Principia College Study Abroad to Nepal & India

By Nick Jacobs 

Our day started bright and early as we left the Colonels retreat at 5am. For the first time while in India, traffic was not an issue and we quickly arrived at the airport. We ate breakfast and quickly moved to the gate, before hearing the announcement that it changed. Our flight was very pleasant and quick. 

Professor Singh met us in the hotel in Amritsar and we set out to explore a partition museum, walking distance from the hotel. However, after arriving we found out the museum was closed and wandered the streets for an hour or so before we met up again. Many of the stores were selling similar clothing or trinkets so Stan and I settled for ice cream. 

The rest of the day consisted of lunch and then a trip to the Indian/Pakistan border. Although it is one of the most militarised borders in the world, every day they hold a military ceremony. These ceremonies seemed similar experiences at sporting events as the crowds cheered against one another and cool drinks, popcorn and candy are available throughout. However, there were very clear symbols of taunting and aggression present from both India and Pakistan. It was a peculiar experience because the two countries are in fierce opposition, yet the ceremony was clearly rehearsed and at one point soldiers from both sides shook hands. The juxtaposition between rivalry and coming together also made it unclear what the purpose of the ceremony is. Nevertheless, a very enjoyable experience for the whole group.

The rest of the time in Amritsar was spent at the partition museum we missed the first day, a trip to a Sikh school where Prof. Singh gave a lecture on Sikhism and a very enjoyable trip around the golden temple. 

The partition museum was confronting and very informative. It was very interesting to revisit such an impactful event in India’s history. We quickly moved to Prof. Singhs talk which was very insightful. He spoke about the fundamental aspects of Sikhism which was a perfect refresher before heading to the golden temple, the mecca for Sikhism not only in India, but the world.

We were fortunate enough to get a quick lecture and see the kitchens where mass production of food made for the Langar (free kitchen) takes place. These free kitchens can be found at any Sikh gurdwara, anywhere in the world. One of the pillars of Sikhism is service, and In an effort to give back, our group washed some dishes for a little before taking a tour of the temple itself. Some of us were lucky enough to spend time on all three levels. Either way, the experience was very enjoyable. The walk from the temple back across the walkway was very peaceful and the love was very tangible. Many in the group commented on the feeling of acceptance that was received from all, whether they were devout or just tourists, there was a very strong sense of equality. 

After leaving the temple we walked back to the hotel with Prof. Singh and said our goodbyes.

By Sammy Keller

Partition- it’s one of the most influential events in the history of the Indian Subcontinent, and something that we don’t think about very much. As part of our abroad preparation, we talked about the basics of partition. Once we got into country, we were able to speak with partition survivors, former military officers, and this week we visited the newly opened partition museum in Amritsar, in the Indian state of Punjab.

We’ll talk about the details of partition throughout this blog, but here are some of the basics. Partition was the separation of the Indian Subcontinent into two sovereign states- India and Pakistan. This partition came with the end of the British colonial rule of India, which for a long time exploited the region, the people, and continuously fired up the tensions between Hindus and Muslims- therefore, when the British were leaving, the Muslim League advocated for an independent state for Muslims, which would later become known as Pakistan.

We went to the Partition museum with Dr. Baljinder Singh, a former professor and president at Khalsa College in Amritsar. He was our guide during our time in Amritsar and he took us to the Wagah Border ceremony, a lecture at Khalsa College, and the Golden Temple.

When you walk into the museum, you come into a somewhat narrow room with beautiful floor tiles. On the left is an outline of the museum, which out lines the stages of partition. The outline goes: Why Amritsar, Punjab, Resistance, The Rise, Differences, the Prelude to Partition, Boundaries, Independence, Borders, Migration, Divisions, Separations, Remembrance (also called “The Room of Hope”).

As you enter through the glass door into the museum, you see a plaque with a summary of partition. The first paragraph reads “18 Million lives impacted.” This gives you the scope of the kind of impact that this event had on the region and the amount of lives that were impacted by the partition of 1947.

