ABSTRACT
This chapter is a collection of personal stories of ordinary people from in and around Lucknow that represent only a fraction of millions of other ordinary lives scarred by Partition. Most of the information in the chapter is from long conversations I had with ordinary family members and friends in Lucknow and with people in different cities of Pakistan who recall Partition in their own personal way. After all, politics alone is not responsible for Pakistan. Here is an attempt to explore other personal and sociocultural reasons for standing by Partition, or not.
Here, the personal narrative is alternated with historical incidents that have touched ordinary lives, inspired poetry, films and literature easily found in archives, and in numerous books on Partition, on Lucknow and on the history of the Indian Subcontinent.
Since Lucknow was at the centre of many events that finally led to Partition, there is much about the city, its citizenry and its unique role in one of the most tumultuous incidents in the recent history of South Asia that is surely also responsible for current tensions between India and Pakistan.
