Some journeys do not end when the destination is reached. A traveller may arrive in one city from another, but the homes, streets, faces and voices left behind along the way continue to travel with them for the rest of their lives. The migration of the millions who came to Pakistan after the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 was much the same. Some caught trains, others found space on trucks, while some walked alongside caravans. But each person carried a story with them, one end of which was tied to the past and the other to the life that remained ahead.

Today, 79 years have passed since the creation of Pakistan. The generation that witnessed that migration with its own eyes is rapidly disappearing. Ninety-one-year-old Maqsoodan Begum and 90-year-old Raisa Begum, both residents of Lahore, are two living links to that generation. One is from Dehradun, near Amritsar, while the other came to Pakistan from Delhi. Despite the decades that have passed, 1947 is not merely a historical event for them. It is a past that, whenever remembered, still enters the present.

Maqsoodan Begum recalls how rapidly circumstances began to change after the announcement of Partition. Fear and uncertainty began to take the place of the familiarity between people who had lived alongside one another for years.

Maqsooda Begum had four sisters and five brothers. She herself had just completed eight years of schooling at the time of Partition. She and her family lived in a Muslims majority area, while the surrounding villages were predominantly inhabited by Sikhs and Hindus. When riots broke out, Muslim homes were set on fire. She and her family were terrified.

Maqsooda Begum’s father owned trucks. As the situation deteriorated, her father decided that they too would leave their home, as large numbers of Muslims were fleeing the area. He put the children and other family members on his trucks, loaded essential belongings, and began the journey.

She said they did not know why the riots and fighting had suddenly begun. All they knew was that Muslims would no longer remain in India and that everyone would go to Pakistan. Their journey was towards a land they had never seen before. Along the way, convoys were attacked and looted, but eventually the family reached Lahore, travelling under the constant shadow of fear.

Raisa Begum’s father worked in Delhi. When the situation deteriorated, one of her uncles came to Lahore. He found a house in the Nisbat Road area, and called the rest of the family from Delhi to Lahore. She said some of their relatives remained in India and did not migrate to Pakistan. Their descendants still live in India today.

According to Raisa Begum, while mobs attacked and looted migrant convoys and abducted young women, there were also people who helped Muslim convoys and families escape violence-hit areas and reach places of safety.

Both the elderly women said they once told these stories of migration to their sons and daughters, and now they pass them on to their grandchildren and younger generations.

Raisa Begum’s memories contain images of migration caravans, dangerous journeys and families abandoning their homes and belongings.

For these families, migration was not simply a matter of crossing a line drawn on a map. It meant leaving homes, parting from loved ones, gathering whatever belongings they could and setting off towards an unknown future. Trucks and trains became the means of travel, but for many, the journey passed through fear, hunger, thirst, separation and death. This is where the history of 1947 leaves the pages of books and takes the shape of human faces.

Much has been written in Pakistan about the Partition of India and the Pakistan Movement. The struggles of political leaders, activists and prominent figures have become part of books, newspapers and documentaries. Yet one question remains: where are the stories of the millions of ordinary people who were direct victims or eyewitnesses to this history?

A child sitting on a train with his parents, a woman leaving her home with its key in her hand, a family travelling to Pakistan in a truck with its modest possessions, or an elderly man seeing his ancestral city for the last time — all were also characters in the history of 1947. They held no political office, but their memories contain details of that period that cannot always be found in official records.

This is what the world calls oral history. It is history that emerges not from a historian’s book but from the words of someone who witnessed an event or experienced its consequences in their own life.

According to Naeem Murtaza, a history professor at a private college, young people’s interest in historical events has not disappeared. The real problem, he says, is that the system for bringing these stories to them has weakened. Unless these events are presented systematically at the family level, in educational institutions and through the media, the avenues through which younger generations can access them will continue to narrow. The question, therefore, is not simply whether young people want to hear history; it is also how we are telling it to them.

Umar Akbar, head of a collaborative cultural and intellectual platform focusing on history, believes the pace of modern life, social media, economic pressures and changing priorities have shifted the attention of younger people in several directions. Unless young people are made to understand that the story of 1947 is not merely an event from the past but is also connected to their own identity and present lives, he says, they will naturally drift further away from it.