In the first gallery, you get an explanation of why they chose Amritsar for this museum, which opened not too long ago. During partition, Amritsar become a gathering point for people leaving India for Pakistan, as it was the last stops for trains leaving for Lahore, which was now part of Pakistan. Amritsar was also where the trains pulled in with refugees from “the other side”, as the plaque phrased it.

Prior to partition, Amritsar was an economic center in India, but once the impacts of partition swept through the country, Amritsar suffered heavy hits on its economy and its population, The population continued to drop for years and would not recover from partition until the 1960s, when it experienced its first population growth again. Today, Amritsar has a steady population of roughly 1,500,000 and it is considered the Sikh capital of the world, as it is home to the Golden Temple.

As you enter into the next gallery, you get a brief explanation of what life was like in Punjab, seeing some traditional clothing that is given to daughters at their wedding. But when you turn around, you see a wall covered in images, letters, and documents that explained the ways that the Indians were humiliated by the British during the colonial rule. An example that stood out to one of the students in our group included a small framed document that a bunch of signatures on it. It was a very official document, but all it did was that it allowed an Indian to have a chair when meeting with a British official. It wasn’t a chair at a conference or seat at the table of the local government- it was permission to have a chair when meeting with a British official. Otherwise, the Indian would have to sit on the floor. That’s the kind of treatment that many Indians received for a very long time before we reach the next galleries.

During the early 1900s, Britain continued its foreign policy of “divide and rule”, which included splitting up certain territories to make it easier to rule them. One of the territories that was split up was Bengal, one of the major states in the region. The goal was to split up the region for administrative purposes, but also split up Hindus and Muslims. There was a copy of the signed bill in the gallery that made the separation of Bengal official in 1905. However, the response in the state was incredibly strong, and the British eventually lost that battle when they reunified Bengal in 1911.

As we move along the timeline, or into the next gallery, we reach the most defining time period that would pave the way for partition- 1930-1945, the period of recovery from the Great Depression and World War II. During that time, the call for Indian independence became louder and louder. However, at the same time, the Muslim’s desire for an independent state became louder as well. It was first articulated in 1930 by Allama Muhammad Iqbal. The desire for a Muslim state was so strong because if India were to be one state, Muslims would make up a minority in India, ruled by Hindus. However, on a global scale, Muslims living in the Indian Subcontinent make up a large percentage of Muslims around the world. Today, India still has the second largest population of Muslims, trailing behind Indonesia and followed by Pakistan.

The 1940s marked the height and the end of World War II, which took its tool on the British economy. At the end of the war, the British Labour party came into power, which represented a dropping desire for colonial rule in India due to the financial crisis as a result of the war.

The talks about Indian independence and a solution about the land were represented by Gandhi and Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, who are both considered the fathers of their respective nations, and strong advocates for independence from Great Britain. Unfortunately, that was about the only thing that they could agree on. Gandhi did not want partition to happen, but Jinnah’s mind was set on a separate state where Muslims could live in peace. A reporter at the time, Viceroy Wavell, summed the outcomes of the talks up as:

“Jinnah wants Pakistan first and independence afterwards, while Gandhi wants independence first with some kind of self-determination to be granted to Muslims by a provisional government that would be predominantly Hindu.”

Jinnah believed that Hindus and Muslims were two different people and it was therefore not possible for them to live peacefully as one country, and therefore the focus would shift from protecting Muslim interests to an independent statehood for them.

As we continue our journey through the timeline, we now reached 1946, which marked a very dark predictor of the events that would follow once Pakistan and India would be granted independence.

Negotiations between Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Congress Party, fell apart after Nehru made some remarks that upset Jinnah and Muslim community. Nehru said that the Congress party would negotiate “unfettered” by previous agreements, which sent a strong message to Muslims and other minorities that their future would be uncertain if Nehru got his way.

Jinnah called for “Direct Action”, and violence broke out immediately in a number of states and cities, such as Bengal, Punjab, Bombay, Mumbai. The political climate had been incredibly tense for months and years, and this was the final drop that caused clashes between Muslims and Hindus throughout the country. Hindus attacked Muslim communities in one place, but Muslims would retaliate in a different part in response- just like it would happen a year later once the borders were drawn and Pakistan and India would be independent.

