How can VR technology help preserve memory? Everything you need to know about Project Dastaan and their work to raise awareness about the 1947 Partition, with Saadia Gardezi.
For many, the mention of the Partition of Pakistan and India is overshadowed by the politically charged narratives of 1947, very rarely are survivors of Partition provided with platforms to share their stories and experiences. In this episode, Saadia speaks about Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative which examines the human impact of global migration through the lens of the largest forced migration in recorded history, the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. (This transcript has been edited for the website)
You have Co-Founded an incredible initiative called Project Dastaan? Can you please tell us more about your work?
Project Dastan is a multimedia project that began with reconnecting partition witnesses to their ancestral homes using VR technology. We developed an immersive VR experience about Partition called Child of Empire that we have been touring around in the UK, India, and Pakistan. Hopefully, we will be able to tour the US and Australia soon.
We have also produced a series of short animations called The Lost Migrations, which we made in collaboration with young artists in studios in India and Pakistan. The Lost Migrations are three lesser-known, fictionalised stories about migration from across South Asia.
The statistics say, over a million people died and 15 million migrated because of Partition but beyond these statistics how do we preserve these beautiful stories of childhood. Of Eid, of Holi, of joy, of going to the mosque or the temple and what can we do with these stories?
Project Dastaan’s productions are emotional and thought-provoking. How was the idea for Project Dastaan first developed and how has it evolved since then?
In 2018, Sam Dalrymple, Sparsh Aruja and I were thinking about Sparsh’s grandfather who had migrated from India to Pakistan and how difficult it is for him to get a visa to travel back to Pakistan now. The Partition generation is a dying generation and there’s so few people who actually witnessed Partition left. Most of them were babies or children when it happened.
We’re losing all of these memories and first-hand testimonies. So, we came up with this crazy idea that the easiest way to reconnect people is through VR technology and we could transport Sparsh’s grandfather back using virtual reality. Sparsh always says, something like Project Dastaan should not have to exist. It should be easy for people to go back and see their homes and villages, but the sad reality of India and Pakistan is that it is a very difficult journey to make. Pakistan and India have always had animosity towards each other, and the visa regimes keep changing. There is no flow of people across the border.
We began by interviewing people who had a desire to see their childhood homes. We had teams in India and Pakistan conducting the interviews. Sparsh and Sam were in India, and I would make the films in Pakistan for people who had migrated from Pakistan to India to show them their homes. We began with just a 360 camera and taking 360 shots of whatever people could remember from their childhood, whether that was a mosque, a school, an open field, or the mountains. We would film whatever they could remember and take them on a bespoke tour of their hometown and their homes if they still existed.
Sometimes, you find people that they may have known there, from two or three generations ago who still remember the stories of their grandparents. This is how it started, to give them closure in a sense. That is how it began, but after the pandemic we found out that we had lost some of our Partition witnesses, they had passed away. It is becoming more and more difficult to find survivors and witnesses because as I mentioned, they were babies or children at the time. Then we pivoted to making films to keep these stories about this major world event alive.
The statistics say, over a million people died and 15 million migrated because of Partition but beyond these statistics how do we preserve these beautiful stories of childhood. Of Eid, of Holi, of joy, of going to the mosque or the temple and what can we do with these stories?
I think every generation since 1947 has taken Partition and made art and literature out of it. We wanted to explore what else we could do.
Why do you think storytelling is an important medium to raise awareness about events like Partition?
For us, Partition and Partition Studies is a large field, especially in academia. We wanted to bring that information out of the archives and put it in front of people in an engaging way, which is why Project Dastaan focuses more on storytelling part. We fictionalised some of our narratives and created animations to offer this to a younger generation.
I think every generation since 1947 has taken Partition and made art and literature out of it. We wanted to explore what else we could do. We are familiar with Manto’s stories, with Urdu literature like Udaas Nasle. I have also mentioned Paritition literature which is a lot of oral history as well as history from the top, the elite history. I think exploring it in animation, whether 3D or virtual has not been done before. Our virtual reality film is there to create that empathy. If you are put in the shoes of the migrants, how do you feel? How do you feel if you are walking through the stories of the trains that arrived full or corpses or how does it feel when you have to hide? We want to get as close as we can to the experience.
Sometimes it is uncomfortable but somethings it is just so new and strange to people three or four generations later. It does create conversations about empathy about the other side and you know what we think in India and Pakistan as the enemy side, but they were just people trying to find their way during a very difficult time.
Through your work, have you seen a renewed interest amongst the younger generations about Partition?
Yes, absolutely. We are sitting in the UK right now and the diaspora generations are very interested in finding out more about their roots, finding these stories and this sense of belonging that they have to South Asia. We have been warmly received here in the UK. I think Indian and Pakistanis are losing the connections they had to the generation that migrated because they have passed on. Our generation and younger do not have any direct links with the 1947 generation. There is no one left in their families that saw Partition first hand.
All my grandparents have passed away, so this project reintroduces Partition history to a new generation. We introduce this in a way that is not official history, it is not what we read in textbooks or the patchy history that is different in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. We give an alternative version, which is kind of like, here is something, judge for yourselves because these are just oral testimonies.
We asked ourselves if there is a place for empathy in our version of history? Or do we want to just continue talking about what Jinnah, Nehru or Gandhi wanted. Beyond that is the history of the people who were actually impacted and what their perspectives might have been.
We have seen that in India, in Pakistan and across these post-colonial empire-based discussions of what bureaucracy is and how these borders were created and how this paperwork, passports, were created to control people.
