A Memoir of Partition
11 January 2018
On the twentieth day of March 2008, I headed home for the first time in my life. I was fifty-six years and a month old. Walking east across the border gates at Wagah I was on my way to the fulfilment of a family pietas of very long standing. I was going to a home I had never known; a home in a foreign land, a land that state propaganda wanted me to believe was enemy territory. But I knew it as a country where my ancestors had lived and died over countless generations. That was the home where the hearth kept the warmth of a fire first kindled by a matriarch many hundred years, nay, a few thousand years, ago and which all of a sudden had been extinguished in a cataclysm in 1947.
In that great upheaval, in a singular moment in time, that home ceased to be home. One part of the family made it across the border to become a tiny part of a huge data: they were among the nearly two million people uprooted from their homes. Another part of the family also became a statistic—a grim and ghastly one: they were part of the more than one million unfortunate souls who paid with their blood for the division of India and foundation of the new country of Pakistan for Muslims. They who died were not just Muslims who lived east of the new line drawn by Cyril Radcliffe. They were Sikhs, Hindus and even Jains who had homes thousands of years old, west of this line in the land that became Pakistan.
Read more »Labels: Books, India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 10:56,
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Ghazva e Hind
13 April 2016
My Twitter friend Harsh [@hashkeys] from, I think Bombay, is a smart young man with an open mind. And I like him very much. The idea for this piece came from one of his flippant tweets about them (the Indians) mounting Ghazva e Hind against us. And then he went, ‘Umm, that didn’t come off quite well.’
Now those of you who do not know what this phrase means are obviously not accustomed to listening to a lunatic in a red hat. The man goes on about how Muslims will one day liberate India from the wicked Hindus. Of course that will be shortly before the entire world converts to the one and only true religion, that is, Islam. And then before we can even get a hang of it, it will be Judgement Day.
I hope between getting rid of the Hindus and turning India pure and Judgement Day we have enough time for us Muslims to kill at least 200 million of our own kind. The same way as we are these days busily doing in Pakistan.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Twitter
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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By the banks of the Bien
20 August 2015
Years ago, when he was still alive, my uncle Dr Habib ur Rahman once told me that he and his cousins used to cycle out from Uggi (our ancestral village in Jalandhar) to the Bien, a small stream. It was only a few kilometres away and they would spend their summer days swimming in its pellucid waters and picnicking on its sandy banks.
On my last visit to Uggi, I asked Bakhshish Singh to take us to the river. Now Bakhshish, in his early thirties, tall and very good-looking is a mona Sikh, while his father, the venerable Saudagar Singh, large-boned and bewhiskered, keeps the tradition of the great Guru Nanak alive. Back in March 2008, my first ever visit across the border, I was introduced to Bakhshish by the good Gurmeet Singh who looks after the Desh Bhagat Hall in Jalandhar (of this at another time). Bakhshish took me home to show me the village of my ancestors. It turned out that this family and I, they Kamboh and I Arain by caste, were kinsfolk from a distant past.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, India, Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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A Punjab odyssey
13 December 2014
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Shabnam and I crossed the border on a cold winter morning to a warm reception on the far side of the gates at Wagah. We were not part of any delegation; this was a purely private trip, a follow-up of my March 2008 yatra. The earlier visit, my first ever to India, was an attempt to discover the fate of one part of a family I had never known.
One day about the fourteenth of August, 1947 my grandfather Dr Badaruddin who lived on Railway Road, Jalandhar and his wife, two daughters and father in law together with their servant, his wife and five children were lost to the world. They became part of the one million mostly Punjabi people, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, who died for the division of India. From living beings, these people suddenly became statistics.