We’ve now reached a point in the museum where the idea of partition became a reality, and Nehru, as well as the British governor to India, Mountbatten, tried to persuade Jinnah to remain as one country. It was for nothing, and Pakistan would become a country.

The Independence of India bill was introduced and passed the British parliament on July 18^th, 1947. Independence for India was set for August 14/15, 1947- much sooner than many expected. Arguably, Great Britain was just trying to find a solution and get out as soon as possible.

Who would draw the borders? Mountbatten was clearly not in favor of partition, so he did not see himself fit to take on that responsibility. His solution was to find someone who was qualified and had no bias whatsoever. Therefore, his pick was Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had never been to India before. He arrived in India on July 8^th, 1947, and his report must be finished before August 14^th– just about over a month to divide and entire country into two.

Much of the responsibility fell onto Radcliffe because the Border committee was evenly split on many of the border issues, making Radcliffe the tiebreaker. The report was finished on August 12^th, but Mountbatten did not want to release the new borders until after Independence had been announced. Therefore, people were left in suspense and uncertainty until August 17^th, which is widely seen as a huge mistake because people started moving months before the Independence bill was passed because they saw it coming and they wanted to get out as soon as possible. However, they couldn’t be sure if where they were going would even be part of the country that they were hoping to go to.

The day came, and Pakistan and India were declared independent. Fun fact: Mountbatten was required to be present in both countries in order to declare them independent, so Pakistan was declared independent on August 14^th, 1947 and India on August 15^th.

People started moving before partition even happened, which unfortunately means that the violence broke out way before the two countries were even established. Once partition was officially declared, it just got worse.

6.5 million Muslims fled west, from India into Pakistan, while 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs fled east, into India. In the east, 2.7 million moved from East Pakistan into India, and 0.7 million went the other way. East Pakistan would become Bangladesh in 1971, but during Partition it was given to Pakistan. Geographically, it is not connected to the rest of Pakistan, but is surrounded by India.

The migration gallery of the museum states that 18 million people moved during partition, which is actually the highest estimate. Numbers range from 10-18 million based on your source. The gallery explains further how people moved, emphasizing the importance of railways- if you look up partition on google, you will see a lot of images of trains that are packed to the roof with people trying to flee to safety.

Money matters- especially during partition. If you were rich, you could leave by car or even by plane. If you had some money, you might be able to flee by train. If you were poor, you had to walk with a cart pulled by a horse or a donkey. The museum showed images of caravans of refugees trying to make it to their new home- wherever that would be. The largest human caravan is attributed to partition, with over 100,000 people walking into India.

The refugee gallery was very different from the rest of the museum- throughout the museum there was some traditional music, but the refugee gallery was different. There was no music, and the room was much larger than the other rooms. The noises that you heard were recordings from radios during partition or videos that showed the stories of partition survivors. Photos and drawings of refugees on the road or in camps decorated the walls, showing the fear and desperation in their faces.

This should be a whole separate blog, and people have written incredible books on this topic, but I can’t write about partition and not talked about the horrors that women faced. Women were left completely helpless during partition. Rape and sexual assault happened everywhere, India report 50,000 abducted women, Pakistan 33,000. To protect the family’s honor, fathers would kill the females in their family to ensure that they don’t fall into the hands of the enemy. Other times, the women were encouraged to commit suicide. Many would do that by jumping into the wells in their villages. Sometimes they survived because bodies had already piled up at the bottom, so they would climb up and try again- and again.

Life did not become easier for refugees once they arrived in their new homes. Refugees accounted for roughly 2% of India’s population in 1951, which was about 365,000,000 at the time. People struggled to find new homes for their families, find jobs, which made it so much harder to process that they had just lost so much.

To make things worse, both countries lost their respective founders. Gandhi was assassinated in January of 1948, and Jinnah died in August that year. Both were regarded as the fathers of their nations- their deaths were a huge loss to their countries.

