Other Side Of Silence

by Urvashi Butalia

  Niranjan would board a bus every morning and make an announcement: ‘I have come from Pakistan where a lady misses her mother very much. If any of you is a Lubanwala Sikh, please stand up.’ It worked. Through the word-of-mouth network that lies at the core of many post-Partition reunions, Niranjan learnt that Sadeeqa’s parents had survived the Partition violence and settled in Dhera Dhupsadi, a tiny hamlet near Kurukshetra.7

  Niranjan Singh followed this lead. He arrived, unannounced, one night at Dharam Kaur’s house with a note from Sadeeqa which said ‘I, Mohinder Kaur, daughter of Javind Singh, am alive.’ And, some years later, Sadeeqa was able to come to Dhupsadi, and meet her mother; and her mother travelled to Pakistan to attend the wedding of her granddaughter.

  But not everyone had such good fortune. Workers at the Gandhi Vanita Ashram in Jalandhar recount that in 1947 a two-year old child was brought to the ashram. No one knew who she belonged to or whence she came. Today, at age fifty-two, she still continues to live there, a child of history, without a history.

  Not everyone was as lucky as Dharam Kaur and Sadeeqa, however. In August 1956 the Karachi-based newspaper Dawn carried an editorial about the different approaches of the two countries to the question of the recovery of abducted women. The editorial referred to a particular case, that of ‘a young girl whose distressed father has often told his tale of woe in our correspondence columns. Of what value,’ asked the editorial, ‘are joint pledges to extend facilities to relatives of abducted women in the pursuit of clues, when a father, now a citizen of Pakistan, who visits his native town to reclaim his daughter, is not only denied legal protection and assistance from executive authority but is actually thrust in jail on flimsy charges and in effect deprived of his right to fight his case.’

  The girl’s father, Qamaruddin Ahmed, had made several visits to India to find his daughter, a minor who had been abducted by someone from his own village. In 1951, the father was arrested and jailed on charges of being a spy. He spent three years in jail. ‘Refusal to restore my child, by the Bharat government,’ he said, ‘was not surprising, but our own government, in spite of my repeated entreaties, neither provided me any legal help, nor did it assist me in the recovery of my child.’ After serving his sentence in India, when Quamruddin came back to Pakistan, he once again appealed to the Pakistan authorities for help in recovering his daughter. And was told that ‘the Government of Bharat had declined to return my child. Our Government had also dropped the matter.’8 In 1957, the recovery programme for abducted women was officially closed. And with it, this father’s — and that of many other parents’ — search for their children.

  In the last chapter I spoke of a book that a friend and I had found, that provided a district by district listing of Hindu and Sikh abducted women in Pakistan. Entries in the book are classified according to whether the abducted person is a child (usually below sixteen, although sixteen-year olds are also sometimes listed as adults) or a woman, or a widow, or — and this is rare — an adult male. In an attempt to look at the dimensions of the problem of the abduction of children, I scanned this list at random, and came up with the following statistics. In Campbellpur, out of a total of 92 people abducted, 30 were children, in Dera Ghazi Khan this figure was 107 and 23; in Rawalpindi, of 598 abductions, 146 were children; in Gurdaspur, there were 69 children in 188 abductions, in Sheikhupura, of 916 abductions, 318 were children. On an average, male children formed between a third to a half of this figure in most places.

  I would like to end this account of children, with a sample listing of a very small number of the children who were abducted at the time of Partition. The entries here pertain to Sheikhupura district. If this list is to be believed at all, in many cases the rapists and abductors of children were, as is often the case, people from the same village, people who were known to the families whose children disappeared.

