My Family Reunion

In 1947 I was a student at the Muncipal Primary School at Nanakpura in Lyalpur. I was in teesri jamaat (grade 3) when the school closed for summer after the final examinations. I did not know then that I was never to return to that school.

Strange things started to happen that year after the school closed. Our next door neighbor, Jagdish Chander, was among the few who had a radio, a rare luxury in those days. His radio was placed in his baithak which had a door that opened directly onto the street. Suddenly, there started to be a crowd of people outside the baithak to listen to the radio every evening when the news were being read. They were eager to listen to the news about a new country to be born, called Pakistan. They speculated about whether Lyalpur would go to Hindustan or Pakistan.

During summer, we slept at night on our two-storey house’s rooftop, as was the common practice in those days. One night, we woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of ‘Allahu Akbar’. The sounds were coming from across the canal from an area called Dhobighat, inhabited by the Muslims. The sounds were threatening and struck terror in my heart. The next night, the same sounds came again but this time there was a counter shouting of ‘Bole so nihaal, sat sri akaal’ from Guru Nanakpura. At first, this sound frightened me even more, but then I joined in the shouting like everyone else and found a strange courage in screaming ‘Satsri Akaal’ at the top of my voice.

We started to hear about stabbing and riots in the city. The RSS volunteers started to collect food and blankets for some refugee camp for the Hindus and Sikhs at Chiniot. A few days later, some sanghis from the RSS came to our house and recruited my 17-year old brother for a night patrol of young Hindus and Sikh men that they were setting up. This patrol, equipped with long laathis/staves, would hold watch at the edge of the mohalla every night for any sign of trouble. This didn’t continue for long. Soon, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed. All streets became empty as darkness fell and nobody was allowed to go outside after dark.

And then came the move. It seemed a lot of people decided to leave Nanakpura on the same day. We put a double lock on our front door and took a tonga to the house of our maternal grandfather in the adjoining mohalla of Santpura, with the full intention of returning to the house soon. Nanaji was an ex-subedar of the Indian army and had a licensed pistol. It was thought that his house would provide a better sanctuary during those unsettled times. Another sister of my mother had also come there from her unsafe house in Sheikhupura. Nanaji had a large house and had also available to him the empty house of his Muslim neighbour, a professor at the nearby Agricultural College. The professor, who was the sole Muslim in that street, left the key of his house with Nanaji and went to a safer place until the situation stabilized.

The situation never did stabilize. On or around 15th August, a special train was leaving Lyalpur for Delhi to take all the Hindu and Sikh railway employees and their families to India. My Maasarji was a railway employee and was leaving by that train. The trains to India were not safe those days but the railway train was expected to be relatively safe as it provided with special protection. My mother asked her sister to take me along with her as part of her family so that the family name would survive even if the rest of the family did not. She agreed. My mother handed over both me and her gold ornaments to her sister. The arrangement was that if my mother made it safely across to India, she would take back both me and her gold, if not, my maasi was to use the gold to help her raise me.

I got into a crowded train at the Lyalpur railway station early in the morning. It was a hot day and overcrowding in the compartment made the heat stifling. When the train started I saw a soldier with a rifle with us. His presence was reassuring. The train moved slowly towards Lahore and reached there around noon. The train was supposed to have only a brief stop at the Lahore station but the halt was extended. Rumours started that some people, with murder on their minds, were not allowing the train to leave. People closed the windows and covered them with blankets and sheets. I have always wondered why they did so as it did not provide any added protection and only added to the insufferable heat. We were all scared, especially since the soldier with the rifle had got down at the station and was nowhere to be seen.

The train remained at the station for several hours. When it finally moved, we all took a sigh of relief. But the relief was short-lived. The train stopped again at the Mughalpura station. It was not scheduled to stop there but we heard that some people had stopped the train by placing logs of wood on the railway tracks. The agonizing wait started again.

However, this time the stoppage was not for a long time. The track was cleared and the train started again. The sun was beginning to set. Soon, the people in the train started to sing the Hindu aarti prayer of Om-jai-jagdish. We had safely crossed the border into Hindustan. I have never heard people sing that prayer with greater fervour.

The train journey terminated at Amritsar instead of going to Delhi. The Indian government had decided to prevent all trains carrying angry refugees past the Panjab province. My Maasi had some relatives in Amritsar and this is where we stopped for a couple of days. These relatives lived near the Hall Bazaar gate. The next day I heard some noises coming from the street outside the house. From the people’s talk, it appeared that the noise was from a group of people who were marching to the railway station to attack a train going to Pakistan to avenge some slaughtered train from the other side. The madness was in full swing on both sides.

After a couple of days, we started our journey towards Delhi. The public transportation system must have broken down because we traveled from Amritsar to Ambala in a truck. From Ambala we took a train to New Delhi, which had a ramshackle station in those days. We took a thela-cart to take us to Havelock Square near Birla Mandir. There, another Masarji was an under-secretary in the Central government and his government flat was the final destination of our extended families coming from Pakistan.

