his is the scene of one of the worst bloodsheds of Partition. Locals just mowed down Sikh men, women, and children. The killing continued for months leading to August 14, 1947,” Prof Dr Sajid Awan says while I marvel at the beauty of the Kallar Syedan area of Rawalpindi.

Prof Awan is a historian with few parallels. He is currently heading the National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, a centre of excellence at the Quaid-i-Azam University.

Prof Awan has picked me up from Naval Anchorage to celebrate Nauroz at Choa Khalsa. Having gone through the overcrowded patch of Islamabad Expressway across DHA, we had taken the Grand Trunk Road. From Rawat, a double road shot off to Choa Khalsa, surrounded by a stunning Potohar landscape of green hills.

Raja Ghulam Qambar, the Kallar Syedan Press Club general secretary and a leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party), tells us that Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the former federal minister, had had the road converted into a dual-carriageway. “Before the construction of a bridge on the main Rawalpindi-Lahore railway line, it was a nightmare for residents of the area to reach Rawalpindi or GT Road. Patients being taken to city hospitals, especially pregnant women, had to suffer a lot in traffic jams,” Qambar says.

Chowk Pindori is the main stop for Kallar Syedan on this road.

This is where the PTI government started a mega project to build a signal-free thoroughfare to Lower Topa in Murree.

The historic Uthal Jattan village is nearby. “Kallar Syedan is the area where you could find origins of the massacre of Sikhs in the Punjab before the province was partitioned,” Prof Awan tells us.

We have stopped at Chowk Pindori and decided to explore the area before we proceed further.

The road construction was meant to facilitate tourists, especially Sikh pilgrims, to visit historic places other than Nankana Sahib in.

The road was aptly named Tourism Highway. Due to the tourism potential in this area, the successor government has not shelved the project. Typically, development projects suffer from delays with every change of government. But the Tourism Highway project is not one of those.

The road construction is in progress. Officials representing the Frontier Works Organisation and the contractor tell us that they provided an alternative passage for the travelling public before startig working on the new road.

The project is to cost Rs 4.27 billion. The 123-kilometre road is unique in that it links Azad Kashmir, the Galiyat and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Though the signs of rise and fall of the Sikh empire are scattered around every inch of the region, Thoa Khalsa is a prominent place. We have wanted to visit Thoa Khalsa. It is on top of a hill overlooking the Tourism Highway. Notables of the village have built large houses on the top.

As a matter of routine, development projects suffer from delays with every change in government. But the Tourism Highway project is not one of these.

Qambar tells us that he is a Janjua. He says besides the Janjuas, some Rajput clans reside in the area. A considerable number of people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also come over in recent years to settle in the area.

There is a mosque with tall minarets at the start of the narrow road that enters the village. We finally reach what is left of Sardaran Dee Haveli of the yesteryears. It is located in a huge compound where Sikhs were confined in March 1947.

Raja Muhammad Basir, a local, has compiled testimonies of some survivors, including Sardarni Basant Kaur.

“For three or four days, we were trapped inside our houses. We couldn’t get out, though we used to move across the roofs of our houses. We couldn’t get out at all,” Kaur recalls.

Gradually, all the Sikhs in the area came together and were housed at Sardaran Dee Haveli. The accounts of the extreme measures some Sikh families took to spare their women and children abuse at the hands of potential rioters are devastating.

Kaur says heads of several families took drugs before killing their loved ones and themselves. In the end, the surviving women and children jumped into a well in the Haveli. Some of them still escaped death and were later rescued by peace volunteers and taken to camps set up in Jhelum. Kaur was one of them.

Master Tara Singh had led the Sikh politics in the area. He was born in nearby Gujjar Khan, now a big city represented in the National Assembly by Speaker Raja Pervez Ashraf.

Singh used to frequent Kallar Syedan and the nearby settlements.

It is already evening when we left Thoa Khalsa. We had to get back to the main road to reach Choa Khalsa. Thoa Khalsa and Choa Khalsa are two different places.

Instead of driving to Chowk Pindori on the Tourism Highway, we take another country road to see the plaza with high glass walls built by a young pir revered in the area. The pir is famous on social media and has a reputation for performing exorcisms. Devotees regularly come round in large crowds and he breathes out in a loudspeaker. It is said there that the mere sound of his breath heals those in attendancce.

“It was once a simple place. The building has been rising with the rise in the pir’s popularity. On most evenings, the road gets choked with traffic.”

Since the evening is upon us, we postpone our journey to Choa Khalsa and return to Islamabad. We know that Thoa Khalsa will no longer look like the place it has been. Real estate developers are swarming the area sine the construction of the Tourism Highway started. As a result, prices of land in these villages have skyrocketed. The government has banned the sale and purchase of land adjacent to the road. In the past, however, no government has been able to enforce such a ban for long.

The writer, an ICFJ fellow, teaches mediatization at International Islamic University Islamabad. Twitter: @HassanShehzadZ