75 Years Ago Alumni Remember Where They Were in 1947

In 1947 India and Pakistan achieved independence amidst great hope but also amidst great violence. 75 years later our alumni who were there offer us glimpses of what they remember about that time — for them, for their families, and for Woodstock and the hillside. They were children at the time of independence, and here they share their reflections on what occurred.

Special thanks to Janie Downs Wallbrown ’52, who upon our request collected and shared many of her classmates’ stories along with her own.

After collecting the stories, Janie wrote to her classmates on Independence Day: “I found all of your stories to be so interesting. At the moment, I'm sitting at my balcony desk, looking out as our apartment complex in Hyderabad is in the process of raising a huge Indian flag and singing Jana Gana Mana. 75 years. We were there at year one .… Thank you for sending in what you remembered. I had no worries about family or other major concerns. I had my friends around me. It was school as usual. Perhaps that's the reason I remember so little?

Love to you all ... Janie”

Raksha Mehta Talwar ’52

I lived in Saharanpur near the border with Punjab. My father was a leading freedom fighter of the area. He and the head of our town’s police (who went on to become his dear lifelong friend) had already worked for months before to sustain the amity that existed between the Hindus and a very large community of Muslims. They organised citizen groups to make sure there was security and no riots and killings. This was an unusual achievement at that time.

My mother organised ladies into help groups so that when refugees began to pour in there were free kitchens in shelters the locals had set up. Within a few weeks sewing and embroidery centres provided fabric, machines, etc. where refugee women could work to earn daily wages. The products were sold at a cost within Saharanpur and in neighbouring towns. I recall at age 11 I was also roped in with other children … we had to measure and mark fabric for cutting, fold the pieces, and sort thread spools and embroidery skeins by colour.

Crèches for children were opened where we sang and played with them and distributed pencils, crayons, and paper. The first Independence Day flag hoisting happened at midnight. My sisters and I who had been taught the new anthem led the citizens in singing! 75 years ago!

Jai Hind! Friendship to all!

Raksha

Peggy Ewing Devine ’52

We were on furlough in 1945-46. We got back to Lahore in October of 1946, just in time for the mission to reassign Daddy (Rev Rhea Ewing) to be principal at Woodstock. I attended six weeks in 4th standard, so I was able to be in 5th standard in ’47. I didn’t get put back a year as so many of the returning kids had been. My parents were pretty low-key about the dangers and uncertainties of the situation in front of me, so I just carried on.

During part of that time our cook Anwar was held at a camp at the far end of Mussoorie for his safety. He hated it there, so after a couple of weeks, he showed up at our door. He had hiked all that way through bushes and scrub just to get to us. So we hid him in the attic at the Principal's Cottage until it was safe for him to be back at work with us. He stayed with us until my folks were assigned back to Lahore at which point he returned to his village in India.

Our bearer Aziz was from Kabul and was on the same train returning to Woodstock as several of our 10th standard boys. Somehow they all got together and realized the danger Aziz was in, so they made him lie down and put a bedroll over him, and one of them pretended to be sleeping.

Stella Acton Green ’58

I attended Woodstock from February ’54 till graduation. I was in Mussoorie with my parents and sister in the summer of 1947. My father was the pastor of the church in Kulri bazaar during our two-month holiday from the heat of the plains. We had travelled from Lahore in Punjab and expected to return at the beginning of September. We did leave the hillside that month but with uncertainty as to how long it would take to get back to our homes. There were about 70 or so of us travelling together - men, women, children, infants, and pets.

The trip to Saharanpur by train went all right, but there our fortunes changed. When the stationmaster saw our group, he was not willing to grant us tickets to go farther west across the newly designated border. He did not want the responsibility for the welfare of foreigners travelling along rail lines where so much carnage was being wrought daily. The outcome of his decision was that we were put in five old bogies on a siding in the rail yard. The cars leaked with the daily rains of the monsoon, and our food ran out.

After five days of this a train pulled into the junction carrying British troops assigned to help curb the uprisings and violence in the area. Hearing of our predicament, the officer in charge offered to escort our party through to Lahore. We were going home!

The memories so far have been reinforced by the telling and retelling of my parents. I was six, and my sister was four that summer. But the next episode is still ingrained in my memory:

As we were travelling the rails westward, my father called to me to come to the window of our compartment. Mother was not happy about his decision, but he replied that he wanted me to remember the atrocities that man can inflict on his fellows. So I went to the window and knelt on the seat to look out. Along the tracks were mutilated bodies left from the last train which had passed and been derailed with the passengers killed. I have not forgotten.

Thankfully our group of travellers arrived safely at Lahore. We were home and others almost so. My parents aided in the refugee camps set up on the outskirts of the city and had many more memories of that difficult time.

