How the Memory of India's Traumatic Partition Is Being Preserved Across Borders

TIME.com - Seventy-one years ago, a line drawn between India and Pakistan ushered in a bloody separation that left lasting scars on both sides of the border. Upon independence from the British Empire, the two states were demarcated along religious boundaries that proved much less clear than administrators anticipated. An effort is now underway to preserve this past while those who experienced it are still alive, so that future generations may better understand how their borderlands became so volatile.

The Radcliffe Line came into effect at midnight on Aug. 15, 1947, marking the dissolution of the British Raj and dividing the provinces of Assam, Bengal and Punjab into two new nations determined by areas of Hindu and Muslim majority: then known as the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, of which Bangladesh was a part. Mixed religious communities began a desperate months-long scramble across newly drawn borders to reside with their own kind; Muslims on the Indian side attempted to cross into Pakistan, while Hindus and Sikhs fled the other way. More than 14 million people crossed in both directions, resulting in what is generally regarded as the largest mass migration in human history.