Ardas for the Punjabis killed in the 1947 Partition

On the day after India's Independence, the SGPC's calendar keeps an Ardas Day for the Punjabis who were killed during the Partition of 1947. It remembers the people of Punjab, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims alike, who lost their lives, their homes and their land when the province was divided between India and Pakistan.

A divided Punjab

The new border, announced only after independence, ran through the heart of Punjab. Lahore, the capital of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, went to Pakistan, and so did Nankana Sahib, the birthplace of Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Kartarpur, where he spent his last years, Gurdwara Dera Sahib in Lahore, Panja Sahib, and hundreds of other places sacred to the Sikhs, along with much of the fertile canal land that Sikh farmers had settled.

The killing and the migration

In the months around August 1947 Punjab was swept by communal violence. Trains arrived full of the dead, villages were burned, and women were abducted or killed, some by their own families to save them from capture. Estimates of the dead across the subcontinent run from several hundred thousand to two million, and Punjab bore the greatest share. Some ten million people crossed the new border in one of the largest migrations in history. Nearly every Sikh family from West Punjab carries stories of what was lost.

The daily Ardas

Since 1947 the Sikh Ardas has included a prayer for free access to, and care of, the gurdwaras and shrines from which the Panth has been separated. The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor in 2019 answered part of that prayer.

How the day is observed

Gurdwaras hold Ardas for all those killed, and many families remember the villages and homes their parents and grandparents left behind.