The gallery of hope finished up our tour at the museum, but it doesn’t end the events of partition. Partition continues to affect these countries, for they have both lost so much for their independence. The gallery of hope pays tribute to those who lost their lives during partition, but it’s also a place of hope, as the name of the room reveals. While both countries have suffered a lot, and they have unfortunately not been able to reconcile since partition, the room reminds us that, no matter how much Indians lost during partition, they country was able to rebuild and become a strong nation.

The center of the room is decorated with a tree made from wire. The leaves are messages that were hung up. Some of them are written in Sanskrit, and some of them are in English. The messages pay tribute and give hope that one day they may live in peace. One leaf reads:

“You can divide land and property, but no one can divide the human spirit!”

by Danielle Lomascolo

We spent 2 days and 3 nights with homestay families in Noida, a city right outside of Delhi.  The area of Noida where we were is known for its large retired military population. Mackenzie and I stayed with a former Colonel in the Indian Army as a member of the Infantry. After his time in the service, He and his wife had moved to Noida.

The purpose of the homestays was to enrich our cultural experience here in India. We spent the first week touring around learning more about other religions and cultural landscapes.  The homestays are what allowed us to interact more with the people of India. At our homestay, we were able to engage in conversations based on cultural differences, politics, and history. While this is what we talked about, we were also able to observe household norms. 

It was just the couple that lived in the house, but also brought in a maid or domestic help to cook and clean.  While the wife was not moving as quickly as she use to she was still in a way expected to oversee these household duties and would also help cook. The Colonel would often be doing his own thing while this was happening. The home they lived in was 3 bedrooms & 3 baths, along with study and storage. On the walls it had the Hindu god Ganeshi along with Egyptian art, and Army memorabilia. It was a charming home but had a different feeling than a typical American home.

During this experience, we spent one full day with our homestays. My day consisted of getting up early in the morning to head to the Colonel’s farm, which was located northeast of Delhi.  He had mentioned that the farm had been in the family for 170 years. The plots of land are divided among his family members, and his plot is a mango farm with about 1,000 mango trees. The mangos were just starting to flower, so we were unable to see the actual fruit, which will be harvested around June and July. In addition to the farm visit, we met two of his cousins.

by John Woodall

To begin our homestay experience, our group was briefed on some proper etiquette on the bus ride to get dropped off.  Between bumps in the road, we all tried to write down proper greetings depending on if our homestay was a Sikh or Hindu, what the morning routine would consist of, and what we should call our homestay family (most were retired from the Indian Army, so colonel was a common title).  A few drop offs in, and the majority of our group was left on the side of the road with Colonel Singh and our luggage. Colonel Singh, professor Sally Stiendorf’s father-in-law, had arranged the homestays for us all. Once it was our turn, my roommate for the homestay Sean and I got in a rickshaw with Colonel Singh and he took us down a few blocks to our homestay.

“This is Colonel Arya Vir ” he told us as we hauled our luggage through the front gate of the small two-story building, tucked tightly between others in a row of similar buildings on the street.  The lights came on and we were greeted inside by our host for the next 3 nights. After a quick greeting, Colonel Singh left Sean and I inside a small living room with Colonel Arya, who we would get to know very well over the next few days.  The language barrier was definitely a challenge, even though he did speak English. We listened to some of his stories, exchanging questions with each other to try and break the ice all while enjoying some tea and crackers. Afterwards, a quick tour of the house brought us upstairs to our room.  Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say it wasn’t totally what we were used to. But we were still comfortable, and it had a great view from a rooftop patio area we had access to.

