Seven Days in Summer: Countdown to Partition

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Paul Berczeller

Sanjay Singhal

Jon Alwen

Voltage TV Productions Ltd

Documentaries

Factual: History

15/08/2017

BBC Two - Seven Days in Summer: Countdown to Partition

Seven extraordinary days that see the birth of India and Pakistan and the end of the Raj.

Set over the seven dramatic days leading up to the Partition of India and creation of Pakistan, this film gives a blow-by-blow account of that tumultuous week.

Today India and Pakistan are home to one fifth of the world's population. They are rising powers but hostile neighbours. Their enmity can be traced back to the week of their birth, 70 years ago. On 15 August 1947, Britain would give up the Indian Empire, partitioning it in into two independent countries, India and Pakistan. This film tells the story of the seven days that led up to their independence and the last days of the British Raj.

With seven days to go, the British were yet to announce where the border would be drawn. Millions anxiously awaited their fates, unsure in what country they would find themselves come independence. By the end of the week, one of the biggest migrations in human history is under way and countless people will have lost their lives. The film moves through each dramatic day, drawing on oral histories of survivors who were eye witnesses to the complex human tragedy that unfolded. From a Muslim boy in Punjab heading north to what would become Pakistan in an attempt to escape the escalating violence to a gang leader in Calcutta - where Gandhi was desperately preaching non-violence. We tell the story of a women whose husband attempted to kill her to prevent her being raped, as well as a Hindu man saved from a Muslim gang by his own Muslim servant who risked his own life in the process.

Elsewhere, a writer sees his beloved cultured city of Lahore burn around him and hundreds of thousands lose their lives on the famed railway network as religious violence increases and spreads with each passing day. This week was marked by extreme contradictions of wild celebrations and vicious bloodshed. This film vividly retells, day by day, the unfolding events as seen through the eyes of ordinary people, caught up in an historic summer that would change the world forever.

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