1947 Archives - Page 2 of 2 - INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT

Rukmini, a princess, a great artist & the great grand-daughter of Raja Ravi Varma

Rukmani Varma with Lord Mountbatten. India House, London, UK. 1976

Rukmani Varma with Lord Mountbatten. India House, London, UK. 1976 Image contributed by Rukmini Varma, Narrative by Manu Pillai In a time when the Indian Subcontinent was still a land of splendid Maharajahs and fabulous courts, Rukmini Varma was born in 1940 into one of its most early royal houses, with an unbroken dynastic lineage of over 1200 years.Titled Her Highness Bharani Tirunal Rukmini Bayi Tampuran, Fourth Princess of Travancore, her early life was an idyllic fairytale, with all the enchanting auras and ceremonies surrounding a royal princess. Her grandmother, the Maharani Setu Lakshmi Bayi (1895-1985) was the revered matriarch of the house, who had ruled the State of Travancore and its five million people with much distinction in the 1920s. The entire family lived in her hallowed shadows. Rukmini was her eldest and favourite grandchild, and in a dynasty that traced its bloodline through female gene, her birth was of significant importance for matters of succession to the Gaddi (Throne) of Travancore. Growing up in Satelmond Palace in Trivandrum, art came naturally to Rukmini. Her great grandfather, Raja Ravi Varma, was a master and celebrated painter, known as the Father of Modern Art in India. Some of his most fabulous works adorned the palace walls of Rukmini’s home. Her grandmother, the Maharani, was a patron of many local artists whose works ranging from portraits & landscapes to murals & dramatic scenes from the great epics, were a constant inspiration. But what impressed Rukmini’s attention the most were the hardbound, tastefully produced annual catalogues of all the major art galleries across Europe that her grandmother had collected. The works of great baroque masters like Rembrandt, Rubens, and Caravaggio fascinated…

The mythical Uncle Bunnu.

The Cordeiro Siblings. Alec, May and Beatrice. Karachi (now Pakistan). Circa 1910

The Cordeiro Siblings. Alec, May and Beatrice. Karachi (now Pakistan). Circa 1910 Image and Narrative contributed by Naresh Fernandes, Author, Bombay The picture, photographed sometime around 1910, is the childhood image of my grand-uncle Alec Cordeiro, fondly called Bunnu. Next to him is my Grand-aunt May and my Grandmother Beatrice. It isn’t clear when and how exactly my ancestors got to Karachi, but it seems that they’d been there for four generations. Like most Goans, they left looking for work: the Portuguese didn’t establish any industry in Goa, so hundreds and thousands had to seek work in other places. There were sharp discussions in the family about whether our ancestor Santan Vaz had made his money running a liquor distributorship or a booze joint. My paternal great-grandfather, Xavier Cordeiro, was a postmaster general in Karachi. His son-in-law, my grandfather, Alfred Fernandes, moved to Karachi from Burma during World War II. He’d been working for the Burma Railways and had to leave when the Japanese invaded in 1941. So he and his wife, my grandmother, Beatrice (standing right), decided to return to their family’s home in Karachi. In only a few years, the entire family pulled up their roots from the city in which they’d lived for four generations to take their chances in India, a few months before Partition in 1947. Though my father was only nine when the family left Karachi, his elder siblings had more vivid memories : trips between Bombay and Karachi were made on ferries named the Saraswati and the Sabarmati (“they were like little tubs, we all got seasick”) ; relatives having leisurely evenings at the Karachi Goan Association (KGA), “gin and lime was the favourite drink”, and the enterprising…

A Partition story from Pakistan

My Father Syed Ali Mehdi Naqvi

My Father Syed Ali Mehdi Naqvi Image and Narrative contributed by Waqar Ul Mulk Naqvi, Punjab Province, Pakistan This is the only image of my Late father Syed Ali Mehdi Naqvi I possess. He was born in 1930 in a small district called Beed then in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. In 1960, when new states were created on the basis of linguistics, the Marathi dominant town of Beed became a part of Maharashtra. My father graduated from Usmania University, Hyderabad (now Osmania) in Masters of Persian when he was only 18, in 1949. My grandfather Hassan Naqvi was a lawyer with the High Court of the Nizam of Hyderabad at the time and also owned a lot of agricultural land in Pimpalwadi (District Beed, Now in Maharashtra). Agriculture was a big part of the family income. When Partition of India and Pakistan was announced, my grandfather was still very optimistic that Hyderabad will be declared an independent state. The Nizam of Hyderabad was very adamant about that. But the Indian Government did not comply and the Nizam had to surrender in 1948. With a lot of sorrow, and seeing no other option in a very precarious India, my grandparents along with their children were finally forced to join thousands of others and leave India in 1955. All of our assets, a house at Muhalla Qila as well as the cultivated agricultural land were left behind, abandoned. They migrated to Karachi via Bombay on a ship. With our roots, and legacies all left behind, my family had to go through a lot of hurt, disillusionment and suffering. Consequences of which can be felt till today. In my family’s words “we were simply plucked and sent into a…

The last photograph of a family together

Possibly the first photograph of the village, a Kashmiri Pandits Extended Family. My grandmother, Tara Dhar, (second from right in the top row), my grandfather Raghunath Dhar (fourth from right in the same row) Between them is my great grandmother, Sokhmal Dhar. Vicharnag, Srinagar, Kashmir. Circa 1915 Image and Narrative points contributed by Anil Dhar, Mumbai This is probably the first, and as it turned out, the last ever photograph taken of my entire Kashmiri Pandit extended family. The Dhar Family. My grandmother, Tara Dhar, stands second from right in the top row, and my grandfather Raghunath Dhar, fourth from right in the same row. Between the men is my great grandmother, Sokhmal Dhar. The family was photographed in Vicharnag, a small village situated on the outskirts of Srinagar, Kashmir. Vicharnag when translated, means “the spring of contemplation". The village has a centuries-old temple complex which housed several Pandit families including mine for hundreds of years. The Dhar family belongs to the Kashmiri Pandit community - the only Brahmin Hindu community native to Kashmir. These were also good times, when ties between all communities, be it Hindu or Muslim, were strong and warm. This picture holds so many cultural nuances. For instance, the headgear of the elder male members was different from the younger male members. Moreover, the women were not in purdah (veiled) displaying some liberal social and cultural aspects of the community at the time. After belonging to a land for centuries, the families were forced to uproot themselves because of Indo-Pakistani border War of 1947, and then again in 1990 because of the eruption of radical militancy and ethnicity based massacres by subversives, on the Pandits. It is said that approximately 250,000…

All translations are machine generated, hence they are not 100% accurate.