Millions were uprooted during the bloody partition of British India into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India ─ one of the largest mass migrations in history.
An untold number of people ─ some estimates say up two million ─ died in the savage violence that followed, as Hindus and Muslims fleeing for their new homelands turned on one another, raping and butchering in genocidal retribution.
Here are the stories of five people who witnessed the horrors of Partition firsthand.
'Where is my sister?' Nisar Akhtar, 76, and his wife Naushaba Siddiqui pose with pre-Partition photos in Karachi. — AFP
Nisar Akhtar, now a retired statistician in Karachi, was six-years-old when the smoke began to rise every night from the villages surrounding his family's home in Hoshiarpur district in Punjab state.
Sikhs, his father said, were burning the surrounding areas.
Every day from that moment on they "faced the fear of being or not being".
Eventually, after one failed escape attempt which saw his father separated from his family, they managed to flee to a refugee camp before beginning a 21-day walk into Pakistan, which was when the real nightmare began.
Sikhs attacked their caravan of several thousand people repeatedly.
"They would toss the children in the air with their spears," he said. "I saw infants, children, and elders with spears pierced in their bodies."
"They were moaning with pain and I passed, skipping them. What could I have done? People were reeling in pain and shouting for water and we were too insensitive to help them. Everybody was concerned with his own life."
He clung to his mother's shirt so as not to lose her. She was also carrying his newborn sister.
"At one stage, I am not sure whether knowingly or inadvertently, she left the baby lying on the ground. I asked her, 'Where is my sister?'"
"'I don't know,' she flatly replied... I went back and I saw her (the baby) lying on the ground and picked her up. Today she is alive with the grace of Allah."
'My aunt was never the same'