The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) has set the ball rolling for writing a contemporary history of Lahore in Pakistan and Khulna in Bangladesh to compare how the cities have changed since Partition.
While a team of researchers, sources say, has already made a trip to Khulna, the Lahore trip has not yet happened. The idea is to map changes that took place in the two cities post-Partition.
Lahore has been chosen as it was the cultural centre of pre-Partition Punjab, before it went to Pakistan, while Khulna was selected because it had a high Hindu population and yet went to East Pakistan after Partition. It became part of Bangladesh after the country came into being in 1971. “We have lots of historical evidence on the Lahore and Khulna of pre-1947. We also have the census reports since 1881.”
