By Suman Bhuchar
The experiences of the survivors of the Partition of India are shrouded in silence. Sudha Bhuchar’s seminal play ‘Child of the Divide’ sheds some light on what they lived through and witnessed as children.
As part of Wandsworth's South Asian Heritage Month 2026, Bhuchar Boulevard undertook workshops and a dramatized reading of the play at the R.O.S.E Community Clubroom in Nine Elms, to new invited audiences.
Inspired by Bhisham Sahni’s short story, Pali, Child of the Divide tells the story of a lost Hindu boy, left behind in his hometown which is now on the wrong side of the border when British India is carved into the two independent nations of Pakistan and India. Pali’s fingers slip through his father’s hands as his family, along with others who are fleeing their homes, scramble to get onto trucks that will take them to safety and ostensibly new lives in India.
Found by a childless Muslim couple, Pali slowly adapts to a new family, new faith and a new name, Altaaf. His life unfolds along with four other children, two who are refugees from India, as they navigate religious and geographical divisions, ethnic rivalries and heal from the trauma and violence they have witnessed. They find friendship, family and love in unexpected places.
Years later when Pali’s father comes to claim him, the families grapple with the ties of blood and belonging and Pali has to decide who he is; the Hindu boy he was born to be, the Muslim boy he has become or simply a child of the divide.
Child of the Divide has had an acclaimed journey since the Tamasha/Polka theatre premiere in 2006 when it was Time Out magazine’s ‘No 1 show for families.’ The play has been revived multiple times and was the inaugural production for Bhuchar Boulevard, marking the 70th anniversary of the Partition. It was awarded ‘Best Production’ at the Asian Media Awards 2018.
This is art as history and history as performance. But like much of Sudha’s work, the inspiration is personal.
My mixed heritage children would ask about their history, and I also realised that children in primary schools didn’t know that Pakistan and India were the same country once."
Sudha led the two workshop sessions on July 6 at the R.O.S.E Community Clubroom. The morning one was aimed at adults and members of the Happy Homes group and Partition Memorial Trust (partners on this project) and the afternoon one was for younger children. Through reading scenes, holding conversation circles and inspiring drawing from the children (with artist PiNS); participants experienced putting themselves in the shoes of the children in the play and reflected on both the history and parallels in their lives today. South Asian and Irish participants shared samosas and stories of lived experiences.
That workshop blew me away, seeing all the different communities come together for the first time”- workshop participant.
Child of The Divide: Workshop
The older women from the local community experienced the power of the scenes in a deeply personal way, with Sudha offering spontaneous translation where English was a barrier and younger participants expressed how they wished to break through the silence of intergenerational trauma through knowledge and sharing. This has fuelled Bhuchar Boulevard’s resolve for the play to be revived in 2027, another milestone anniversary year.
The workshops were supported by History Speak founder, Manasi Pophale, and educator and artist, PiNS (aka Bhupinder Singh).
Kristine Landon-Smith, who directed the original premiere of Child of the Divide at the Polka Theatre in 2006 & returned to direct the SAHM reading, explains:
The play continues to have enormous significance - it is about coming together despite difference, intolerance and bias - so contemporary in its theme, told through the eyes of young people it is not only a moving and effecting piece of work, but it also educates on a number of many different levels: The need for understanding across national boundaries, the need for understanding within national boundaries is all cleverly explored in this seminal work. It is a piece of important history, not always told and this play delivers that history to young and old in a clear and accessible way. It is common practice for plays from the Eurocentric canon to be regularly reproduced but this is not so common with works from other heritages. Work from the South Asian diaspora needs to be reproduced so that it has the potential to embed in the consciousness and become part of a regular telling of history.”
To this end, Bhuchar Boulevard’s Retracing our Footsteps strand of work aims to showcase the South Asian performance canon and to have the opportunity to share Child of the Divide on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Indian Partition was wonderful.
Along with Kristine, we were able to reunite some of the actors from the 2017 production namely, Nyla Levy, Devesh Kishore and Diljohn Sidhu, and worked with two new actors, Ainy Jaffri and Adrian Paul Jeyasingham. To have Arun Ghosh underscoring this reading with his original soundtrack as well as playing clarinet live was the icing on the cake.
