Every year, as flags unfurl to celebrate the birth of India and Pakistan, I reflect on my personal teary moments while visiting the scores of abandoned assets across Pakistan during the research on Sikh legacy.
Only after 10 million were made homeless and 1 million left dead, in August 1947, the politicians of the two newly formed nations gained the right to unfurl the newly crafted two national flags. But a few thought of the impact on the flags that reflected the inherent spirit of the impacted communities. In abandonment of their ancestral lands, members of all communities, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were left with no option but to walk across the divide to recreate their lives.
Independence was finally gained at the loss of humanity!
Visiting the sites of dilapidated gurdwaras across Pakistan that haven’t had a congregation for seven decades, time and again, I would kneel down to touch the remnants of the flag base on which the Nishaan Sahib (flag that unfurls at every gurdwara) would once sway. There was a time these flag base would provide support to the pole that unfurled the flag which represented the spirit of the community, but today these bases themselves are in need of support.
Strange indeed are the ways of the Almighty!
Photographed in Jan 2017, during the research for the book “THE QUEST CONTINUES: LOST HERITAGE The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan”
