Syed Babar Ali
Story: One and one don’t make two, but 11. Hence if we are together, we can be much greater than two. We, the people of South Asia, especially India and Pakistan, can be 11 if we have the right attitude towards each other. I was born in Lahore in 1926 to Syed Maratib Ali and […]
Tarlochan Singh
Story: I was born in 1933, in the village Dhudial, then in District Jhelum, (about 80 kilometres from the modern city of Islamabad), with a 5% Sikh population. Former Indian Prime Ministers, Dr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral, were also from the same district. My father’s name was Sardar Balwant Singh and my […]
Ajit Jaswant Singh
Story: I was born in 1926 in Mianwali Bangla, Daska Tehsil, in the Sialkot District of West Punjab. My father, Tarlok Singh, was an accounting officer in Lahore, and my mother, Balwant Kaur, was a homemaker. I have two sisters and a brother. I completed my high school education in a government school in Lahore, […]
Patrick Nicholas Sequeire
Story: I was also called Patty and was born in 1926 on Sumsay Estate, Connoor, Mysore (now Mysuru). My family members were tea makers, and I spent my childhood in the tea and coffee estates. I never saw myself working in the tea estate. I recall the process of collecting tea leaves and sending them […]
Maryam Babar
Story: I was born in 1941 in Hyderabad to a Scottish-Indian family, and named Maryam Haqqani. I was called Munni at home by my family when I was little. My father was a powerful landlord, the cousin of Laiq Ali, the Prime Minister of Hyderabad at the time. My mother, Eva Matthew Watt, was a […]
Narinder Singh Kapany
Story: I was born in 1926 to Sardar Sunder Singh and Kundan Kaur in my mother’s village of Moga in Punjab. I grew up in Dehradun, where I attended Presbyterian School until college. In 1951 I went to England for a Ph.D. in the field of solid state physics, where I coined the term “fiber […]
Naseem Mirza Changezi
Story: I was born in 1910 in my ancestral home at Pahari Imli, near Churi Walan in Jama Masjid, Old Delhi. I was a freedom fighter and fought alongside my contemporaries, such as Bhagat Singh and Rajguru, against colonial powers. I have been profiled and documented numerous times by leading scholars and academics for my […]
Feroza Khatun
Story: My name is Feroza Khatun and I was born in 1934 in the village of Ghono Shyampur near the town of Godagari, in Rajshahi District. The house I lived in was large. My father was a rich farmer and my family’s expenses were paid by the land. My family practiced Islam, and we had […]
Sarat Chandra Hira
Story: I was born in 1929 in Tuthamandra, a village in Faridpur District. My father was a farmer, and my mother was a highly educated woman who guided me in education. It was after my father’s sudden death, due to malaria, that the responsibility of running the family fell upon me. I specialise in Sanskrit […]
Purnendu Prasad Bhattacharjee
Story: I was born in the town of Gouripur in Mymensingh District in 1920. Gouripur has an important place in the history of Bengal. At the time of Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah’s reign, the Gouripur Estate was placed under Raja Krishna Rai Choudhury’s jagirdari (feudal land grant). Sri Krishna Rai had two sons, of which the […]