  What I have attempted above is in the nature of an exploration into a relatively unmapped terrain. Throughout, I have been faced with the question: how do we explore the histories of children? If women are difficult subjects and silences have built up about so much in their lives, how much more difficult it is to look at the lives of children, particularly when it is assumed, often with some justification, that they cannot speak on their own behalf. If Partition history has had little to say about children, despite their centrality in it, this lack is not unique to it. For history in general, and particularly Indian history, has not really addressed this important question. In the West, children of holocaust survivors have recently restarted the process begun by Anne Frank many years ago, of looking at their lives at a time when the world seemed to be collapsing around them. Partition was just such a moment: a child may not have been able to understand the violent breakup of family and community, the sudden loss of parents, but he/she could not have remained untouched by it. What, we might ask, has happened to these children? Even as their lives and futures were being decided, many of them remained in ashrams and homes, or were being transported in baskets across the country from one institution to another, most of them lost to history. When and how shall we begin to recover the histories of these children? How shall we insert them into history?

  MURAD

  ‘I would always be out playing . . . ’

  Murad, a tonga puller in Lahore, was a child at the time of Partition and lived in India. Like many children, he too did not know what was happening and was forced to move to Pakistan. I have never met Murad: I reproduce his interview here with the permission of the interviewers, Peter Chappell and Satti Khanna, for whose film it was done. I have chosen to include Murad’s interview here after much thought and for very specific reasons. It seems to me that Murad’s recollection of his childhood experience of dislocation exemplifies many things I have spoken of above. The rather sophisticated, somewhat terse and distant telling of his story is clearly the telling of an adult and Murad was in his fifties when Peter and Satti met him. Yet, according to them, it was the first time he was telling his story in a self conscious way: if this was so, it made me wonder whether the process of such self conscious recovery works to lend a coherence and linearity to narratives, such as Murad’s seems to have. Another question that this narrative raised for me is whether the ‘downplaying’ that is so evident in what Murad says — ‘we lay there and passed the time’ is how he describes an experience that must surely have been full of fear — almost as if the whole thing was a game, is one way of making sense of an experience that may otherwise have been incomprehensible to the child who lived it. It is perhaps because of this that I have been drawn to this interview again and again, for it brings home to me, repeatedly, the question of how a child makes sense of such a traumatic experience and indeed how the adult that child inevitably turns into, remembers and recounts that experience. When Peter Chappell and Satti Khanna spoke to Murad, there was no ambivalence in how he felt about the differences between Hindus and Muslims. Yet in his recollection of his childhood there is an element of nostalgia — and of realism in the last story he tells — for the happy mixing that took place between the two communities. Did Lahore — which became symbolic of the uprooting — and Partition do this to him? Or would a Muslim or a Hindu child — would Murad in other words — have become increasingly Muslim anyway, aware of his identity as someone different from his Hindu neighbour, or was this the result of Partition? And had such awareness come in the normal course, would it have drawn such deep lines through Murad’s life as the move to ‘Lahore’ seemed to have done? These are questions that need to be posed in every instance where one can see a crystallizing of identities around religion after Partition. It is not a question that can be easily answered.

  Murad’s interview is also important because it is one of the few that provides a perspective from the ‘other side’ — and it is not surprising to see how similar the experiences are. Minus the geographical location and the name, Murad’s narrative could be that of a poor child on either side of the border. More important than the
question of location and religion then, are the telling insights Murad offers. To give just one example: ‘Landlords go to the landlords and the poor go to the poor’, he says, describing how and where he sought support and solidarity. Class is not so easily dismissed after all.

  MURAD

  I was a small child. My uncle lived in India. Someone would take me to any of the persons around, but they would refuse to take responsibility for me. People would say that I would bring bad luck. A schoolmaster accepted me and I started living with him. He cared for me. He was more sympathetic to me than my close relatives and looked after my needs. I would take his cattle to the grazing ground. Then the controversy over Pakistan and Hindustan came up.

  I would always be out playing ... My maternal uncles took me to their homes. They thought I would be killed while I was playing out on the streets. One day, we were inside the house. My uncle came in and sat down. Sikhs came! Daughter-fuckers!

