Land of Five Rivers

by Khushwant Singh

  ‘Hand it to me,’ I said a little tensely.

  ‘I got it first,’ she replied coldly.

  ‘None of that!’ I threatened, ‘You have to give it to me.’

  ‘Oh, I have to, have I?’ she scoffed. ‘In that case I shan’t!’

  ‘Come on, hand it over and I’ll never ask anything more from you.’ I tried to sound suggestive and grown up. She flushed.

  ‘Take it, there,’ she said curtly throwing the feather away. She collected the fodder into a sheaf, picked it up and started home. I could not take my eyes from her slender figure, straining under the weight of the sheaf. I was left wondering whether I had really offended her.

  Back in the graveyard I found Noora’s father the saintly Badru, saying his namaaz. Noora stood by humbly. Both the father and the son had incongruous yellow scarves, the symbol of the Sikh religion, around their necks, for they, along with others, had recently agreed to ‘conversion.’ These were the days of communal riots and the yellow scarf guaranteed security to the Muslim minority in East Punjab.

  The Partition of the country had torn India into two parts and conversion had been made a condition by the Sikhs, for those Muslims staying on in India, in retaliation to a similar declaration by Muslims in Pakistan for any Hindus or Sikhs there. The majority, no doubt, in our area were Muslims, and that too of the orthodox sect of Sunnis. But what could they do? They were in India and whoever did not convert to Sikhism was killed.

  After the invitation for conversion a huge number of steel bangles, wooden crescent combs and yellow scarves were procured for an elaborate conversion ceremony. Just when the parsad, the sanctified sweet, was being prepared for initiating the Muslims to the Sikh religion, a phlegmatic voice said:

  ‘What good is this initiation, bound by outward symbols? These cannot deter them from continuing to be Muslims at heart!’ It was Baba Phuman Singh, pausing to fling a pellet of opium into the hollow cavern of his mouth.

  ‘What else do you advise us to do?’

  ‘Feed them with pork,’ he said.

  ‘Our own people have been made to eat beef on that side of the border,’ said another.

  Everyone agreed to feed pork to the Muslims gathered for initiation. Four or five pigs were killed and cooked immediately. This ceremony had been carried out in a similar manner in neighbouring villages also.

  The Muslims listened and watched with the resigned passivity and indifference of those who no longer cared whether they live or die.

  ‘Our Gurus baptised with parsad only,’ my father whispered to Babaji, in mild protest.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut, man. Nothing like silence,’ he said and drifted towards the pots of meat to examine the quality.

  In a little while all the Muslims were initiated into the Sikh religion. Wearing the five symbols of Sikhism they started swallowing the pieces of pork served to them.

  ‘We have always been Hindus. Only that blasted Aurangzeb made us change,’ one of them said in a futile effort to seek justification for his acts. Babaji and a jew other village elders, sat a little separately from the rest, in their own superior elite group of Sandhus.

  ‘The Maharaja of Patiala is a Sidhu,’ I heard him say. ‘Sidhu and Sandhu are equal. The only difference is that our jagir provides us only with opium while the maharaja’s gives him all the luxury he could dream of.’ The talk did not interest me.

  ‘Noora and his people are not being baptised?’ I asked my father. ‘Hush!’ my father silenced me, ‘I have delivered all the five symbols to them and they are wearing them. Noora’s father is a saintly person and respects us. I wouldn’t want him to feel disgraced in public. May be he does not want to take part.’

  When my grandfather asked about the baptism of Badru and his family, my father managed to convince him that Badru had taken pork in his very presence. To allay any remaining doubts, father swore it solemnly and thus the whole of Badru’s family was also counted among the baptised.

  And where was the lie in it? That day when I had demanded the peacock feather from Rahmte she was wearing a yellow duppatta on her head and a steel bangle on her wrist. Her father Badru and her brother Noora too were wearing yellow scarves around their necks and steel bangles on their wrists. Both were performing the namaaz. They would not have dared to pray the Muslim way had there been a witness. But then the only person present was myself and I was his pupil. They knew well that I would not tell anyone in the village that they were praying the Muslim way. How could I, who till the third standard had done my sums with the help of Rahmte?

  It is still all so clear before my eyes, that day — Rahmte carrying the sheaf of fodder, Badru and Noora praying. The long henna-dyed beard of the holy man touched the ground as he bowed in prayer. His loose lucknawi shirt was a little dirty. I stood at some distance watching them all, when I heard sudden shouts of ‘Bole so nihal, sat sri akal.’ It was the Sikh cry and it sent us running for our lives in great terror. In the general panic Noora stumbled and fell on the ground. The running hoofs came to a stop and many a spear was jabbed viciously into his body. He lay there with his entrails hanging out. It was the last I saw of him.