Sardar Kalyan Singh Kalyan, a teacher at Government College Lahore, connects the issue to the curriculum. According to him, the freedom movement and Partition are largely taught through dates, events and dry facts, while human emotions, personal experiences and eyewitness accounts receive insufficient attention. As a result, history becomes a subject students memorise for examinations rather than something they understand by connecting it to life.

If a student is told that Pakistan came into existence on August 14, 1947, they learn a historical fact. But when that same student sits before an elderly woman who tells them that she left her home, travelled through dangerous circumstances, experienced fear and rebuilt her life in a new country, history is transformed into a human experience. Dates and figures provide information, but human voices create a sense of connection.

The importance of museums and archives to Pakistan’s historical heritage lies precisely in their ability to preserve the past in a form that can be presented to future generations. Faqir Saifuddin, head of the Faqir Khana Museum, which works on Lahore’s historical heritage, says the preservation of historical heritage should not be limited to buildings, objects and documents. Living memories are also a valuable historical asset of any society.

Talha Shafiq, assistant director at the Walled City of Lahore Authority and a researcher, says these stories are not merely events from the past but part of the foundation of national identity. “It is important for younger generations to understand how independence was achieved, what sacrifices were made for the creation of the country, and what ordinary people lost and gained in the process,” he said.

According to Shafiq, one of the great strengths of oral history is that when elderly people recount what they saw with their own eyes, they do not simply describe events. They also convey details of fear, hope, separation and human experience that are not always present in books. Oral history should therefore have a place in education as well.

Experts caution that an eyewitness’s memory cannot be treated as a complete and definitive historical truth. Over time, human memory can alter certain details, the sequence of events can become distorted, and one person’s experience cannot represent an entire society. But this does not diminish the value of such memories. When the recollections of different individuals are examined alongside official records, newspaper reports, letters, photographs and other historical documents, a much fuller picture of the past can emerge.

The children who were alive at the time of Partition are now at least 79 years old. Those who were teenagers or adults then are, for the most part, now over 90. The implication is clear: there is very little time left.

When an elderly person dies, it is not only an individual who disappears. A portion of local history preserved in that person’s memory disappears with them. Who will tell us which route a family took during migration? At which station did the train stop? Where were the crowds? What did people take with them when they left their homes, and what did they leave behind forever? Where did they spend their first night after arriving in Pakistan? What did it feel like to begin life again in a new country?

The answers to these questions may not exist in government files. They exist with these elderly witnesses. “There is a need for a formal national oral history archive of the eyewitnesses of 1947 in Pakistan,” Umar Akbar said. Video interviews with elderly citizens should be recorded, documenting their ancestral regions, migration routes, families, journeys, initial experiences after arriving in Pakistan and their subsequent lives.

This work should not be limited to Lahore, Karachi or Islamabad. Elderly people living in smaller towns and villages must also be reached. Their stories can be preserved in Urdu as well as Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi and other local languages, with translations produced later.

One person’s story may be the story of a single family, but thousands of such stories together could form a chapter of national history that is broader and more human than anything found in books.

The village of Narowar is located near the Wagah border. Before the creation of Pakistan, most villages in the area were inhabited by Sikhs and Hindus. Remnants of old havelis, gurdwaras and other places of worship can still be found there. Sikh families from India frequently visit the area to see their ancestral villages and homes.

While recounting his memories of 1947, an elderly Lahore resident Sher Muhammad, from the border village of Narowar, became emotional. Sharing his memories of the creation of Pakistan, he said that Maulana Jan Muhammad, a Muslim League candidate, had won from their area, but after Partition, their district of Gurgaon became part of India.

Sher Muhammad said he was 10 or 11 years old at the time and would join other children and young people in chanting slogans in support of Pakistan. After Partition, groups of Sikhs and Hindus began attacking Muslim settlements. Women and young girls were also targeted, he said. In a nearby village, Muslims were gathered inside a large haveli on the pretext of sending them to Pakistan, but the building was attacked during the night. Dozens of women jumped into the haveli’s well and sacrificed their lives to protect their honour.

Sher Muhammad said three convoys left his village for Pakistan. Women, children and elderly people were put on trains, while others travelled by bullock carts. At Bhatinda railway station, an attempt was made to attack the train, but an English officer, with the help of troops, managed to thwart the attack. The convoy travelled through Fazilka Bangla and Multan before reaching Kasur, where an outbreak of cholera claimed the lives of many people, including some of his children.