  First they knocked my uncle down ... I thought I would also be killed and tried to get out. Sugarcane chaff was piled at the back. I jumped into it and wrapped myself with the stuff. There was another uncle of mine. He came after some time, shook me and said what now. We should run away, I said. They would not spare us even if they killed my uncle. My uncle who had been killed had given a few coins ... Then we came to a camp nearby. It was miserable there. A man was bringing the sugarcane and another was cutting this into pieces. If they saw a Muslim they would kill him. Somehow, hiding, we reached the camp. Near the camp there was a sugarcane field, no food to be had, we lay on the ground and passed the time.

  Both my parents died when I was a child. Wherever I was taken, people refused to take me in saying I would bring ill luck ... Nobody was ready to keep me. Unwillingly the older uncle took me in. A few Sikhs lived around our village on the main road. People said, ‘he plays outside all the time ... There are bullets flying around, he will get killed.’ So they took me back to my village, then some mirasis took care of me. I would graze their horses and eat with them. I got up on the roof, saw the Sikhs come and kill three or four of them. I thought, if they have killed these men, why should they spare me? They will kill me as well. So I jumped into a pile of sugarcane chaff and lay down. I thought they’ll think it’s sugarcane and go away, they’ll get lost. Then we will figure out a way to escape. My uncle came and said, ‘they’ve killed your grandfather as well, let’s go away from here.’ We headed towards the camp, the Sikhs were in strength all around. A military train came, they said, all those who do not have families to protect them should get into the train.

  ‘We are ready to leave for Pakistan.’ We got in. There was a qila near River Beas. The train stopped and we got down. We were three or four boys. They said, let us drink lassi. I said no, I will not drink lassi, they must have poisoned it. We entered the bazaar. All three of them had lassi but I did not. I said, better to drink the river water, the soldiers have checked it. It’s free of poison. We came back. All three collapsed and were dead.

  Then there were lorries ready to leave for Pakistan. A man said, the Sikhs will slaughter us on the way. I am not going I said. I will leave only when our soldiers come. I am already lost. Why invite death in this way? The lorries owned by Muslims came. We got in. We got out at Wagah border. Now find your way, they said. Nowhere to go, I thought. I did not know the way. I started following someone from Jalandhar. I would not spend the few coins I had. They would be needed if things got worse. As I reached Sahedra night was falling. There were date trees and shrubs all around. People were miserable and sick with cholera. I left the place and moved towards a village called Attari. I saw an old woman. I said, mother, I want to stay here. ‘You can stay here,’ she said. ‘Where have you come from?’ she asked. ‘From a well to an abyss,’ I replied, ‘I have no relatives.’ She was kind, she gave me roti to eat. ‘If you want to stay we can provide you with a house,’ she said. ‘What for, dear mother?’ I said, ‘What can I do with a house? I have no family.’ I came out on the road. A truck came. It stopped. Buses were rare in those times. People used to travel in trucks. A man shouted: ‘To Jaranwala.’ ‘Do you dig roots out there?’ I said, ‘I am already uprooted. Why bother me?’ ‘Friend, you seem to have suffered a lot,’ the driver said, ‘come, get in.’ I got down at Jaranwala. I roamed about a bit and said, this is the place where they dig the roots out.

  I knew no one. A tonga man came shouting, ‘saran di khoo.’ ‘What is that?’ I asked. ‘It’s a stop,’ he replied. ‘Can you take me there?’ I asked. ‘Why not,’ he replied. I was a boy, so he said ‘you won’t be a burden. You are just a child.’ But anyhow, I would lose a bit of money. ‘Never mind, I will give you a free ride.’ ‘You are kind,’ I said. He took me to that stop. There was a village nearby. I came into the village. Landlords go to landlords and the poor go to the poor. There were some porters. I went to them, told them my story. ‘We are already in a bad shape,’ they said. ‘It seems you have suffered even more than we did but we can’t make both ends meet.’ If this is the state, I thought, why not go to the mandi and try my luck there. Can one find work there? ‘Yes, you can,’ they said. They showed me a hut.

