The friendship that survived the division of a nation

The friendship that survived the division of a nation

Seventy years ago, in August 1947, British colonial rule in India came to an end. The country was divided into two independent states - Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Using letters and diaries sourced from the world's first Partition Museum which opens in Amritsar on 17 August, Soutik Biswas pieces together the extraordinary story of four friends who were separated by the traumatic event and reunited 30 years later.

"Our country has been broken; the great, sound pulsating heart of India has been broken," a young man in Lahore, Pakistan, wrote to his best friend in Delhi, the capital of India, in the summer of 1949.

Writing in elegant cursive and turquoise blue ink, Asaf Khwaja had poured his heart out to Amar Kapur. Barely two years had passed since they had been separated by the bloody partition which split the subcontinent into the new independent nations of India and Pakistan.
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