After relaxing and settling upstairs, we joined Colonel Arya for dinner.  It was served to us by a girl who was working in his house. This is a common practice and as he explained later Colonel Arya was supporting the family until they were able to get on their feet more.  Dinner consisted of a traditional cuisine. Despite having been in India for almost an entire week, the names of most dishes still escaped me. However it was full of flavor, and he was not shy to keep offering us more.  At one point in the meal he handed us a small bowl of brownish slices of some kind of fruit. As Sean and I put one of the small slices on our plate, we both gave each other nervous glances, unsure of what we were about to embark on.  He explained to us it was pickled lemon* and as they used to tell us when we were little, that was our “no thank you bite” at dinner. We politely nodded as we ate them under Colonel Arya’s stare waiting for our approval, unsure what the polite thing to do was.  Dinner continued, and the only other notable thing was a tutorial of how to properly use the cutlery according to the Colonel. As he learned in the Army (which was heavily influenced by the British), he taught us how to scoop with the fork in the left hand and the spoon in the right.  Once dinner was over, it was off to bed for a good night’s rest.

The next morning we got up early and went down for tea before breakfast.  Since we were still adjusting to the way things should be done, we didn’t realize that tea would be brought to us in our rooms instead.  So we sat at the same table we had dinner on and drank our tea accompanied with cookies. We then got ready for the day, the only difference here was our showering situation. The bathroom was a tiled floor with a drain in the corner, and two sink like faucets coming out of the wall above it a few feet off the floor.  On the wall was a hot water heater that had to be turned on, and a few buckets lay near the drain on the floor. The process involved filling a small bucket with hot water, dumping it over yourself, then repeating as many times as necessary. It was a new kind of experience.

We went down for breakfast, and soon found ourselves at the table being served a wonderful meal prepared for us.  Soon though the same bowl of pickled lemons found itself in front of Sean and I again. As we struggled with balancing being polite, we both ate a few too many of them.  After breakfast, we then were escorted to a nearby park to meet up with our group for the day’s activities.

After a long day of activities, we came back to our homestay for dinner.  After dinner, it was off to bed. The next day, Saturday, everyone would spend entirely with their homestays, doing whatever they had planned.  Colonel Arya had his daughter and daughter-in-law in town, and his wife had been sick, so unfortunately we didn’t get to spend the day with them.  However, Sean and I did spend some time with our abroad group leaders and Colonel Singh. I soon found myself back at Colonel Arya’s house, and was able to relax in our room a bit before dinner.  I had the great pleasure of having dinner with Colonel Arya, his daughter and daughter-in-law, where we discussed his grand daughters, facetimed their relatives and even became Facebook friends. His daughter shared a script for a movie she wrote, and to be honest I would totally go and see that movie.  The dinner was wonderful, and to mix in with the traditional cuisine was a box of Krispy Kreme donuts for dessert.  

The next morning was our last with them, and it was a quick breakfast before heading out.  Colonel Arya had been very gracious and kind with us, and made us feel welcomed even though we had very little in common.  It was such an amazing experience to live with a local family for even just a few days, because so much about their culture and family values was learned from it for myself and our entire group as well.  And plus now I’ll have someone to stay with when I visit India again!

*We looked up pickled lemon and it looks very different than what he served us.  We are still unsure of what we ate exactly.

By Bubba Sugarman

We finished a delicious lunch atop the roof of the Colonels Retreat, the hotel in which we were staying, and packed up our backpacks for our afternoon of exploring. Two guides in bright orange shirts with “Delhi by Locals” printed on them met us at the gates of our building. They walked us through the busy streets and up a flight of stairs to the bustling metro platform. They gave us a token for the checkpoint gates, and we boarded the metro. We traveled for about 15 minutes to the outskirts of Delhi.

We stepped out of the metro and found ourselves on a platform overlooking a small town. On one side, a dirt lot that had once been a dumping ground was home to a few stubby trees. Children, feral dogs, pigs, and cows played among the debris and tufts of plastic bags and refuse peaked out of the hard-packed light brown soil-like tufts of artificial grass. 

Walking through the crowded streets, we passed market stalls with tarpaulin roofs. Vendors offered snack foods, shoes, freshly pressed sugar can juice, and other wares. The median served as a trash dump where cows lounged, chewing their cud and sorting through the pile for bits of garbage to eat. Their watery eyes blinked in the bright sunlight, and their tails flicked off the flies that settled on their sunbaked backs.

