Unedited audio of the Jamila Bhatti filmed interview (with contributions from her daughter Saira Qureshi) Interview by: Atiha Chaudry

Interview description by: Harriet Morgan-Shami

Track 1:

General discussion between volunteers as camera and recording equipment set up. [00:49] Describes her family background. Family originally from Ambala, lived in Lahore during the winter and moved to Shimla in the summer due to her father’s role as the Head Administrator in the Punjab Secretariat. Talks about her siblings. Explains that she spoke Urdu and Punjabi as a child growing up in Lahore, her father describing the latter as a rough language whilst the former was respectable. [03:28] Describes her family home in Lahore which was a large 3 storey building. Remembers her father bringing work colleagues home and not being allowed to go downstairs during their meetings. Recalls not being allowed to play with friends who were not family members and talks about having servants when staying in Shimla. [06:09] Describes her family in more detail. Talks about her father’s daily routine and his preference for walking over using a car. Briefly talks about her mother who died when Jamila was very young. Explains that her brother ultimately worked in Intelligence and was assigned to Bhutto. Tells of her own family and having four children. [09:18] Talks about her confusion over her birthdate. Describes in more detail her family’s ancestral home of Ambala and her extended family. Talks about the hierarchy under British rule – British first, Hindu second, Muslim last – and how the most educated were allowed to work in the administration. Remembers her family gathering once a year in Ambala to celebrate the Mela and to go hunting, and recalls the many Mango trees there. [14:39] Interviewer asks about her memories of the Partition taking place. Jamila explains that her father continued to go to work and that she and her brother were locked in the house. Remembers going on to the roof and seeing smoke coming from the Shalmi Hindu/shopping area of Lahore. Recalls seeing a Sikh man riding on a bike and being killed by Muslims before her brother taking her away from the roof. [16:41] Talks about her 3 sisters being in India and returning to Lahore in a convoy organised by the British Government for Officers’ families. Describes how many other members of her extended family came to stay with them in Lahore because they had nowhere else to go. Remembers hearing the adults talking about a train carrying Muslims from India to Pakistan being massacred and sent on to Lahore with the dead bodies still inside. This caused anger amongst Muslims in Lahore who did the same to Hindu trains. Talks about the Hindu area of Shalmi in Lahore being burned. Remembers her father talking about people being thrown back into burning houses. Refers to Muslim women throwing themselves in wells to avoid being raped and/or abducted. [20:41] Remembers her father’s uncle resisting leaving Lahore. When his family finally did leave they were attacked by Hindus and her great uncle murdered in front of his children. Recalls how people left feeling that they would soon be returning. Further emphasises that both Hindus and Muslims committed the same violence against each other. Talks about the refugee camps in Lahore and the lack of food. [22:22] Confirms that she remained in Lahore during this period. Interviewer asks how she felt as a child about what was going on. Recalls being confused about why she was being locked in the house. Talks about seeing the university buildings being looted and remembers her stepmother’s brother stealing which led to her father getting angry and kicking both her stepmother and her brother out. He felt that no one should steal from another regardless of their religious identity. [23:59] Talks about her father helping people e.g. housing relative who had to flee from India. [24:41]

Track 2:

Expresses her desire to go to India. Talks about her brother’s death. (Interviewer setting up recording). [00:30] Talks about her 3 sisters being married and living in India at the time of Partition. Recalls her father telling her sisters that they could choose whether to stay in India or come to Pakistan. Due to her father’s role in the government administration he was able to arrange safe passage for his daughters to Pakistan. [02:12] Interviewer asks Jamila to describe a photograph of her father. She explains that the photograph is proof of her father’s position in the British Raj. She believes it to have been taken on the day of the announcement that Pakistan was to be created. She describes the other people in the photo, one of which she believes to be Lady Mountbatten. Her father is pictured speaking. Recalls a photograph of the King, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in her family home in the meeting room and remembers thinking that Princess Elizabeth was beautiful. [04:50] Jamila’s daughter, Saira, asks her to remember what happened to her sister during the Partition. Jamila tells how her third sister had just given birth to a son when she had to travel from Ambala to Lahore by train. She became ill during the journey and died. She was 18. [06:41] Jamila confirms that the family home in Lahore remained in the family’s possession. She recalls that the ancestral home in Ambala was taken care of by their Sikh neighbours who prevented others from looting it. She tells of how those Sikh neighbours brought the family’s possessions to them in Lahore a two years after the Partition. Talks about the harmony between different religious groups prior to the Partition and how these Sikh neighbours always made them feel welcome when her family visited Ambala after 1947. Equally when these Sikh neighbours wished to visit an important Gurdawara in Lahore to worship they stayed with her family. [11:42] Begins to recount how she came to live in UK. Her husband came over in 1963. [12:27]

Track 3:

Discusses her migration to the UK which was primarily motivated by the desire to flee the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. [01:30] Tells of her marriage at 15 to her husband who came from Sialkot. They were married in Lahore and then moved to Karachi for his work. She started having children when she was 16. Talks about her homesickness after arriving in the UK. Describes where her children live now in the UK and what they are doing and her. [04:52] Recalls her depression after her husband died and how that motivated her to start a charity in Karachi that supports cancer patients. She then went on to buy land where she built a hospital. [07:39] When asked what life would have been like if the Partition hadn’t taken place, she believes people would have been happy. She talks about the intercommunal harmony before the Partition describing different communities celebrating each other’s events and states that they were a peaceful people. [08:57 End of the interview]