Please note: this blog includes extracts containing descriptions of violence
Between November 2025 and January 2026, my colleague Chandan Mahal and I have run Study Days for A-level and GCSE history students entitled: Carving Out Two Nations: Towards Indian Independence and Partition. This has created an excellent opportunity to make use of the recently produced ‘Voices of Partition’ padlet (an online tool for sharing text and audio) and listen to oral history recordings with groups of students. The oral history testimonies predominantly come from a series of interviews conducted by Kavita Puri in 2017.
When using the clips, we follow the interactive listening approach to the testimonies, whereby learners are encouraged to draw on their contextual knowledge to think about what they are expecting to hear from the clip (see previous blogs on this approach here and here). As we listen, learners make notes and select any key words or phrases. Once we’ve listened, learners reflect on what they heard, and how far it was in line with their expectations.
One extract comes from Kavita Puri’s interview with Mehroo Aziz. Mehroo was a student in 1947, living in Bombay with her family and attending medical school. Once the students have jotted down what they expect to hear and before we listen, we give a content warning that the extract contains descriptions of violence. Whilst students will have learnt about the violence that took place during and after partition, it can still be shocking to hear testimony that speaks about it so explicitly. In terms of guiding students through difficult content, we follow the pedagogical principle of ‘safely in, safely out,’ ensuring that students feel a sense of belonging within a supportive and trusting learning environment.
In the first part of the clip, Mehroo talks about the role of key individuals, saying how Gandhi opposed partition whilst Jinnah was for it. This part of the extract is often in line with student expectations: a narrative that centres leadership is one that is instantly familiar and recognisable to history students. However, the second part of the extract provides some unique details that are less well known or talked about. Asked by Kavita Puri whether there was trouble on the street before partition, Mehroo responds:
‘Dead bodies lying everywhere. We had to jump over the dead bodies and go to college and school.’
(British Library reference C1790/27, © BBC)
This makes for a powerful listen. The distress Mehroo feels is reflected in how she sounds as much as what she says; her voice falters and towards the end of the clip, she confirms her previous point for emphasis: ‘dead bodies everywhere. Everywhere.’
This extract often comes as a surprise to students, with the juxtaposition of the ordinary – going to college and school – combined with the extraordinary – a stark and violent image of death. In the discussion that follows the listening, learners have picked up on how Mehroo had become desensitised to the brutality, which, in a short space of time, was normalised and interspersed with her daily life. Learners have also reflected on the crucial role of school, both as a way of maintaining continuity and routine in a time of social upheaval and turbulence, as well as the wider importance of education for young women.
This interplay between real world events and the way it impacts on the minutiae of everyday life can also be heard in the extract from Kavita Puri’s interview with Gurbakhsh Singh Garcha. Gurbakhsh was a young boy at the time of partition and in the clip, he describes hearing the news of partition through the villagers all gathered around a single radio.
‘The people were very much interested in finding out whether Lahore was going to stay in India or was it going to Pakistan. And when it was declared that Lahore has gone into Pakistan, I could see people in my village, elderly people, cry.’
(British Library reference C1790/20, © BBC)
It is interesting to hear these memories from a child’s perspective. In the discussion that follows the listening, we have discussed how Gurbakhsh knew that something was happening but did not understand its significance; it was through the responses of the adults around him that indicated something seismic had been decided. The clip ends with Gurbakhsh unable to answer the question of who was making the announcement, saying:
‘But it was just a voice coming from the radio announced that this is where the line was going through.’
There is a curious combination of both distance and intimacy in this clip. On the one hand, the anonymous voice coming through the radio announcing life-changing news speaks to the nature of an opaque decision-making process, leading to the chaos and violence that followed partition. Simultaneously, there is also a sense of intimacy with a community gathered in his uncle’s house, listening to the news on a single radio. It feels fitting that we are a group of learners collectively listening to this clip. As with the interview with Mehroo, it provides a powerful example of the interplay between high politics and individual lived experience, in this case through a child’s lens, which speaks to one of the many strengths of oral history.
Feedback to the study day has been positive. In response to the question, ‘What have you learnt today that you didn’t know before?’ one student wrote ‘the different narratives of different people of different ages’ whilst another commented ‘it provided a nuanced window into different interpretations.’ Students also reflected on how this form of learning compared to their history course, with one writing ‘through oral histories we can see different interpretations and emotional reactions to events that differ to the factual history we learn.’ One student picked up on the subtleties involved with the listening process, responding: ‘how well you can learn from oral histories, especially what people don’t say.’
In terms of next steps, we are developing a new workshop on Indian Independence and Partition which will form part of the core schools’ programme at the British Library. Through listening to a range of testimonies, young people can learn in a way that centres individual experience, enabling greater emotional engagement with the historical events leading up to the partition of India.
About the collections used in the Voices of Partition padlet and workshops
Voices of Partition uses collection material from across the British Library, with a focus on oral histories in the Sound Archive. The two audio extracts in this blog are from Partition Voices: a project from 2017 led by journalist Kavita Puri led a project to mark the 70th anniversary of the partition of India. Through interviews, the Partition Voices team directly documented the experiences of those who lived through this traumatic time and subsequently moved to Britain, as well as stories of their children and grandchildren. The testimonies recall epic journeys and forced migration, violence, parting with friends and family, and the end of Empire, with some speaking about these events for the first time. The outcome of this project was an award-winning three-part BBC Radio 4 series entitled Partition Voices, and later an acclaimed book of the same name. The full recordings and transcripts from Partition Voices are archived at the British Library Sound Archive, with collection reference C1790.
Further reading
Bogard, D. Mahal, C. and Patel, S. (2025). Voices of Partition: unlocking the potential of oral history for teaching India’s independence and Partition, Oral History Journal, Volume 53, pp. 111 – 123
Puri, K. Partition Voices: Untold British Stories (2019). Bloomsbury.
Acknowledgements
Thank you so much to the Learning Team at the British Library for all the learning, with special thanks to Laura Chesover, Georgia Dack and Chandan Mahal for all the support with this work. Thank you also to the Oral History/National Life Stories team at the British Library for letting me be in the gang, with special thanks to Mary Stewart (Lead Curator, Oral History) and Madeline White (Oral History Curator). And, of course, thank you to the interviewees referred to in this blog who recorded their testimonies.
