Far from home, refugees build digital heritage with virtual reality

Project Dastaan – meaning story in Urdu – aims to reconnect Partition survivors with their childhood homes through VR and other technologies, using volunteers in India and Pakistan to track down and film places. — PROJECT DASTAAN

Growing up, Naseem Badar heard stories from her parents, uncles and aunts of how they fled for their lives from their village in northern India amidst bloody riots during the Partition and made their way to the newly created country of Pakistan.

The Partition in 1947, following India’s independence from British rule, triggered one of the biggest forced migrations in history, uprooting more than 12 million people and killing more than one million.