‘Taunsvi’s The Sixth River…remains an astonishing eyewitness account…that is quite unparalleled in the sub-continent’s Partition literature. Maaz Bin Bilal’s most excellent translation of this text captures all the pathos, barbarity and black humour that so characterise Taunsvi’s searing narrative.’—Scroll.in
‘The Sixth River is not only noteworthy for the historical events it records but is significant also in the timeliness of its publication today…Maaz Bin Bilal’s translation [is] a much-needed addition to the flourishing genre of Partition literature.’—Aanchal Malhotra, oral historian and author
The Sixth River is the journal Fikr Taunsvi—born Ram Lal Bhatia—wrote from August to November 1947 as Lahore disintegrated around him. His identity reduced, overnight, merely to a Hindu in his beloved and cosmopolitan city, he is angry at the shortsightedness and ineptness of Radcliffe, Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah. In the company of likeminded friends such as the poet Sahir Ludhianvi, he mourns the loss of the art and culture of Lahore in the bloodlust and deluded euphoria of freedom. He is bewildered when old friends suddenly turn staunch nationalists and advise him to either convert or leave the newly created country. And then the unspeakable trauma that millions are facing during Partition reaches Fikr’s doorstep when a neighbour murders his daughter, and he is eventually forced to migrate to Amritsar in India.
