FAISALABAD, Pakistan — Nasir Dhillon, a former policeman, sells homes in a Pakistani town about 100 miles from the Indian border. His actual property corporate has 4 places and he drives a Toyota SUV, a neighborhood marker of affluence.

But Mr. Dhillon, 38, is healthier identified for his sideline: reuniting other folks separated from their kin all over partition, when Britain cut up its huge South Asian colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan in August 1947.

Mr. Dhillon is the motive force at the back of Punjabi Lehar, a six-year-old YouTube channel that posts common interviews with survivors of that anxious episode. He says it has enabled plenty of Muslims and Sikhs — together with some who are living in North America — to seek advice from their ancestral villages, and has resulted in about 100 in-person reunions.

Partition resulted in communal violence, mass displacement and the deaths of as many as two million other folks. Some of the younger individuals who survived have been separated from their oldsters or siblings.

“What have they finished flawed? They have been youngsters,” Mr. Dhillon mentioned not too long ago at his place of work within the northeastern town of Faisalabad. “Why can’t they seek advice from their households now?”

Dreams Deferred

In a normal case, Mr. Dhillon or his trade spouse, Bhupinder Singh Lovely, interview an individual who desires to fulfill a long-lost buddy or seek advice from an ancestral area or village. The video ricochets round social media and on occasion activates guidelines from the general public that result in a reunion or a adventure to the geographical region.

It’s a carrier that the governments of India and Pakistan have by no means introduced. The neighbors have long gone to struggle thrice because the Sixties, and family members have necessarily been locked in a deep freeze ever since, punctuated by way of periodic army clashes.

Many partition survivors on either side of the border have expressed a loss of life need to pass it and reconnect with lives and other folks left at the back of, mentioned Anam Zakaria, the creator of “Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians.”

“Too many of us have already passed on to the great beyond with this need unfulfilled,” she added. “Against this context, the way in which through which Punjabi Lehar is fostering connections and reunions supplies a window of hope and closure, at a time once we are on the breaking point of dropping the partition technology.”

Building Momentum

Other initiatives have sought to carry other folks from the 2 international locations in combination over time, together with pupil exchanges and artwork initiatives, mentioned Urvashi Butalia, the creator of “The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.”

But she mentioned Punjabi Lehar is exclusive as it celebrates the determine of Punjab, one of the most states of British India that was once divided by way of partition. (It was once additionally the web page of a number of bloody clashes in a while that pitted Muslims towards Hindus and Sikhs.)

“It harks to an id that existed ahead of partition, and in many ways continues after — a regional, linguistic, cultural id, which hyperlinks other folks in combination regardless of non secular variations and rejects the idea the British made at partition, that the one id that had to be foregrounded was once the non secular one,” Ms. Butalia mentioned.

Mr. Dhillon, who’s Muslim, mentioned that his hobby in partition’s legacy comes from his grandfather, who would inform the circle of relatives tales about their ancestral village in Indian Punjab, and the Sikh buddies and neighbors he used to grasp.

“In the media and in other places, we have been instructed a unique tale about variations and enmity between the folks,” Mr. Dhillon mentioned, talking in thickly accented Punjabi, a provincial tongue. “But our elders instructed of a time when Muslims and Sikhs lived peacefully in combination.”

In his mid-20s, he started making buddies with Facebook customers in Indian Punjab, and later created a Facebook web page about Punjabi language and tradition. He struck up a friendship with Mr. Lovely, a Sikh who lives close by. They co-founded Punjabi Lehar in 2016, after Mr. Dhillon left the native police power.

Mr. Dhillon mentioned they selected the title, which interprets to “Punjabi Wave,” as a result of an ocean wave is difficult to prevent.

A Useful Loophole

Early responses to the channel’s movies got here principally from Sikhs in Canada and the United States; some later traveled to their ancestral villages after receiving new details about their households, Mr. Dhillon mentioned. As phrase unfold, he and Mr. Lovely additionally heard from other folks in Pakistan and India in the hunt for to glue in consumer with long-lost buddies and kin.

It is notoriously laborious to get vacationer visas for touring between India and Pakistan, and legitimate channels that experience once in a while allowed other folks to fulfill at the moment are “just about frozen,” mentioned Ilhan Niaz, a historian at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

“There is not any executive reinforce for this kind of stuff,” he mentioned.

There is one loophole: People from the 2 states can meet in consumer at a handful of Sikh holy websites in Pakistan that Indians are accepted to seek advice from, most commonly on non secular pilgrimage visas.

Mr. Dhillon mentioned about 80 of the 100 or so in-person reunions that Punjabi Lehar has enabled up to now have taken position at Kartarpur, a visa-free pilgrimage web page that opened alongside the border in 2019. He mentioned the channel’s paintings has additionally resulted in digital circle of relatives reunions and about 800 in-person journeys to ancestral villages.

Mr. Dhillon’s estimates may now not be independently verified, however the channel has uploaded reams of movies that file emotional trips and reunions within the Indo-Pakistani borderlands.

A up to date one featured Mumtaz Bibi, 75, born in Indian Punjab and raised in Pakistan by way of a Muslim circle of relatives that had followed her as a toddler after her mom was once killed in riots fueled by way of partition.

This yr, Ms. Bibi’s son contacted Punjabi Lehar to look if its directors may assist in finding her Sikh kin in India. “The factor is, it’s a blood relation,” she mentioned in a video that Mr. Dhillon uploaded in May. “Now, a fireplace is burning in my middle to fulfill my circle of relatives.”

She discovered that her organic father had died however that her 3 brothers nonetheless lived within the Indian town of Patiala. A video later posted to the Punjabi Lehar web page confirmed her hugging them for the primary time at Kartarpur, as they cry with happiness.

A Missing Journey

Punjabi Lehar now has greater than 600,000 subscribers, and Mr. Dhillon employs two assistants. He mentioned the web page earns cash from promoting however isn’t his number one supply of source of revenue.

Most weeks, he mentioned, he units apart Fridays for riding throughout the Pakistani borderlands in his Toyota SUV, the use of his outdated police talents and contacts to hunt partition survivors who’re themselves in search of long-lost family members.

He mentioned the web page’s succeed in is now sufficiently big that he most often receives a tip from the general public — information about a lacking buddy, say, or a village cope with — inside every week of posting a video.

There is one adventure Mr. Dhillon hasn’t but controlled to prepare: He desires of visiting the ancestral village and Sufi shrine in India that his grandfather as soon as instructed him about. So some distance, the Indian government have two times rejected his utility for a visa.

“The governments in each international locations are too ate up with their very own squabbling” to assist households in the hunt for closure, he mentioned, echoing a extensively held public belief.

Pakistani officers didn’t reply to requests for remark. An legitimate on the High Commission in Islamabad, the diplomatic illustration of India in Pakistan, mentioned that the fee known the particular want of separated households, however that visas have been processed in step with the principles.

Mr. Dhillon has been spotted, alternatively. He mentioned that Pakistani intelligence brokers had requested about his journeys to the geographical region, and recommended that he may well be more secure in a foreign country. He mentioned that his trade spouse, Mr. Lovely, went to Germany remaining month after encountering equivalent drive from executive government, however deliberate to go back to Pakistan quickly.

Mr. Dhillon mentioned that his personal circle of relatives lives in a village and is aware of little about his paintings. “They ask: ‘What do you do this you want to stay touring right here and there?’”

Salman Masood reported from Faisalabad, Pakistan, and Mike Ives from Seoul.