Why did you decide to incorporate the use of VR and how has this technology and the films produced been received?
VR is a way to create empathy. Can we put you in the shoes of a migrant? Can we send you on that journey? Using VR was about maximising the empathy building impact of our storytelling. We also used traditional animations as well because as lovely as the VR experience is, it is expensive to create. You also need to investment in the technology so people can experience that VR journey, so wherever we have gone, we have had to take our own equipment, headsets etc. The traditional animations were created as a complementary project so anyone can view these films.
Child of Empire goes over the main story you have heard of India versus Pakistan and crossing over the border. The film shows a Hindu man and a Muslim man crossing and their journeys, their thoughts, and experiences. All of this is based on real life testimony. The Indian story is based on Sparsh’s grandfather and the Pakistani story is based on a man called Iqbal Uddin who travelled from Indian Punjab to Lahore.
We have that main story and then on the side we have the traditional animations that are stories you might not have heard. One of them is based on what happened to women and the vulnerability they felt and their narratives. Another one focuses on South India and what was happening there because there is also the creation of sea borders. We tend to forget that there are other communities that were disrupted by Partition and World War 2 across South India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. We also created one about bureaucracy, how people can become stateless and what this means. It is an absurd story that happened to someone. The animation shows a man who is slowly becoming a piece of paper because of all the paperwork that was needed after 1947 to prove your identity. Hopefully, it also speaks to today’s contemporary issues of having new laws being passed in India about who gets to be an Indian citizen.
We have seen that in India, in Pakistan and across these post-colonial empire-based discussions of what bureaucracy is and how these borders were created and how this paperwork, passports, were created to control people. This can be viewed as a form of structural violence for people who do not have the right papers or who cannot prove their parentage.
How has your work been received by people who survived Partition?
From people who survived Partition, most of their responses have been wonderful, especially for the people who invited us into their homes for the VR experience to film those rooms. We often found that their children were so fascinated by the entire experience. Some of them got to see their Phuppo’s house or their parents’ ancestral homes.
It has been wonderful, but it is also very bittersweet. People do breakdown and start crying. When we have shown people Child of Empire, people have had to take a few moments to collect themselves, especially if it was their parents’ experience or if a lot of people who came to see the film were very close to the generation that experienced Partition. Some of them did not want to see the VR film, which we understood because it is a very emotionally charged film, especially if you have family history of that event.
We did not want to reintroduce trauma to people who experienced Partition, so the target audience of Child of Empire is for younger generations, not necessarily the Partition generation. This film commemorates them. The reception overall has been good, but also bittersweet because these are very intense stories of loss and grief.
Making people realise and recognise that Partition happened because of the British, it happened because you were there and that is why we are here, is a conversation that needs to happen.
What would you like people to take away from all the work you are doing with Project Dastaan?
There is a lot of love lost between Indians and Pakistanis. We would love to have more conversations about who we were together and what that means for us today. Both countries and their politics have taken such terrible turns in what has happened to minority rights in India and Pakistan. It is sad to see that we have not learnt anything from 1947, we have not learnt from 1971, and we are just waiting for another year where 40 years later somebody like you and me are having a similar conversation about, ‘we’re commemorating this or we’re animating so and so because this horrible thing happened.’
It is about learning that we have a lot of commonalities and culture. It is sad that we have led borders and politics to run off with the friendships and connections we had. Our grandparents lived together, and they were friends. This is not to say that Pakistan or Bangladesh should not exist because people have a right to self-determination, but does it have to be like this? Does the issue of Kashmir, that has been dragging on for over 70 years, have to be where it is right now? Can we at least have better conversations and recognise we are just people not enemies who are sitting on the border ready to kill each other.
People should be able to have a conversation to talk about our shared past and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Sadly, the direction where these conversations are going now is considered anti-national and if you start looking at Partition critically, you are being anti-national. Trauma is trauma and if you suddenly have to leave your house today and you are told you cannot go back, that is a horrible thing to go through. Can we not just recognise that countless people went through Partition regardless of who they became once they became Indian or Pakistani? It is about that conversation and the recognition of the other as the self.
What is coming up for Project Dastaan and how can our listeners support your work?
We are still touring the films and trying to get as many people as possible to watch them. If we are in your town or you want us to visit just drop us an email. We are also trying to figure out what else we would like to say about Partition or migration in general or the post-colonial state we are in today.
There is a reckoning that must be done with empire and in our case the British Empire and what that meant for our lives and how colonisation created Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. There is a UK based conversation that must happen about the legacy of empire and how it has created these various diaspora communities and about race, about our culture and our ethnicities.
One thing we always stress is, talk to your grandparents. It does not matter if you are Indian or Pakistani, talk to your grandparents and hear what they have to say. A lot of us come from migrating families and I believe Partition speaks to the experiences of other people as well, from Palestine to Syria and all these new migrations that we see today.
Partition is one of the largest forced migrations in history. We need people in the UK to recognise Partition is something that just happened in India, but it is also a part of UK history. India was part of the British Empire and rather than looking at this as global history or the history of Asia, this is British history. It should be in textbooks and in public memory. Making people realise this and recognising that Partition happened because of the British, it happened because you were there and that is why we are here, is a conversation that needs to happen.
Guest: Saadia Gardezi
Saadia Gardezi is Co-Founder of Project Dastaan, a multimedia project focused on survivor’s stories from the partition of India in 1947.
If you would like to learn more about Project Dastaan work you can follow its work on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
If you are interested in learning more about Partition from survivors and their families, read their narratives:
Nani (Grandmother)