  Then I came to Lahore. There was a ‘shawan da dera’ here. I would come to this place regularly. There were cartdrivers who plied tongas. I started looking after the horses. I would get two annas per horse for scrubbing them. The time passed. I said to the chaudhry, ‘Can’t I ply a tonga?’ ‘You don’t know the roads in Lahore.’ ‘I will find out. I can ask those who know.’ There was a cartdriver who had left his job. His horse was there. No experienced cartdriver was available. So Chaudhry asked me to drive the tonga. I would ask the passengers when to turn, where do you want to get to, which road leads to your place. I tried to hide the fact that I knew nothing. But what a misfortune! My hands and feet started swelling. They became so big. I was out on the street again. I came across an old woman. She offered me a bit of money. I refused and I asked her to pray for me. With God’s grace I recovered. There is a ‘khangah’ of naugaza (nine feet). I started visiting it. There a man asked me, ‘Do you have a family?’

  A passenger came and asked whether I could take him to Meeran di Khahi. ‘How much will you charge?’ he asked. ‘What is the normal fare in your opinion?’ He mentioned an amount. I said, all right. I did not know the way. ‘Which way,’ I asked him, ‘tell me the short cut.’ ‘Straight to Delhi Gate.’ When we reached Delhi Gate, I asked him, ‘Which way, sir? Should I turn?’ ‘No, bugger, go straight.’ In my way I tried to be clever so that he could not find out I was not a Lahori. We reached the ‘khooli’. I stopped. I got down on the pretence of getting a packet of cigarettes. I went to a shop and asked where this place was. ‘It is this very place,’ they said. ‘How much are tonga charges per passenger from Bhaali to this place?’ ‘One rupee for a full tongaload.’ He would give twelve annas, I thought. But he gave me a rupee and a half.

  There is not much to think about Partition. In our clan marriages used to be arranged as if by ‘vatta’, a weighing stone. If you have a woman, give us one in return. Give a kilo, get a kilo in return. If you had no woman, you were lost. I was very disturbed. Oh God, I had nothing to fall back upon. Where can you go, if you have nowhere to go? When id came I felt very sad and I had disturbed nights. You know what happened in India — the riots. First there were elections. Muslim League and Congress appeared on the scene. Lorries came and they asked people to vote. We heard Qaid-e-Azam was our leader. Rumours started spreading. Someone would say you are going over there. Where? I would ask him. Where the hell can we go? I have been living here for centuries. They would say, to your Pakistan. Where will Pakistan be? I would ask. ‘Somewhere near Lahore.’ But I hadn’t seen Lahore.

  People would ask, is Lahore a city? I didn’t know. I had never been there. No, they would insist you too will go to Lahore. But how? Where I have been born is Lahore for me, but anyhow we were dragged to Lahore.

  The root cause of the trouble is this. The English never
allowed the men, particularly the Muslim ones, to come up. They never allowed anyone to become strong. The English did not let the Muslims become strong. This is my observation — I have seen this myself. I was a young man when a Hindu Khatri asked an Englishman a question. ‘Sir, Muslims can’t even find two meals a day. Something should be done to solve this problem.’ He said, let them be as they are. They will start killing people the very day their bellies have food ... now ... you can smell murder all around. Everywhere you encounter police.

  In our village there were two telis, oilpressers, very strong young men. There used to be a very big mela, predominantly a Sikh mela. People would come from far flung areas to attend it. There would be mahants who managed the gurudwara affairs. Sikhs would carry them on a charpoy. They would sprinkle flour all round and chant hare ram, hare ram.

  In the past Hindus and Muslims lived like brothers, and looked after each other. Even a big landlord would offer all kinds of help when a poor menial worker was getting married. He would entertain even a very big marriage party. When the party came, they would gather together all the pots and cots. There was a lot of fellow feeling. But when Partition took place, everything got turned upside down. They pierced even infants with their spears. They would carry dead bodies on their spears and one of them would exclaim, ‘Oh, I found only one!’ ... So they started hating each other. There was such harmony before this — the poor could enter a rich house and ask for lassi ...

  Now a line has been drawn. Borders have been demarcated. We are here and they are there. If something is sent from Pakistan to India, Indians tax it heavily, and if a thing comes from India, Pakistanis do the same.