This time around, I hoped to find cases among Sikhs and Punjabi Hindus whose families had migrated from what became Pakistan and whose stories were similar to mine. We found people, we heard their stories, and together we became misty-eyed putting on brave Punjabi faces to show that we did not cry. As I wept privately at night, I am sure others did too. The grief of that event 62 years ago continues to haunt those like Darshan Singh in Jalandhar who was just a child when his family migrated from Klasswala near Pasrur. Others like Mohinder Pratab Sehgal, then just in his teens, who remembered my grandfather and the slaying of the family, still feels the guilt of that terrible time.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Time for peace
17 October 2014
It turns out that the night the German mother died, the father from England was on a sortie. The driver stops his taxi, gets out and says to his fare, 'Now we shake hands'. Khalid A aptly ends his letter, 'There is a time for war, but it must be followed by a time for peace.'
The year 1947 was a time for war. Folks who had lived amenably side by side for generations were riven apart and when the land went into labour to deliver a new country, two million people died. My grandparents, two aunts, great-grandfather, the family's servant with his wife and five children became part of this macabre statistic. The place it all happened was Railway Road, Jalandhar.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Of Tunno and his Bijnot
15 August 2014
The sun set and the blue welkin above turned a nameless colour – the same as the dunes around us. The lowing of cattle and the dong-dong of their bells died down. And so too the bleating of the goats. Only the occasional harsh bray of an ass broke the silence. But even an hour after sundown, it did not go completely dark for the stars above shone with a passion as though this was the last night they were ever going to shine. In the flat, featureless (low dunes are hardly features) desert the stars became visible just as they cleared the eastern horizon. And if one had the patience, one could sit through the night to chart each star’s arc clear across the velvet dome above.
As evening progressed, spotted owls began to sound their churring calls as they swooped about after the various kinds of insects that prowl the desert at night. Still later, the little yelps of foxes, muted by the distance, could also be heard. Earlier, on the drive through the desert, we had surprised a couple of sand-coloured foxes en route. But without my Roberts’ book of mammals, I was unable to identify them. Above us, the wind soughed through the kundi tree under which our charpoys lay. The crisp evening turned even cooler and due east the horizon glowed with the lights of some Indian town across the border.
Read more »Labels: Heritage, India, Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Double Jeopardy
27 June 2014
Mohammad Siddique Ronjha Nakhuda (Captain), native of village Keti Bandar in the delta of the once great Sindhu River, his teen age son and three other men were lucky to make it through that August night in 1995. Others are known to have lost the way and perished in the wilderness. This is the story of hundreds of fishermen from the coastal communities of Sindh – as well as that of their counterparts from India.
Once Ronjha was a fairly well-off fisherman with his own boat and crew. One fateful day in early 1991, as he and his men were hauling in their nets at two in the afternoon, they saw a boat approaching. Since they had been fishing in Sir Creek which, they believed, was within Pakistan’s boundary, they were not alarmed. But this creek in the extreme east of the delta has been claimed by both India and Pakistan and soon Ronjha and his crew were arrested by men of the Indian maritime security agency – men they had until then thought to be their compatriots.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, People, Sindh
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:34,
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Bijnot Fort
20 June 2014
The fortress of Bijnot lies way out in the Cholistan Desert a hundred and twenty kilometres southeast of Derawar Fort and just about twenty-five from the Indian border. Dating back to the 8th century, it is now in a state of utter ruin ruin that was caused not by the passage of time, but by the accuracy of Indian artillery shelling during the 1971 conflict. The story to recount is not of the fort's history and glory; it is the story of two outlaws who frequented this area.
Madho Singh (aka Jagmaal Singh) of the clan Rathore was a native of Bikaner and one of the three sons of a Thakur who held two villages as jagir. One day the Thakur was rudely put down by a neighbour whose cattle were grazing in the Thakur's fields. The incident much distressed young Madho Singh and catching the offender at a lonely spot did him in with his steel-tipped staff. The long arm of the law reached out and Madho Singh became a fugitive.
Labels: India, Pakistan, Punjab
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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The guilt
18 June 2014
Charan Singh, eighty-three years old and blind lives in village Buttar Khurd just off the Grand Trunk Road between Amritsar and Jalandhar. I met him on a cold and foggy day in January. Even before his grandson led him into the courtyard of the house where we waited, we heard the tap-tap-tap of his walking stick. Slightly built of medium height, old Charan Singh had milky white eyes that had not seen for nearly twenty years.