The reading on July 16th was truly electric. Accommodating seventy people of all ages was a squeeze on a hot summer day, but plenty of hydration and sustenance was offered, adhering to the right side of health and safety. Attention was held and emotions were stirred, in spite of young children casually walking in and out of the hall.
The play can open difficult memories and family wounds but also hold collective space for exploring questions that younger people have about what their parents and grandparents went through.
Partition is such an important aspect of South Asian history. As we realise that witnesses, who have been silent about their trauma for decades, are passing on, community, oral historians and archivists are actively seeking out these stories. After all, this tumultuous event resulted in the displacement of over fourteen million people from their homes and the death of over a million. The ramifications are felt across generations and communal tensions can erupt at any given time.
The performance was followed by a Q&A with a panel featuring the cast and creative team along with Sarah Ansari, Professor of History at Royal Holloway College and Bhupinder Singh Bhasin President, Pothohar Association UK.
The Pothohar Association is committed to tracing and preserving the origins of the dispersed Sikh community in the Pothohar region of West Punjab (now in present day Pakistan). Sarah, a member of the Partition Memorial Trust and a part of the Partition Education group advocating for the teaching of South Asian history in British schools, said:
For me, Partition (which effectively marked the beginning of the end of Britain’s global empire) is British history, particularly when we consider how many people in Britain today have direct connections with the events of 1947."
In her introduction to the anniversary play text, Ansari writes that Bhisham’s Sahni’s short story that inspired Sudha has a "potent mix of imagination and reality that is the hallmark of Sudha Bhuchar’s dramatic retelling of the Partition of British India through a child’s eyes."
The panel and audience shared Bhuchar Boulevard’s passion for the importance of teaching this history in UK schools.
Child of the Divide is a celebrated part of publisher, Bloomsbury’s LIT IN COLOUR play list, inspiring teachers and educators to look at the work of global majority writers to use in their classrooms.
The perspectives of children are important as they are often impacted by big political events over which they have no control and yet their stories can get lost.
Child of The Divide: Play Reading - 16 July 2026
Some Audience Feedback
Great evening last night. Very moving reading of Sudha’s play"
Thank you so much, Suman and Sudha for putting on a lovely event. It was very moving please do let us know if we can do anything to get behind you and get this piece back into theatres, where it belongs.”
It (arts and culture) tells us about the conditions that have shaped our understanding of the world and how to navigate the future better.”
It allows people to absorb the truth without being directly exposed, threatened or targeted.”
Really touched by the show. Loved the music, loved the innocence that all the actors brought to the table."
As we move towards the 80th anniversary of Partition in 2027, we must heed the rallying cries of younger people who are actively interested in knowing about their colonial and imperial history; through initiatives such as Partition Walks undertaken by History Speaks CIC & supporting The Partition Memorial Trust’s vision to create a memorial or space in London to commemorate the human stories of the Partition of India.
Bhuchar Boulevard is a local company with a long artistic connection to Wandsworth, beginning at Tara Arts (now Tara Theatre) where in 2021 Sudha was invited to return by the late Abdul Shayek to write Final Farewell (2021/22), an immersive audio theatre walk of remembrance of loss in Wandsworth during the pandemic.
Bhuchar’s writing is empathetic, boldly structured and littered with moments of unexpected joy’- The Stage
Through a revival of Child of the Divide, we aspire to continue to offer work that ‘cuts across difference to touch the heart’ and reminds us of our common humanity.
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Bhuchar Boulevard would like to thank the London Borough of Wandsworth, the R.O.S.E Community Clubroom team, Chetna Kapacee (Strategic Lead for Culture Nine Elms) and Katharine Yexley (Nine Elms Project Assistant) along with Vanessa and June.
Thanks also to artists, PiNS and Manasi who were involved in facilitating the workshop.
A very special thank you to Fozia Riaz and her team at Happy Homes Community (another Wandsworth organisation) for supporting the workshop and helping with the refreshments.
We must also thank our partners, The Partition Memorial Trust for supporting this project an this amazing cast for giving us such a moving performance.
Wandsworth's South Asian Heritage Month 2026 programme was generously supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery Players.
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- Workshop images courtesy of Wachira Hartnett aka June
- Play Reading images courtesy of Chetna Kapacee
