Author: Razi Azmi
Publication: Daily Times
Date: June 29, 2004
URL: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_29-6-2004_pg3_6
The Sikhs and Hindus who survived
the carnage in West Punjab quite literally had to run for their lives.
They were not allowed to leave any trace or retain any links with their
ancestral lands
Now that Manmohan Singh has become
India's prime minister, many in Pakistan want to own him. A leading columnist
of an English newspaper is elated that Mr Singh was born in Potohar, while
an Urdu columnist has proffered a feeble claim that he is actually from
Multan. For a son-of-the-soil to rise to the pinnacle of political success
through a free vote in a country of a billion people has justifiably led
many a thoroughbred Potohari into a state of excitement.
But Potoharis should mix their pride
at the accession of one of their own to the highest executive position
in India with a tinge of regret. One recalls that another former Indian
Prime Minister, I K Gujral, was also from the Potohar belt. It is not as
if these two now-eminent Potoharis had chosen to abandon the place of their
birth to migrate to India. They were hounded out of the land of their ancestors,
forced to leave everything behind them, except memories. And they were
the lucky ones. The unlucky ones (and their numbers are in the hundreds
of thousands) fell to marauding hordes of opportunists, avengers and believers.
It will be said that the carnage
happened on both sides. While that is true, the fact is the carnage was
solely the result of the partition of the subcontinent, which the Singhs
and the Gujrals had not wanted, but which nonetheless happened against
their will and mostly at their expense. Muslims demanded Pakistan and got
it, and Hindus and Sikhs were forced to flee their lands in West Punjab
in order to save their lives. Punjab - both east and west - is probably
the worst example of ethnic cleansing in the history of the modern world.
The Muslims of East Punjab also suffered greatly in lives lost and lands
abandoned, but then they too had wanted and got their Pakistan. It is quite
another matter that their hope for their part of the Punjab to be included
in the Islamic republic proved wrong and they suffered as a consequence,
many paying with their lives.
The so-called Mohajirs, who were
most vociferous in the demand for Pakistan, had the extraordinary privilege
of eating the cake and having it too, insofar as most of them, while migrating
to Pakistan, left some kith and kin in their ancestral homes in India.
So it became possible for a certain Dr Mahmood Hussain to become a minister
in Pakistan, while his brother Dr Zakir Hussain rose to the position of
president of India.
On the other hand, the Sikhs and
Hindus who survived the carnage in West Punjab quite literally had to run
for their lives. They were not allowed to leave any trace or retain any
links with their ancestral lands, having been evicted unceremoniously,
without warning and under pain of death.
One recalls that when I K Gujral
became the Prime Minister of India some years ago, a Pakistani journalist
travelled to Gujral's native village in Punjab and spoke to some old men
there who remembered Gujral's father and family well. Asked about the elder
Gujral, an old-timer reminisced that he was so humane, kind and non-discriminatory
in his attitude that one could not tell whether he was a Hindu or a Muslim.
The articles by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed
in these pages have brought out many a sad tale emanating from Partition.
Many more are embedded in the birth of Bangladesh - which, like Kashmir,
is a spillage of the 1947 partition. While the suffering of the Bangladeshis
has been sufficiently highlighted, the tragedy of the so-called Biharis,
on account of their loyalty to Pakistan, still beckons a historian. The
'Bihari' side seems to have been totally overlooked, for while success
has many fathers, failure is an orphan.
Bangladeshis write their history,
as do Pakistanis, while the Biharis - not counting those who died in 1971
- have been reduced to non- persons living in a sort of no-man's land,
physically in Bangladesh but officially not quite there, being stateless
non-citizens.
The Partition resulted in the deaths
of between half a million to one million people and the largest migration
in history, involving 15 million people. And what do we have to show for
the effort that extracted this colossal human sacrifice? More than half
of the population of the country whose establishment caused this mayhem
rose in open revolt against it and established their own independent state
less than 25 years later in 1971. A Muslim population currently equalling
its own had to be left behind as a small minority in a Hindu-majority India
to reap the whirlwind from its creation. And God knows how many more will
flee or be driven from their homes or die in Kashmir, that 'unfinished
business' from Partition. As for the residual Islamic Republic of Pakistan,
the quasi-official 'homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent', it staggers
from one crisis to another, regarded by independent observers as a failed
state, propped up by little more than prayers, 'nuclear bums' and American
political, military and financial assistance.
The Pakistan/Muslim factor has engendered
Hindutva in India. The BJP has lost an election, but many have signed Hindutva's
death certificate a trifle too early. The patron of the Afghan Taliban,
Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has now been elevated to the position of leader
of the opposition in the Pakistani National Assembly, thus becoming its
prime minister-in-waiting, to use the idiom of parliamentary democracies.
When the Vishwa Hindu Parishad locks horns with the Islamists-jihadis of
South Asia, which is probable if not certain, how many millions more will
fall victims to more madness in the name of religion is anyone's guess.
But the fact that Partition deprived
the current and a former prime minister of India of a place they can truly
call home should motivate thinking Pakistanis to reflect on the man-made
tragedy of 1947 which continues to cast its tentacles, hydra-like, on a
quarter of the world's population.
The author, a former academic with
a doctorate in modern history, is now a freelance writer and columnist