After Kasur, they spent several weeks in refugee camps in Lahore, where they received rations and assistance from local residents. Later, their elders were allotted land in Lahore’s border areas, including Narowar, Sahanke, Wagah, Bhano Chak, The Purah, Kharrak and Chandir.

Another elderly resident of Narowar, Roshan Din, said his family reached Pakistan on foot and by bullock carts. Several members of his family, including an uncle, died along the way, while his father died soon after reaching Pakistani soil.

According to Roshan Din, refugees travelling from Amritsar and Delhi to Lahore through Wagah faced immense hardships. He said convoys were attacked on both sides of the border, resulting in the deaths of large numbers of people.

Roshan Din said great sacrifices had to be made for independence. Even today, recalling those scenes brings tears to his eyes. He said he tells these stories to the younger generation so that they understand the sacrifices through which the country was created and recognise the need to play their part in its development, progress and prosperity.

Saifuddin, of the Faqir Khana Museum in Lahore, says the purpose of preserving memories of Partition should not be to reopen old wounds or generate hatred among younger generations against any nation, religion or group. On the contrary, one purpose of understanding history is to help societies understand the human consequences of major political decisions. The events of 1947 remind us that borders are not created only on maps; their effects reach into people’s lives, families, homes and memories.

“Independence was not merely a political declaration,” he said. “It was accompanied by people’s hopes, fears, sacrifices, migrations and dreams of a new future. Those who came to Pakistan rebuilt their lives here. Some opened shops, others took up jobs, some cultivated land, while others made their children’s education their priority. All of this is also part of the history of Pakistan’s creation.”

Maqsoodan Begum and Raisa Begum are not simply two elderly women. They are representative voices of a generation that did not read Partition in a book but experienced it in their own lives. The past preserved in their eyes belongs to an era that now survives more in books and documents than in living memory. After them, who will tell us what the journey from Delhi to Lahore was like? Who will tell us what families sitting in trucks were thinking? Who will tell us what a child standing at a railway station could see amid the crowds? Who will tell us what people carried with them when they left their homes and what they left behind forever?

These questions are not only about two women. There may still be elderly people in different cities across Pakistan who carry their own stories of 1947. But these stories will not exist forever. Every year, some eyewitnesses pass away, and with them a part of the history preserved in their memories falls silent.

The real question, therefore, is not whether the younger generation wants to hear the stories of 1947. The real question is whether we have made an effort to bring those stories to them. If the voices, faces, memories and experiences of elderly people like Maqsoodan Begum and Raisa Begum are preserved today, future generations will be able to understand 1947 not simply as a date on the calendar but as a major historical event intertwined with people’s lives.

Naeem Murtaza says that if this work is not undertaken, it is possible that a few years from now we will still have the history of Pakistan’s creation, but not the voices of those who witnessed it. We will have the pages of books, but not the voices that could have told us not how history was written, but how it was lived.

Murtaza said various institutions and research organisations have worked to preserve the oral histories of eyewitnesses to the 1947 Partition in Punjab. However, these efforts have yet to become a single comprehensive national government archive. The 1947 Partition Archive is among the prominent projects involved in preserving video interviews with Partition eyewitnesses. According to the organisation, the oral memories of thousands of people have been recorded from cities and villages.

He said the Sustainable Development Policy Institute also launched a project in two districts of Punjab to document stories and oral histories relating to Partition, with the aim of preserving people’s experiences during 1947. Similarly, the Citizens Archive of Pakistan has worked to preserve oral histories and historical material relating to Partition and Pakistan’s early history. Its project relating to Narowal sought to collect memories connected to local history, the 1947 Partition and the creation of Pakistan.

The Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust has also worked to preserve and publish historical documents, photographs, interviews with prominent figures and other material relating to the Pakistan Movement and the creation of Pakistan. However, based on the available information, it would not be accurate to say that the trust has established a separate and comprehensive oral history archive dedicated to eyewitnesses of 1947. The trust does have historical material relating to Partition and migration, including rare documents concerning refugees from 1947.

Akbar says there is a distinction between oral history and conventional archival material: official records, photographs, letters and newspaper clippings are one thing, while an eyewitness’s own voice recounting their experience of migration, leaving home, travelling and arriving in Pakistan represents an entirely different kind of historical asset.