Bob Stewart ’52

My family went on a furlough to the U.S. in the winter of 1946-47, so I was not at Woodstock close to the actual date in August 1947. When we returned, our home was in Pakistan, and there were now a border and two customs stops between Lahore and Amritsar. I was a 14-year-old high school freshman at Woodstock at the time.

Our mali (gardener), a Hindu, was no longer at our place, and no one knew what had happened to him. Arif Alam ’51 was no longer enrolled at school. He had been a friend. He had just moved away somewhere and was (and perhaps still is) okay.

Many of the large Sheesham trees that bordered the Grand Trunk Road that ran through town were dead. This happened because refugees fleeing on foot from farther north chipped away at portions of the trees that could be reached for wood to cook with. This girdled the trees, killing them.

Dita Kashyap Hollins ’52

My memory of Independence Day itself was of a pageant held in the space in front of Parker Hall. Our Hindi teacher Mr Sharma played the part of Gandhi, and I think we all might have been wearing Indian clothes, although I don’t know how we would have had them at school with us. We had been practising the national anthem Jana Gana Mana and sang it with gusto as the new tricolour flag was raised.

Of the aftermath of Independence and the riots after Partition, my strongest memory is of the fires burning on the hillside as the houses of Muslims were set on fire by previously friendly neighbours. They frightened me then as a ten-year-old and became a symbol of the whole tragedy of Partition for me. We heard horror stories of what was happening down on the plains where our families were. My father came from the Punjab, where so many Hindu families were uprooted, but his job had taken him to Lucknow, so my parents were not directly affected.

Most of the rest of my father’s family lived in different cities in the Punjab. His older brother lived in Lahore with his wife, most of his eight children, and his elderly father. He had a flourishing and well-known textile store called Banbasi Stores. Overnight they had to pack up and leave their home and business.

Like so many others, my uncle’s large family headed for Delhi, where they hoped to start a new life. One of my cousins told us the story of their escape by train. While en route, the train stopped and for some reason that I can’t remember exactly my uncle and his family left the train. Later they heard that a bit father along the train had been stopped and all the people on it killed. They had good friends who had brought over some of their valuables and helped them find accommodation in Delhi. Eventually most of the family ended up there in Delhi and found new beginnings, but my uncle was never able to start up his business again.

Roger Minchin ’52

My dad was working in the Indian Medical Service. He had been with the Indian Army in the Middle East when he had some marital problems and a divorce and went back to India. After this was settled he got us three children and later remarried at Ridgewood. A routine medical checkup revealed a “shadow on a lung,” and he was given six months of sick leave after a spell in a military hospital outside of Bangalore. Dad then took up a temporary position teaching at Woodstock while my stepmother assisted in running Hostel. After a few years at Ridgewood, I stayed with them.

Dad told me of murders and assaults in Mussoorie. He lost his job with the Indian Government and decided to move to New Zealand sight unseen. We left Woodstock around October 1947, travelling in a military armed convoy to Bombay. There were two or three British soldiers in each lorry. I can’t recall how far the military took us, but it was likely to have been Delhi.

Dad got a job at Bombay Hospital while the family stayed at Camp Colaba and swam in the sea. After a couple of months a boat going to Australia arrived. This dropped passengers at Fremantle/ Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. Sydney was to have been the final port of that voyage. However, the boat which sailed between Sydney and Wellington had recently run aground at Wellington, so we continued to New Zealand.

We arrived in Wellington on January 30, 1948, the day Gandhi was shot. Normally it would have been the time for school to start for the year, but a polio epidemic caused a one-month delay. This meant another month on the beach – this time at Paraparaumu while Dad looked for work and a school for me.

Leila Singh ’52

My mom, grandma, brother Dip, and I were in Model Town in Lahore. I was in the Jesus and Mary Day School. There were rumblings of unrest in the north. My uncle JJ who lived in New York got concerned and wanted Dip and me to get out of Lahore.

Uncle JJ got in touch with Woodstock Principal Rev Rhea Ewing and managed to get us admitted. Mom took us to Landour and we were left there while she went back to Lahore. Those of us in school didn’t know much of what was going on. I don’t think any of us were aware of the deadly massacres that were happening to Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.

Once again Uncle JJ arranged with the help of the Red Cross for Mom and Beij (grandma) to be airlifted from Lahore to Dehradun to safety. We were fortunate to come out alive. We lost our ancestral property in Abbottabad and Lahore. My mom and grandmother eventually went on to Calcutta where my dad was working as an engineer in Budge Budge.

Josie Thoburn Herndon ’52

We were on furlough during the partition for two years since my father was working on a graduate degree. We left our home in India and came back to the same place which was now Pakistan. We missed all of the dramatic events but heard all about them from a distance.

We were still living in the Forman Christian College experimental residence built by my father with tunnels underneath, pumping cool air from the tunnels up into the house during the summer. In the winter the same air was warmer. Our neighbours had all been Hindus before; now they were Muslims.

