Who Do You Think You Are - Anita Rani 1st Oct
 

On BBC1 at 9 p.m., and repeated on Tuesday at 11:35 p.m.

I enjoyed that, mostly because it was so different.

I already knew something about the well suicides, from a novel. In the book it suggested that committing suicide in the village well was the only way the women could get their own back on their male oppressors - a well full of dead women is no good for drinking water! Also, whether it was actually suicide in all cases.....

I hadn't realised so many people in India died due to Spanish Flu. That was a real eye opener.

OC

Episode synopsis:

Anita Rani is 37. She grew up in Bradford but now lives in East London. Her mother came from a Sikh family but Anita isn't religious. Her mother came from India to marry Anita's father in Bradford in an arranged marriage. Her mother's father, Sant Singh, was a Sikh and the family know that his first wife and child died during the Partition unrest, before he married Anita's grandmother Balbir Kaur. Sant Singh was in the army, so his family travelled around a lot.

Anita met up with her parents, uncles and aunts, at an uncle's house in Ilford, so that they could tell her what they knew about Sant Singh's life. He married Balbir in 1948, after joining the army in 1935 when he was very young. The family said he was born in what is now the Pakistani part of Punjab. They showed Anita Sant Singh's "Indian Independence 1947" medals, and photos of him in his uniform. They didn't know the names of his first wife and son, but they had heard that the child was murdered and the wife killed herself by jumping in a well.

Anita went to New Delhi in India where she met a military historian to find out about Sant Singh's career. He went to the Kashmiri Army training school before joining the British Army in 1942 (the REME). His British army papers showed his date of birth as the 26th Jul 1916, his previous employment as sub-overseer in the Canal department of Montgomery District, and his father's name as Dheru Ram. An extract from his service record showed that in 1947-8, when the Partition troubles were happening, he was serving in Kirkee, far away from the Punjab.

Anita received a parcel from her uncle Gurdip Singh in India. It contained Sant Singh's handwritten memoir, plus a translation. The memoir said that he was born as Sant Ram, and that his mother Dhanti died in a plague which hit their village, Sarhali, which is actually about 80 miles over the Indian side of the border with Pakistan.

Anita went to Sarhali. She met a local journalist and author, and saw a house similar to Sant Singh's family home. The author told her that the "plague" was the Spanish Flu which was a global pandemic at the end of the First World War, causing about 14 million deaths in British India. She explained that Sant was born a Hindu, but it was common for the eldest son of a Hindu family to become a Sikh, hence the name change from Ram to Singh. The family's caste was the potter caste, but he put a different one down on the army form.

Anita met the Taggar clan in the village, distant cousins, who told her that Sant Singh returned to the village after his first wife's death, and that he married Balbir there. They had heard that Dheru also died during Partition. One of the cousins showed Anita the land which he bought from Sant.

Anita then visited Khalsa College and met an historian who showed her where Montgomery district was on a map, and explained that the British government had nine canals built in the area to irrigate the land in the late 19th century, and that this caused a lot of people to move to the area, including Dheru and Sant Ram in the 1920's.


Montgomery ended up in Pakistan when it was created in 1947. Anita went to Amritsar where she met a survivor of that time, who told her that when a group of Muslim men came to his home village asking to be given one of the girls, the Sikh men refused to give them any girls and killed them all instead, and the older women jumped into the well rather than be taken by the Muslim men. Anita met an author who has written about the experiences of girls and women at that time. Many people had to leave their homes, and about 1 million people died in the unrest. Many women are supposed to have jumped into wells, but many of the female survivors say that they were given no choice by their male relatives.

A document from the army archives, listing Sant Singh's dependents, showed that his first wife's name was Pritam Kaur and that they had two children: a son Rajpal Singh born 1939 and a daughter Mahindra Kaur born 1941.

Anita's uncle Gurdip still lives in the house in India where Sant and Balbir raised their six children. Anita went to visit him there, and he showed her a photo of Rajpal and one of Pritam. He had never heard of Mahindra, but Sant had once told him the story of how they died - they were riding towards India, and one of the tribal people threw a spear which killed Rajpal, then they started killing everyone else.

Sant Singh died in 1975, less than two years before Anita was born. She went to the river Ganges to visit the family record keepers, who showed her that Sant Singh had registered the deaths of his father, wife and children in March 1948, shortly before his marriage to Balbir. In 1928, Dheru had registered the death of his father Sondhi, who had visited the record keepers in 1878. Anita added her branch of the family to the records.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

I had never read much about Partition and was horrified at the story of the men killing their wives and daughters.

I was surprised to learn that the eldest son in Hindu families often became a Sikh and that Anita's parents were Sikh and Hindu. I had a Sikh colleague in the 70s who had married a Hindu and it was frowned on by both sets of parents. She had a really hard time with her in laws as a result.

I guess it would depend on which part of India they lived in, Gillian.

That's quite possible Kate.

Her family was one of those expelled from Uganda but I don't know from whereabouts in India they originated.

Sikhism is monotheistic and I understood Hinduism was polytheistic so it would seem a bit of a leap.

Fascinating programme. I felt her anger.

I found that really interesting, in spite of it being in the format I've previously complained about - mainly concentrating on one ancestor and detailing things that happened within living memory. I did know a bit about what happened after Partition but not the full, shocking details. It seemed even more shocking to hear it from someone who actually witnessed it; no wonder Anita was so upset. I like her and think she is a good tv presenter which helped in holding my interest I think. I thought her family were lovely too.

I am not sure enjoyed is the right word given the subject matter but I found it very interesting. I kept thinking Pritam would have been younger than my mother and Mahindra younger than my husband. partition seems so far away and long ago. Seeing the story through Anita's eyes made it seem much closer. I thought the Who do you are team handled it with sensitivity I had no idea that Spanish flu made such a big impact in India.