Our guide led us down a street segregated by makeshift market stalls. Tarps stretched between branches fluttered in the weak breeze forming divisions between each seller’s goods. Large 50-gallon white plastic mesh bags lined the backs of the stalls resting on one another like a pile of overstuffed marshmallows. Men, women, and children lounged on the bags sorting colorful fabric scraps of various sizes into piles. As we walked, our feet tread on a carpet of discarded scraps, slowly collecting dirt, forgotten in the street. Our guide explained that these individuals made their livelihood by purchasing large bags of mixed scrap cloth from manufacturing factories and sorting them by material, color, and quality. They would then resell their raw materials to factories, which would turn them back into cloth. We walked down the street of cloth recyclers and turned into a small wooden door.

We stepped down four earthen steps carved into the rock and found ourselves in a dimly lit shed-like structure about 20 by 50 feet. In the center, a massive metal machine stretched the length of the building. The air inside was stifling as we walked down a narrow metal walkway. Our guide explained that his small building was a metal printing factory. The giant machine printed company logos onto sheets of aluminum that were then baked in place in the massive oven. Our guide passed around a variety of products that had been printed among them, pencil case tins, and a Baskin Robbins bottle caps. We left the small factory and stepped back into the sunshine.

Our guide explained that we were in one of the slums of India. They were called slums not because of the living conditions but because they were built on public land. As we entered the narrow streets of the slums, it was clear that the development of the area had not been planned. Narrow pathways lined by gutters of rancid water weaved in and around brick buildings. Tangles of wires ran along with overhead and terminated in plastic-covered meters outside doors. Our guide explained that the government had installed these lines to supply individuals with clean electricity and reduce the use of polluting diesel generators. Each home received 100 free units of electricity each month, and any overages were charged at a reduced rate.

As we ventured onward through the dark corridors, we passed by the residents of the slums. They sat in doorways, lounged on makeshift beds, or leaned against their buildings. Some watched videos on mobile phones, some talked to one another, others stared blankly into space. Many of the homes had converted their lower floor into a shop. Some sold snacks and toys, and some were filled with sewing machines whirring away as they made clothes, others sold hot food or tea.

As we walked, it often became dark as the leaning four-story buildings blocked out the sunlight leaving the narrow pathways in perpetual darkness. The occasional bare led bulb lit the space illuminating the muddy trash-strewn pathways below. Many of the walls of the building were painted in vibrant blues, yellows, and oranges bringing color into the perpetual twilight of the streets.

Our guide led us to an open area and showed us a local government school. He explained that this school had two sessions a day, one in the morning for the boys and the other in the afternoon for the girls. He told us that in India, to get into a college, children had to score above 95 percent on their big tests. He explained that many students were under tremendous pressure to be successful in school so that they could move out of the slums.

Our guide led us back into the heart of the slums and motioned toward a dark doorway in which we found a flight of stairs leading to the roof of a four-story brick building. We emerged on the rooftop and took in the sight below us. Square brick buildings rose from the dark alleys below. Each faced a different way, stood at a different height, and was completed to a different degree. People hung colorful laundry on wires strung between buildings. Children and dogs climbed between buildings playing among the waste that covered the roofs of the structures. A small girl around the age of eight with dark braided hair climbed up from the darkness below. Crawling on all fours, she scaled the crumbling brick walls with a bright yellow book which red SCIENCE in bold black lettering clenched between her teeth. Found a patch of clear ground on the rooftop and settled down to read.

Our guide ushered us into a small room where he asked us to remove our shoes. The walls were painted in bright murals, and the floor was covered in patterned cloth. A row of mismatched computer monitors and a bookshelf lined the walls. Our guide explained that this was an NGO he had started to help students continue their studies after school. Here they taught computer skills, art, math, and other disciplines. We talked with him for a while, and soon a group of young girls between nine and ten years old pushed open the door. They shyly introduced themselves and told us what they wanted to be when they grew up. They dreamt of being teachers, doctors, and singers and knew that this education was the path toward their dreams.