Anita Rani (pictured above) explores the human impact of the Partition of India through the intimate stories of four British families, including her own, in a new two-part landmark BBC One series. Using compelling first-hand testimony from British Partition survivors, their children and grandchildren retrace the dramatic journeys they were forced to make during Partition.
　　Representing the different communities caught up in the violence - Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and British colonial - they travel for the first time to the homes in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh that their families fled in terror. Their journeys include emotional meetings with long-lost family friends, encounters with neighbours of other religions who shielded their family at huge personal risk, and extraordinary stories of courage and fortitude among the horrors of the communal violence that had erupted.
　　Anita Rani and her mother become the first members of their family to return to the small village in Pakistan where her grandfather lived until 1947. Anita investigates the shocking and distressing events that happened there when her grandfather's first wife, children and her great grandfather lost their lives.
　　Anita Rani says: 「This is a deeply personal project. I realised there's a generation growing up in Britain who know very little about their own history. Partition seems to be a forgotten moment in time, a shameful stain that no one wants to talk about. However 70 years on, it's almost the last chance to hear from the Partition survivors. There are millions of stories but the simplest way of trying to understand what happened is to look at four different experiences, representing the communities caught up in the horror. Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and British.」