Ms. Samina Akram – The CAP Podcast #161

In the late 1930s, Ms. Samina Akram’s father, Anwar Ali, was the Superintendent of Police in Montgomery, which has now become Sahiwaal. In this audio, Ms. Akram talks about pre-Partition ethnic and cultural diversity and harmony in the city; there lived Punjabi speaking British landlords, Hindu officials, and other rich Sikh landlords. They would invite each other frequently to lavish family dinners. Bedis were the richest and the most influential landlords in the area, who fled to India after Partition. In the 1950s, Ms. Akram’s father became IG Punjab Police, and one day, the head of the Montgomery’s influential Bedis, who had fled to India, sent a message asking Anwar Ali to meet him at the Wagha-Attari border. The old man who once owned hundreds of acres of fertile agricultural land was there in tattered clothes and broken chapals (slippers) just to see his old friend from Montgomery!