"The 1947 Partition Archive is a grassroots, volunteer run effort to document and preserve eye witness accounts from the partition of British India into present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1947.
We are proactively seeking and collecting video testimonies and extensive surveys of eye witness accounts related to the events of 1947. We are also collecting written testimonies from relatives and/or friends of survivors who are no longer with us.
We are thus creating a comprehensive library of first hand and second hand stories from 1947. The Partition of India into modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh marks the largest forced human migration in history. According to some estimates, between 10 and 15 million people lost their homes. Worse, it is estimated that between 1 and 1.5 million people lost their lives. The Partition was also a great loss of culture and a way of life. Yet, unlike other major events of the last century, such as the Holocaust in Europe and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this particular event has hardly been documented and understood. And so, while we are late (63+ years), we are not too late. There are still those who hold vivid and important memories of the chaos that unfolded during Partition. With this project we are collecting, archiving and immortalizing these stories before they are lost forever. When permitted by the interviewee, the information and testimonies we gather will soon be freely available for the purpose of creating a well-informed, aware and enlightened South Asian subcontinent.
We are currently head-quartered in the San Francisco Bay Area with a second project branch in Stockholm, Sweden. Working in collaboration with other organizations and individuals who share our goal, we are working to make this a global project as we gain more resources and expand our volunteer base. We welcome you to join the effort."
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