The partition of India and Pakistan was perhaps one of the most heartbreaking events of history. Thousands were displaced overnight - people lost their homes and became victims of sectarian violence. More than 14 million people were displaced at the time, and about one million died. Even today, its ripples are felt in our culture - through movies, books and some, through people who live to tell their stories.?
Pic Courtesy: Facebook
Sparsh Ahuja and Ameena Malak had a tšºte-š€-tšºte about the ways in which 1947partition affected their grandparents -?Ahuja¡¯s grandfather, Ishar Das Arora, was 7 years old when the Indian subcontinent was divided into two by the British, creating India and Pakistan;?Malak¡¯s grandfather, Ahmed Rafiq, moved from the Indian city of Hoshiarpur to Pakistan¡¯s Lahore.?
Pic Courtesy: Facebook??
Both their grandparents yearn to go back home and see the places where they were born and that's how the idea for?''Project Dastaan' was born.
Project Dastaan is an Oxford University-backed?(South Asia Programme) peace project, which reconnects refugees of the 1947 Partition with their ancestral homes and communities, using film and virtual reality to communicate their stories to the world.
Mohammad Hussein Dar from Project Dastaan on Vimeo.
¡°At its heart, the Project is a poignant commentary on its own absurdity. By takingthese refugees back, we are trying to highlight the cultural impact of decades ofdivisive foreign policy and sectarian conflict on the subcontinent. This is a task forpolicymakers, not university students. In an ideal world, a project like this shouldn¡¯texist,¡± says?Sparsh Ahuja, Founder & CEO of Project Dastaan.
The Project seeks to promote a cultural dialogue between the three countries - Pakistan, Bangladesh and India - to educate younger generations about the common ancestries of their predecessors, and most importantly, immortalise the experiences of those who suffered undercolonialism.
The Project is divided into three parts:
One is a The Social Impact Program that helps?track down the childhoodhomes and villages of partition witnesses, and films them in?in 360 video.?
The second is the Child of Empire - a flagship VR experience of the project through which these migration storieswill also be used as an educational tool to teach partition history.?
The third is a feature documentary called The Lost Migration, and it shares first-hand survivor narratives through documentary-style storytelling.?
¡°I think Dastaan is ultimately about stripping away the layers of politics and trying tosolve a very simple problem: that children forced to leave their homes, have neverbeen able to go back again," says Sam Dalrymple, Co-Founder & Operations Lead.
According to a statement shared with Indiatimes, 'These films showcase the people and places that the witness mostwants to see again through VR experiences šC the chaotic sounds of a long-forgot-ten Sindhi bazaar, the serenity of a Punjabi pind, or the Baul harmonies echoingthrough an ancient Bengali gaon'.
The project was founded by a?group of Oxford University students from Pakistan and India in 2018, and it is backed by the Oxford University South Asian Studies Programme,?
The mentors at Project Dastaan are a panel of historians, educationists, and activists like?Malala Yousafzai (Nobel Peace Prize Recipient), Gabo Arora(former Creative Director at the UN), Suroosh Alvi (Co-Founder of Vice Media), andcelebrated authors such as William Dalrymple and Aanchal Malhotra.
Sayyed and Musarrat Abrar from Project Dastaan on Vimeo.
¡°Project Dastaan is at a stage where we are looking for financial support to sustainour peace-making efforts. We are hopeful that people will come forward to help usby donating and giving public endorsement to the Project so that we can reach morepeople, raising funds and awareness.¡±Saadia Gardezi, Co-Founder & Pakistan Lead.?
Speaking to Indiatimes,?Abu Sufiyan, head of the project in Delhi, said that they have achieved 50% goal of crowdfunding and managed to get people to contribute, despite the ongoing protests against the CAA and NRC.?
According to the crowdfunding platform, 'by donating to our cause you can help the last surviving first-hand witnesses of Partition to be heard, and to revisit something they have yearned for all their life and also help educate younger generations about the common ancestries of their grandparent's generations'.?