Partition Stories

“One thing I want to mention: The library of our high school, I think, in Sarsa was one of the best in Punjab. It was unique. I can’t say for sure because at the time I didn’t get to visit other high schools. But I knew. You can imagine what high school libraries are like; they are limited. We were fortunate, we got a headmaster – actually, even before the new headmaster, the old headmaster, who was a Sikh, was fond of books. He started developing the library when I was in sixth or seventh grade, bringing books to the library from other places. But the new headmaster did a lot of work after him. He brought a lot of books to the library. All the literature that was being published in India, especially Muslim literature – history, theology, novels, whatever was being published – he brought them to the library. He acquired Maulana Maududi’s work, Shibli Naumani’s work, everything coming out of Aligarh, the writers from Nadwatul Ulama, countless books of history and fiction. As a result of this, I had read a lot by the time I finished tenth grade. I was exposed to a lot of writing, I got the opportunity to read a lot and I developed a passion for it. Books people didn’t think about, even teachers didn’t think about: I read them. Shibli, Hali, Maududi. I also read non-Muslims, of course. I read all of Premchand.

The movement for Pakistan started to build momentum. Slowly, at first. I remember when the resolution was passed in 1940. I must’ve been in fifth grade at the time. After that, the people who had been studying with us since childhood, non-Muslim students, they began to drift away. A difference arose between us, in our conversations. They used to say that the English were orchestrating the movement, that the whole Pakistan movement was really masterminded by the English. They said the English wanted to weaken India and its great civilisation. This must’ve been in seventh or eighth grade. It’s not like the friendship between us ended, but things changed. Before, we used to visit each other’s homes, even though their behaviour towards us was never exemplary. They would consider us untouchables. We felt this as children. They wouldn’t let us come too close. Or if it was time to eat, they would serve us in leaves, in peepal leaves, instead of the dishes they used for themselves. It was painful to see this. But we were in the same school, so we met and talked and we visited their homes. We used to study together till late at night.

“The RSS began to have a presence in the area around this time as well. You could hear a lot of rhetoric against Muslims. Riots began to start after that”

Then in the last year or two, after 1945-6, you could sense they were gearing up for a fight. The RSS began to have a presence in the area around this time as well. You could hear a lot of rhetoric against Muslims. Riots began to start after that. It became hard to slaughter cows, and an atmosphere developed that you couldn’t eat and slaughter cows. Or if a cow was slaughtered, it would cause a lot of tension in the city. So, slowly, a tense and hostile environment started to take hold.

On the night Pakistan was made, I think it was Ramzan, it was Laylat-al-Qadr, we offered prayers. The boundary was not decided at the time. The Radcliffe Award hadn’t been announced. The mosque was a little far away. We used to go there every year. Many people would come; it would be a gathering of a thousand or two thousand people. But that year, we were careful. The Hindu majority did not like that Pakistan was going to be made. Many of the youngsters carried knives and other such things with them to the mosque. We feared that something might take place. Anyway, the Radcliffe Award was announced. Let alone our area, Pakistan didn’t even get Ferozpur or Gurdaspur, where Muslims were in a majority. It became clear that things were going to develop differently than we had thought previously.

“They told me they planned to attack the Muslims in the camp, but something or the other always kept them from it”

In the Pakistan movement, there was no idea of migration, of populations moving across the border. But as the movement gathered pace, riots broke out in different parts of Punjab. There were also riots in Bihar. Amritsar was the first place to be affected. It added to the tense atmosphere. It was decided when Pakistan was made that the Muslims living here will go to Pakistan and the Hindus will come here. Where we were living, it was converted into a refugee camp. It was agreed that we will stay inside the area and we won’t venture out. Some people from the army were designated to guard us. Our area, where our house was, which was called Sabzi Mandi, it became the camp. Muslims from other areas came there.

I talked to some people afterwards: after Pakistan was made, some students who studied with me who came to visit Pakistan when relations between Pakistan and India were better. They found me and I met them. They told me they planned to attack the Muslims in the camp, but something or the other always kept them from it. Who knows what kept them? There was a shrine in our area. It was a well-respected shrine, of a very popular spiritual person. Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs, they all went to this shrine. Maybe it was those prayers, the blessings of the shrine, that kept the violence at bay. So fortunately, there were no attacks, no violence in our area comparable to the violence taking place in other areas close by.

Some of the people in the camp got together and decided to organise the way the camp would function. We didn’t know how long we’d be stuck there and there were many issues to be solved. For example, there wasn’t enough food in the camp. They only gave us chickpeas, which were especially unsuitable for little children. My elder brother took charge of the camp. He decided to put some people on guard to make sure we were safe. These guards would stay up all night. Secondly, he created a way of dividing up the food rations. We also built friendly relations with the soldiers guarding us and we convinced them to let some of us out at night. There was a bazaar near the camp with many shops owned by Hindus. We’d go out at night when the shops were closed and silently take milk and other such necessary items from the shops and bring them back. The soldiers overlooked this.

Gradually, people started to migrate to Pakistan in groups. We were afraid that we might be attacked any time, so people started to leave whenever they could. Two groups left from our city. Many people left through Bikaner. On the 2nd of November, we were told that a train had arrived and we should get ready to leave. We could bring very little with us. We just wanted to get to Pakistan. We left the camp on foot to get to the train. Some people brought little things. I was interested in books, so I made a little bag for myself. I was preparing for an examination called Adib Alim; I think they still have it now but it’s not very prominent. I packed a few books with me to prepare for that examination. After matriculation, there weren’t many opportunities for us to get higher education. In our city, there was nothing after high school. You had to go to Jallandhar or Amritsar or Lahore and all these places were quite far away. I couldn’t think of going there. My family, like most Muslim families in our area, was poor – you could say we were lower-middle class – and they didn’t have the resources to send me. To go there, to live in a hostel, was unimaginable. I took some books with me. What else could we have brought? We had to walk a mile or two on foot to get to the train. There was only so much we could carry with us. And we didn’t know where we were going to end up, what things would be like in Pakistan. The books? I probably packed some of Maududi’s work. Ghalib, most likely. Some poetry, some afsanas.

The train had come from Delhi. There was very little space. They wanted to break us in two groups – one for this train, one for tomorrow’s. But we decided we wanted to stay together. We got on the train and somehow fit ourselves into the limited space. They were not letting us get into the last three or four carriages of the train. They were closed. The train stood there for a couple of hours. We walked around and peered into these last few carriages. We saw corpses, blood; they filled the last four carriages. There were corpses piled up and blood coming out of them. Fear gripped us. What would happen to us if this had happened to others trying to migrate? We fit somehow: some of us on the roof, some in the carriages. The train was going to stop at Bathinda station. We had heard rumours that Sikhs were ready to attack us in Bathinda. Rumours, or news reports, this was the information reaching us. But thankfully nothing happened. Slowly, stopping and taking off again, the train crossed the border and we reached Pakistan.”