Soon thereafter, my mother arrived there with Nanaji, my two sisters and my infant baby brother. My brother-in-law was posted with the Panjab Police in Lahore. The Hindu and Sikh policemen were all let go of their jobs and had nothing to do until they were offered alternate jobs on the other side of the new border. He and my brother went to Lahore to pick up his stuff and crossed the border along with a caravan of refugees. We did not have to wait for them for too long. They joined us in Delhi a few weeks later.

Pitaji was not so lucky. He was one of those people who were called sehjdhari Sikhs in the old Panjab. They considered themselves to be Sikhs but did not wear long hair or turbans. Ever since I remember, I woke up in the morning to the rhythmic sounds of Pitaji reciting the five paaths (prayers) considered mandatory by devout Sikhs. Somewhere along in his life, Pitaji thought that this was not enough and he must become a full-fledged Sikh. But there was a problem. He was a Subedar-Major in the army and the army rules did not permit anyone to change his religion as long as one stayed in the army, so he was obliged to shave his beard as long as he was in the army. After the end of the second world war, the government decided to retrench the army and offered voluntary retirement to people with full pension. This was a godsend to Pitaji. He figured that his pension would be sufficient to meet his and his family’s needs and traded his army uniform for a beard and turban towards the end of 1946.

Sometimes in February or March of 1947, Pitaji decided to take his father, Bhaaiaji, to his village home in the Chakwal district. There, they were happily spending their summer ensconced in that remote village, blissfully ignorant of the turbulence that was shaking the rest of the province. Their rude awakening came one August morning when some Muslim villagers visited them and told them that they were now in Pakistan, which was a country for Muslims. They were given the choice to convert to Islam within 24 hours or they would be put to death. To Pitaji, the choice was clear; he was not going to change his faith under any circumstances. Bhaaiaji, who was too old and weak to walk, was willing to convert rather than face the consequences. That night, Pitaji took leave of his father and decided to leave the village under the cover of darkness. He walked eight kos or 15 kilometers to the nearest railway station of Sodhi. From there, he took a train bound for India.

Pitaji had a younger brother, my chachaji, who was also a junior commissioned officer in the army and posted at Sialkot. When the time came, he opted for Pakistan but was told that he would not be welcome in the Pakistani army and had to accept a transfer to the Indian army. Before he left for India, he was allowed to take an army truck to rescue the rest of his family. He went with the truck to Lyalpur, only to find a deserted house with a broken lock. He then proceeded to the ancestral village of Chakwal to fetch his brother and father. He parked the army truck on the road and went to the village with two soldiers. There he met his father who had now assumed a Muslim name of Rasool Baksh. As soon as the news spread of my uncle’s arrival, several Hindus who had similarly converted to Islam went to my uncle and requested him to rescue them as well. He took as many as he could pack in his truck and dropped them off at the nearest refugee camp. He took Bhaaiaji with him to Sialkot and from there to his new posting at Jullunder.

Pitaji went through a more harrowing time. The train he took from Sodhi had gone only a 100 or so miles when it stopped at a small station. There it was set upon by a mob carrying swords, spears and axes. Five of them intruded into Pitaji’s compartment and started to hack the passengers to death one by one. Someone hit pitaji’s shoulder with an axe and another speared his thigh twice. Blood gushed out of his wounds. He controlled his pain and lay breathless on the floor. He heard one of the attackers say to the other, “Leave this bhainyaawa, he is dead”. The intruders left the compartment after completing their job.

One of the surviving passengers on that train knew Pitaji and had seen him in the ‘dead’ compartment. He reached Delhi and we were informed of Pitaji’s ’death’. We went through a period of mourning and performed all the last rites that could be performed of a dead person without the dead body.

But Pitaji was not dead. After a few hours, the train with its cargo of corpses and some wounded passengers restarted its journey. When it reached Lahore, all wounded passengers were asked to get out of the train and were loaded into a bus to be taken to a hospital. But before the bus could leave the station, another mob of assassins appeared. They asked the wounded passengers to come out of the bus one by one. Those who accepted Islam were spared while the others were put to death. Pitaji prayed to the tenth Sikh guru and vowed that if he was saved, the first thing he would do would be to go to Amritsar to seek amrit and be formally baptized as an amritdhari sikh. His prayers were answered when a jeep of gurkha soldiers arrived at the scene just before his turn was about to come, saved the remaining passengers from the mob insanity and took them into the safe care of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Pitaji spent several weeks at the Ganga Ram Hospital. Then, he was transferred to Amritsar in an exchange of hospital patients between the two new countries. When in Amritsar, he went to the Golden Temple to be formally baptized. After the ceremony, he was accidentally spotted by a neighbor from Lyalpur who had also gone to visit the Temple. She took him home and took care of him for several days until the she ran into my brother-in-law who was now posted at Amritsar.

One day, we received a postcard from our sister informing us that our father was alive and staying with her. Our joy knew no bounds. A few days later, he joined us at our new home in Delhi. He was weak and emaciated but in good spirits. It seemed like we had been reunited after years, though it was only a few months since independence. I remember because my father was with us on the day Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948.