Hello podcast listeners I'm Connor and welcome to this week's episode of

Intelligence Squared as this weekend August 15th marks the anniversary of the partition of

India in 1947 it's a good time to look back at one of the most tumultuous and violent events of the 20th century.

So this week we were joined by Kavita Puri, author of Partition Voices, Untold British Stories.

And she spoke to the BBC South Asian correspondent

Regina Vadyanne about the personal testimonies and accounts she has

collected from people who lived through partition and subsequently went on to

become British citizens. It's a really fascinating conversation and if you do enjoy it

there's a link in the podcast description where you can find out more about Cavita's book. Now to the episode.

Hi, I'm Regina Visinarvonne Arvin and I joined by Kavita Pory. Welcome Kavita. This book is a great read first of all and it comes at a time in August this time of year when people are talking about partition because it's the anniversary month.

First of all, just tell us why you decided to write this book.

Well, it's very simple really. I decided to write the book because it had never been written and partition was this big

thing in my family and it sounds kind of strange to say it was was always there, but it was not something I could

broach really. Every time I tried to talk to my dad about it, he would just shut it down.

And I kind of talked to friends of mine who were of British South Asian heritage and they said something similar and so as a journalist with the 70th anniversary approaching I thought you know I wonder how many families are out there

who have that kind of experience and I suppose once we started looking for these stories, we realized they were absolutely everywhere in Britain.

And they, you know, they were literally all around us and so I felt it was really important to document these stories as I said not just because it hadn't been done but I thought it was important for

the historical record and I think that people think that partition is something that

happened you know really far away on the Indian subcontinent but it is very present in the people that came

to Britain in the 50s and 60s and that legacy really lives on in the generations, the subsequent

generations that make up contemporary Britain.

And I suppose finally really, if I, if we hadn't recorded those stories, I was afraid that that generation would die out and we would just never know.

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