ABSTRACT
In April 1951, more than three years after the traumatic events of partition, Diwan Chaman Lall, a pre-eminent public figure from Lahore and a parliamentarian and diplomat in independent India, was asked to speak on the subject of The Fate of the Punjabee Nation’. In his speech he declared:
We have not only been uprooted-seven million of us-but all that we cherished has been destroyed, the sanctity and refuge of our homes, the little soil most of us owned, whitened in the past with the sacred bones of our ancestors, the tradition of the mohalla, the city, the village, the biradari and the leadership-all things which were part and parcel of our existence, nay, which made our existence endurable and pleasant and happy-all that is finished for us. Like the fallen autumn leaves in the wind or bits of stray newspaper flying hither and thither in the blown dust, those who have come away safe in limb and mind are without any bearings and without any roots.1