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| My friend late Talwinder Singh with the blind and elderly Charan Singh |
Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Blinded by guilt
07 June 2014
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| Charan Singh |
Even before he entered the courtyard where we sat, we could hear the tap-tap-tap of his cane in the paved alley outside. Small of stature and a little hunched over by age, the man had large milky eyes that had not seen the light of day for 20 years. He himself was, so he said, 83 that year.
As a 20-year-old constable in the district administration, he was assigned as guard to a Sikh revenue officer in Kasur. When the line was drawn with Kasur falling to Pakistan and mayhem began, Charan and his officer crossed the BRB canal and made for the new India. On the crossing, they saw the brown waters clogged with bloated bodies, the Hindu and Sikh men, women and children who had only a few days earlier lived peaceably with the Muslim neighbours.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 07:30,
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This Side That Side: Restorying Partition
20 February 2014
Book 'This Side, That Side' published in India was launched at Faiz Ghar, Lahore on February 20, 2014. Books is about true stories of partition and contains one piece by me.
Here is a trailer of the book. Have a look http://vimeo.com/73392119
Related: “Partition is and probably will remain unsurpassed”Labels: Books, India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 09:19,
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The White Trail
19 February 2014
The story behind a poem by a young woman about a time long before she was born, when people were maddened by hate
I visited my ancestral Jalandhar for the first time in March 2008. Until then, my family did not know what had become of my grandparents (paternal), two aunts, a great grandfather, the family's servant and his wife and five children.
My grandfather had not thought it necessary to leave hearth and home and move the family to Pakistan. But they did not remain in Jalandhar either, as my uncle learnt in September 1947 when, as an intern at Irvin Hospital, Delhi, he volunteered to serve in the refugee camps of Jalandhar.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:29,
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Living through another age of partition
29 January 2014
Even before he entered the courtyard where we sat, we could hear the tap-tap-tap of his cane in the paved alley outside. Small of stature and a little hunched over by age, the man had large milky eyes that had not seen the light of day for 20 years. He himself was, so he said, 83 that year.
As a 20-year-old constable in the district administration, he was assigned as guard to a Sikh revenue officer in Kasur. When the line was drawn with Kasur falling to Pakistan and mayhem began, Charan and his officer crossed the BRB canal and made for the new India. On the crossing, they saw the brown waters clogged with bloated bodies, the Hindu and Sikh men, women and children who had only a few days earlier lived peaceably with the Muslim neighbours.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Symbol of Hope
22 January 2014
After I shared my 'story of tragedy and forgiveness,' Mr Gandhi invited me to plant a tree which would stand as a tangible symbol of hope and commitment towards reconciliation between India and Pakistan and the world at large.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition, Photo Stream
posted by Salman Rashid @ 11:43,
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Reflections on ‘Making Democracy Real’ at Panchgani
21 January 2014
Shabnam and I were sorry to leave a day earlier than the conference finished, but work in Pakistan called. We travelled back to Amritsar where we remained for two days. But there was simply no time to go to Jalandhar and Ludhiana to see all our friends. It would have been more travelling and less spending time with people who have given us a great deal of love and affection.
Speaking for myself, I came away with a singular notion from Panchgani: the sane minority, and make no mistake, sanity is in minority, is linked together in a very strong, unshakeable bond. Right now, it might seem that we are not in a position to bring about any significant change in the way the world is run or making democracy real. But the four days at Panchgani tell me that there is just that little chance that this effort will eventually work out after all.
Read more »Speaking for myself, I came away with a singular notion from Panchgani: the sane minority, and make no mistake, sanity is in minority, is linked together in a very strong, unshakeable bond. Right now, it might seem that we are not in a position to bring about any significant change in the way the world is run or making democracy real. But the four days at Panchgani tell me that there is just that little chance that this effort will eventually work out after all.
Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Memory, Justice, Healing
11 January 2014
On 10 August 1947 my uncle Dr Habib ur Rahman left his parents’ home in Jalandhar to rejoin work after a few days’ break. Having graduated the year before from King Edward Medical College, Lahore, he was then an intern with Irwin Hospital, Delhi.
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| Memory, Justice, Healing Evening at Making Democracy Real 2014 with Rajmohan Gandhi, Archana Rao and Rahul Bose |
A week earlier, he had received a letter from his youngest sister Tahira. Having completed her higher secondary school exams, she was visiting with her older sister Zubaida whose husband was then a surveyor with the Survey of India and posted at Solan midway between Kalka and Simla. Tahira had written that Solan was rife with communal tension and that she wanted to be with the parents in Jalandhar. She asked her brother if he could come for her to take her home.
Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 18:30,
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What takes me to India?
09 January 2014
I had not anticipated being a speaker at the conference, but some days ago I was told that I’ll be in a panel titled ‘Memory, Justice, Healing’. I will be speaking on my experience of March 2008 when I went home to Jalandhar for the first time in my life. There I met Mahindra Pratap Sehgal whose father was among the rioters that had killed my father’s immediate family – twelve persons in all. Incidentally, the Sehgal family was neighbours.
Read more »Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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‘I have seen Lahore!’
05 September 2013
Darshan Singh was eight years old in 1947. He was born in village Klasswala near Pasrur where his family was comfortably well off. His father ran a thriving restaurant I n Rawalpindi’s Gwalmandi and the family lived in a rented house near the restaurant. In 1944, Darshan joined Standard High School, not very far from Snatam Dharm High School. He remembers how he daily used to walk back and forth between his home and the school. He remembers the streets, the large pipal tree under which he and his mates played marbles, and the teachers who taught him.
The house on the left could possibly be Darshan’s childhood home
Then one day young Darshan’s world exploded in flames – an event whose cause and meaning his young mind failed to fathom. Though his immediate locality was untroubled, but from the roof of their home, he and his family could see the eerie glow of the fires raging in other areas. Presently his father, Varyam Singh, announced that they had to leave Rawalpindi.
Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Foreign Invaders Through Afghanistan
05 August 2013
Greek historians of the Classical Age wrote a very curious observation about India (Pakistan). They wrote that India was a country that did not attack any other and that no other country attacked India. Indeed, the ruins of Moen jo Daro and Harappa, the two major Indus Valley Civilisation, show citadels and walls that were obviously not made to withstand attacks. They were more to keep a check on the people entering or leaving the city; perhaps with a view to prevent traders from evading payment of customs dues. It was as if our ancient ancestors had no threat of invasion. Though this remote period was separated from Greek writers by two thousand years in which much happened, the collective memory of the people of India held the word to be passed on to the Greeks.
That was our prehistory. But about 1700 BCE, came the great influx of speakers of the Aryan tongues. (Some Indian ‘scholars’ contest this invasion, asserting instead that India was the original home of this white-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed race whence they spread across the world. They tread on weak ground). The Aryan invasion changed everything for thereafter India lay open.
Read more »Labels: Greeks, History, India, Pakistan
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Across the Border
10 June 2013
On the twentieth day of March this year, I went home for the first time in my life. On that day I was fifty-six years and a month old. Walking east across the border gates at Wagah I was on my way to the fulfilment of a family pietas of very long standing. I was going home to a home I had never known; a home in a foreign land where my ancestors had lived and died over countless generations. That was a home where the hearth kept the warmth first kindled by a matriarch some hundred years ago.
And then in one great upheaval in a singular moment in time, that home ceased to be home. One part of the family made it across to become one bit of a huge data: they were among the nearly two million people uprooted from their homes. Another part of the family also became a statistic – a grim and ghastly one: they were part of the one million who paid for the new country of Pakistan with their blood.
Labels: India, Pakistan, Partition
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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