  I looked at the riders in yellow and blue and stood there dazed. They had already closed in on Badru. The saint pleaded with folded hands flourishing his yellow scarf and the steel bangle on his wrist to show he was a Sikh. A Nihang Sikh with fox-tail moustaches, playfully struck the wrist which was raised to exhibit the bangle, and cut it clean from the elbow. When Badru raised his other hand in abject imploration, the tyrant struck that off too.

  ‘Send this pig as well to Pakistan,’ someone shouted and ran towards me.

  Sending one to Pakistan was a common phrase for killing a Muslim.

  ‘He’s a Sikh one, you fool,’ a voice checked him. It was the Nihang Sikh who had speared Noora.

  From his saddle he lifted me up and put me in his lap.

  I do not know what happened after that, for I lost consciousness.

  When I came to my senses next day I was lying in bed in the verandah. My mother’s eyes were red and swollen with crying.

  ‘He’s saved, don’t you worry. It was only shock. He is just a child after all.’ Babaji was talking to my mother.

  ‘It was almost the end of him,’ my mother said wiping her tears and rubbing my limbs.

  ‘What a dreadful shock for you, my son! God protect you, God bless you,’ she said wiping my face with her duppatta.

  ‘Bless and be blessed afterwards, first give offerings to the Martyrs who saved his life,’ said Babaji and everyone agreed to this proposal. They started making preparations for the Martyrs.

  Chokingly, I told my mother about Noora’s death and asked her in a trembling voice if she knew anything about Rahmte. She told me in tears that Jaina and Rahmte were abducted by the crusading rioters along with other Muslim girls of the village. Many were murdered, about fifty of them. Whoever was seen with a new yellow scarf and bright steel bangle was killed.

  Meanwhile the whole of the village made ready to offer parsad to the Martyrs. Though it was a quiet evening, everyone was frightened. Baba Phuman Singh was absolutely stunned. He was almost out of his wits. Just a while ago he was informed that his life-long friend Ghanshamdas had also been killed by mistake. He had been carrying a yellow scarf to one of his Muslim friends out in the fields, when he was surprised by the rioters who killed him, taking him to be a new convert. They did not wait to check who was who. They were busy people. They had to visit and plunder other villages too. For them the sight of a yellow scarf was enough to tell them of ‘converts.’

  While praying at the Martyrs field, Babaji (my grandfather) was still thinking of Ghanshamdas. Yes, true, he had to die some day. But this sudden and uncalled for death had given a new uncertainty to people, including Babaji. It meant that anyone who was carrying a yellow scarf, even if he was a Sikh or a Hindu, would not be spared. Where then was the guarantee of safety to converts? In fact those who had not accepted Sikhism were safe
r, for they were cautious, not caught so easily and hence not killed. Thus, absurdly, avowed Muslims were escaping while Sikhs were being slaughtered!

  Even though he was singing aloud the praises of Guru Gobind’s sons, the Five Beloved Ones, and the Forty Martyrs, his heart was crying over the calamitous riots towards the end when he was reciting verses in honour of those who had shared their wealth, fought sinners, offered sacrifice for the faith, suddenly his legs buckled beneath him. The mention of ‘sacrifices for the faith’ choked his throat. His khunda fell off on the ground. The rest of the prayer was completed by my father. Having finished the ceremony my father told me to go and offer parsad to the Martyrs. As I placed the parsad on their tombs, the crows from the peepul tree nearby came cawing and swooping and ate it up in no time. ‘Let the Martyrs remain hungry,’ I said to myself.

  As my father distributed parsad to everyone and was about to leave, Babaji came forward and held him there by his arm.

  ‘Tell the boy to put some on the Pirs tombs too,’ he said pointing towards the Pirs’ graveyard. Looking in that direction I remembered Noora. The peepul in the field reminded me of Rahmte who had frowned at me under it. Had she done it in love or in hatred? I would never know now.

  ‘What do you mean?’ father asked Babaji, a little puzzled — ‘on the Pirs’ tombs?’

  ‘You remember the massacre,’ Babaji whispered to father, after taking him beyond the boundary of the field. Perhaps he dared not say it within the Martyrs’ domain, afraid of their curse on his unbelief.

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ father said bitterly.

  ‘Those who were initiated have been killed, haven’t they?’

  ‘So what?’ whispered my father still puzzled.

  ‘Those who did not agree to initiation are saved, you know that.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ father said, frowning perplexedly. ‘Well, if you don’t, I can’t help it,’ snapped Babaji, a little irritated by my father’s denseness.

  ‘Listen,’ he tried again, whispering very low to prevent the Martyrs overhearing. ‘Those who remained Muslims were saved, were they not? Well, who knows if tomorrow the Pirs don’t turn out to be more powerful than our Martyrs?’

  Suddenly enlightened, I ran and offered parsad at the Pirs’ tombs. Father did not stop me.