Libby

Thoburn Sheather ’52

My parents lived in Jabalpur in the centre of India. Muslims and Hindus met and decided there would be no bloodshed, so there wasn’t.

It was quite different for us at Woodstock. I remember looking across the valley to the bazaar and seeing smoke from houses which had been set on fire. Of course we couldn’t go into the bazaar. I heard stories of how people who wanted to bring their staff up to the hills protected them by having them lie down on the bench, spreading their bister rolls on top of them, and sitting on them when they stopped at stations. It was a very hard time for India. But I don’t remember feeling unsafe where we were even though we knew what was going on.

Barbara Clark ’52

This topic brings back vivid memories.

A good memory is learning the new Indian National Anthem and vigorously singing it together. In October and November it was not so good. We hung over the railings in the Quadrangle watching the smoke from the fires in Mussoorie as businesses were burned and looted. There were occasional gunshots.

Food was getting iffy. A low point was the dinner of boiled channa, powdered milk with scum on top, and a vitamin pill. Another unusual menu was chapatis with ghur syrup and a dessert of unripe watermelon. At least it was filling. Woodstock looked after us the best they could. It was worrisome that there was no mail from our parents for many weeks.

When it was time to go home through Landour to catch our buses to go down to Dehradun, it was sobering to see Mussoorie for the first time in many weeks (we had been confined to school grounds). The destruction and blackened, burnedout buildings made us wonder what we would find at home.

The Bombay party travelled with no threatening incidents that I know of. How glad Margaret (Clark Ward ’51) and I were to see our family again. It had been mostly peaceful in Mandleshwar, which was almost entirely a Hindu community.

Then came the shock of Gandhi’s assassination. There was grief, anger, and fear of what would happen next. Some of Gandhi’s ashes came to our village Mandleshwar on the north shore of the Narmada River. Fittingly his ashes were being scattered in all of India's great sacred rivers. My father was asked to join the procession. It was a time I remember with sadness still.

Liz Sutherland Rees ’52

We left India on furlough in December 1946. As we prepared to travel to New Zealand, tensions must have been rising already because the sailing of our ship from Calcutta kept being postponed. Eventually our parents decided to make the train trip as planned from Punjab to Calcutta and stay there until we could sail.

When we arrived we moved into a small boarding house where we “hid out” for the best part of a week. We children were kept in complete ignorance about the political situation (I think there had been rioting and bloodshed a few months earlier in Calcutta), but I still distinctly recall the atmosphere of tension surrounding those days. We were not allowed outdoors, and we literally “laid low,” keeping away from windows, etc.

Eventually we were quietly transported to the small ship and sailed down the Hoogli. Dad returned to India the following year, 1947. I read that "the mission personnel were heavily involved in the refugee camps," but he never spoke to us girls about those years. We later heard that our lovely Muslim cook lost his life on an ambushed train.

Jim Taylor ’52

I had left India before Partition and Independence. We left in January 1947 – there is no one left alive to confirm that date – so all I can recall is the year before Independence.

And of that all that comes back to me is standing on the hillside somewhere near Oakville with my father. We could hear, distantly, the sound of crowds somewhere in Mussoorie chanting, "Jai Hind! Jai Hind! Jai Hind!"

I asked what the shouting was all about. My father explained, "They want India to be an independent country governing itself."

"Why?" I asked. "Don't they realize that the way things are is good for them?"

My father, with greater wisdom than mine, said nothing.

At that age I had no idea of the pros and cons of independence. I was unaware of some of the atrocities of British imperialism or the way the Empire had robbed India of its resources to make

Britain wealthy. I probably was not even aware of my privileged position in society simply because I was a white foreigner. I assumed that the way things were was the way things should be.

Janie Downs Wallbrown ’52

I remember that our food was scant and bad during those years. Sometimes we ate whatever vegetables/plant life that could be gathered from the hillside. We learned that the problem was due to something about the meatwallas all being Muslim and the doodhwallas all being Hindu. Those from different groups were killing one another, so great care needed to be taken to get any food to the school. My brother got typhus in September of 1947 (after Independence Day but before Gandhi was killed in January 1948), so my mother stayed over an extra month with us out of boarding.

When my mother finally left for Calcutta, the first of several legs of travel to reach our mission station, trains were running out of Dehradun only sporadically. Mother had to sleep on the train platform until a train got through to the station.

Her train was attacked. I forget if it was Hindus dragging off all the Muslims or vice versa, but they came to my mother's cabin. She was terrified. She said she was a Christian. They left her alone. Even so she witnessed people being dragged off the train and slaughtered with knives.

Finally arriving in Calcutta, Daddy met my mother at the train. They had a hard time getting back home. Gandhi was fasting in Calcutta trying unsuccessfully to bring about peace. People were packed into the city with much rioting and bloodshed.

Getting back to our mission station in Tura, Meghalaya, from Calcutta required a train, boat, ox cart, and bus. My parents were much exposed, and it was a very scary time for them.