting the glass, ripped from the feet of the dead at the last station. A warning. A promise. The baby started crying. Its mother stuffed her sari in its mouth. Exactly as Major Walsh's Field Notes described: "Mob ritual: removing footwear before killing, then throwing them at the next train.”
The Guard's Cabin. Old Ahmed had worked this route for thirty years. He knew every bend, every crossing. Now he watched through his cracked window as shadows swarmed the tracks ahead. His hand hovered over the emergency brake. Then he thought of his daughter-in-law, waiting in Karachi. Of the Hindu mobs on the Delhi line. He lit a cigarette. The train plunged into the darkness. Service Ledger lay open on the desk, its last entry reading: "Monsoon delay, 2 hrs 17 min." His hand hovered over the brake lever that LNWR Maintenance Records show had been faulty since June. The Platform at Dawn - The stationmaster's report (filed under Punjab Archives Ref. X-442) noted: "Arrived: 5:47 AM. Cargo: 87% human remains (per attached inventory). Special Instructions: Lime requisition for platform sanitation. Behind him, a single child's shoe - size matching the UNHCR 1948 Missing Children Register entry #4471 - lay overturned. Still warm.
The Boundary Commission's Secret Addendum put it best: "Railways ceased being transport. Became a mobile killing ground. Recommend line closures and..." But walk those tracks today, and the Geological Survey's 2001 Acoustic Report confirms: "Persistent 40Hz frequency detected at 11:47 PM nightly - consistent with mass human vocalisation." The documents don't lie. The trains won't let us forget.
For survivors, the memories never faded. Saadat Hasan Manto, the famed Urdu writer, captured the madness in his short story "Toba Tek Singh", where a lunatic refuses to accept the new borders, mirroring the absurdity of Partition. ” Where does my village go? Tell me, where?” No one answered. Even today, the partition remains an open wound. The blood-stained trains stand as a grim reminder of how hatred and political decisions can lead to unspeakable suffering.
Today, those trains are gone. But if you stand on the platform at Amritsar or Lahore at midnight, some say you can still hear them, the distant whistle, the muffled screams, the sobbing of a million souls who never made it home. The partition didn’t just divide a country. It turned humanity into monsters. And the trains? They were the chariots of death. The partition trains were more than just transport; they were witnesses to one of history’s darkest chapters. As we remember the victims, we must ask: How could humanity fail so terribly? And how can we ensure such horrors are never repeated?
For years afterwards, railway workers whispered of phantom trains that still ran on August nights, their ghostly passengers forever suspended between countries that didn't want them, their silent screams louder than any whistle. And if you press your ear to the tracks near Attari even today, you might hear the truth Partition tried to bury: that when civilisation cracks, it's always the innocent who get ground between the gears, their ghostly passengers forever suspended between countries that didn't want them, their silent screams louder than any whistle.
The final death toll? No one knows. But ask any survivor and they'll tell you: the real number isn't in the ledgers. It's in the way an entire subcontinent still startles at train whistles, how we all inherited that twitch at the back of the neck when carriages grow too quiet. For we didn't just lose people in those blood-soaked compartments. We lost our very soul.
Somewhere between Lahore and Amritsar, the train jerked to a stop. Silence. Then; screams.
.
