A Unique Project Aims To Connect Partition Refugees To Ancestral Homes Through Virtual Reality

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 t¨ºte-¨¤-t¨ºte about the ways in which 1947 partition 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 taking these refugees back, we are trying to highlight the cultural impact of decades of divisive foreign policy and sectarian conflict on the subcontinent. This is a task for policymakers, not university students. In an ideal world, a project like this shouldn¡¯t exist,¡± 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 under colonialism.

The Project is divided into three parts:

One is a The Social Impact Program that helps track down the childhood homes and villages of partition witnesses, and films them in in 360 video.

projectdastaan.org

The second is the Child of Empire - a flagship VR experience of the project through which these migration stories will 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 to solve a very simple problem: that children forced to leave their homes, have never been able to go back again," says Sam Dalrymple, Co-Founder & Operations Lead.

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This week we met husband and wife Bahadur Ali Pambra and Jannat Bibi who migrated from village Pambra near #Jalandhar in India to #Sheikhupura in Pakistan as children, eventually settling in #Lyallpur (now #Faisalabad) and later the #UK. They had to escape as violence and fires broke out in nearby villages. They always thought they would be able to go back #home, but it was not to be. Bahadur Ali and Jannat Bibi were from neighbouring villages and had family ties. They married each other in #Pakistan in 1961. Bahadur Ali visits Pakistan every year, but has never been able to visit #India due to visa difficulties. #1947 #partition #culturalexchange #southasia #oralhistory #punjab #VR #ludhiana #pambra #amritsar #karachi #lahore

A post shared by Project Dastaan (@project.dastaan) on Jul 24, 2019 at 7:02am PDT

According to a statement shared with Indiatimes, 'These films showcase the people and places that the witness most wants to see again through VR experiences ¨C the chaotic sounds of a long-forgot- ten Sindhi bazaar, the serenity of a Punjabi pind, or the Baul harmonies echoing through an ancient Bengali gaon'.

projectdastaan.org

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,

Thanks for your support! ?? https://t.co/tvYThY70G9

¡ª Project Dastaan (@ProjectDastaan) January 23, 2020

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), and celebrated 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 sustain our peace-making efforts. We are hopeful that people will come forward to help us by donating and giving public endorsement to the Project so that we can reach more people, 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.

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The Partition of India and the exit of the British happened within a matter of months and its planning was rushed. The people of India and Pakistan paid the price with an estimated one to two million dead by 1948. The suffering of migraton is a story many witnesses have difficulty in recounting, and even pictures cannot portray the terror and confusion of communal violence unchecked by broken, distant and partisan governments. Nisid Hajari, in ¡°Midnight¡¯s Furies¡± (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), his narrative history of Partition and its aftermath, writes, ¡°Gangs of killers set whole villages aflame, hacking to death men and children and the aged while carrying off young women to be raped. Some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed Partition¡¯s brutalities were worse: pregnant women had their breasts cut off and babies hacked out of their bellies; infants were found literally roasted on spits.¡± Pictures from Life Collection. Warning: Graphic content in further pictures. #sharedheritage #history #pakistan #1947 #partition1947 #culturevation #migration #colonialism #colonial #britishempire #India #Pakistan #1947 #partition #art #culturalheritage #contemporaryart #southasia #film #bollywood #colonial #postcolonial #literature #amritapritam #punjab #poetry #southasian #imperial

A post shared by Project Dastaan (@project.dastaan) on Sep 17, 2019 at 9:54am PDT

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'.