  Perhaps the insinuation in Babaji’s remarks still escaped him?

  the death of shaikh burhanuddin

  Khwaja Ahmed Abbas

  My name is Shaikh Burhanuddin.

  When violence and murder became the order of the day in Delhi and the blood of Muslims flowed in the streets, I cursed my fate for having a Sikh for a neighbour. Far from expecting him to come to my rescue in times of trouble, as a good neighbour should, I could not tell when he would thrust his kirpan into my belly. The truth is that till then I used to find the Sikhs somewhat laughable. But I also disliked them and was somewhat scared of them.

  My hatred for the Sikhs began on the day when I first set my eyes on one. I could not have been more than six years old when I saw a Sikh sitting out in the sun combing his long hair. ‘Look!’ I yelled with revulsion, ‘a woman with a long beard!’ As I got older this dislike developed into hatred for the entire race.

  It was a custom amongst old women of our household to heap all afflictions on our enemies. Thus, for example, if a child got pneumonia or broke its leg, they would say ‘a long time ago a Sikh, (or an Englishman), got pneumonia: or a long time ago a Sikh, (or an Englishman), broke his leg’. When I was older I discovered that this referred to the year 1857 when the Sikh princes helped the ferringee foreigner — to defeat the Hindus and Muslims in the War of Independence. I do not wish to propound a historical thesis but to explain the obsession, the suspicion and hatred which I bore towards the English and the Sikhs. I was more frightened of the English than of the Sikhs.

  When I was ten years old, I happened to be travelling from Delhi to Aligarh. I used to travel third class, or at the most in the intermediate class. That day I said to myself, ‘Let me for once travel second class and see what it feels like.’ I bought my ticket and I found an empty second class compartment. I jumped on the well-sprung seats; I went into the bathroom and leapt up to see my face in the mirror; I switched on all the fans. I played with the light switches. There were only a couple of minutes for the train to leave when four red-faced ‘tommies’ burst into the compartment, mouthing obscenities: everything was either ‘bloody’ or ‘damn.’ I had one look at them and my desire to travel second class vanished.

  I picked up my suitcase and ran out. I only stopped for breath when I got into a third class compartment crammed with natives. But as luck would have it it was full of Sikhs — their beards hanging down to their navels and dressed in nothing more than their underpants. I could not escape from them: but I kept my distance.

  Although I feared the white man more than the Sikhs, I felt that he was more civilised: he wore the same kind of clothes as I. I also wanted to be able to say ‘damn’, ‘bloody fool’ — the way he did. And like him I wanted to belong to the ruling class. The Englishman ate his food with forks and knives, I also wanted to learn to eat with forks and knives so that natives would look upon me as advanced and as civilised as the whiteman.

  My Sikh-phobia was of different kind. I had contempt for the Sikh. I was amazed at the stupidity of men who imitated women and grew their hair long. I must confess I did not like my hair cut too short; despite my father’s instructions to the contrary, I did not allow the barber to clip off more than a little when I went to him on Fridays. I grew a mop of hair so that when I played hockey or football it would blow about in the breeze like those of English sportsmen. My father often asked me, ‘Why do you let your hair grow like a woman’s?’ My father had primitive ideas and I took no notice of his views. If he had had his way he would have had all heads razored bald and stuck artificial beards on people’s chins...That reminds me that the second reason for hating the Sikhs was their beards which made them look like savages.

  There are beards and beards. There was my father’s beard, neatly trimmed in the French style; or my uncle’s which went into a sharp point under his chin. But what could you do with a beard to which no scissor was ever applied and which was allowed to grow like a wild bush — fed with a compost of oil, curd and goodness knows what! And, after it had grown a few feet, combed like hair on a head: My grandfather also had a very long beard which he combed... but then my grandfather was my grandfather and a Sikh is just a Sikh.

  After I had passed my matriculation examination I was sent to the Muslim University at Aligarh. We boys who came from Delhi, or the United Provinces, looked down upon boys from Punjab; they were crude rustics who did not know how to converse, how to behave at table, or to deport themselves in polite company. All they could do was drink large tumblers of buttermilk. Delicacies such as vermicelli with essence of kewra sprinkled on it or the aroma of Lipton’s tea were alien to them. Their language was unsophisticated to the extreme, whenever they spoke to each other it seemed as if they were quarreling. It was full of ‘ussi, tussi, saadey, twhaadey,’ — Heaven forbid. I kept my distance from Punjabis.

  But the warden of our hostel, (God forgive him), gave me a Punjabi as a roommate. When I realised that there was no escape, I decided to make the best of a bad bargain and be civil to the chap. After a few days we became quite friendly. This man was called Ghulam Rasul and he was from Rawalpindi. He was full of amusing anecdotes and was a good companion.

  You might well ask how Mr. Ghulam Rasul gate-crashed into a story about the Sikhs. The fact of the matter is that Ghulam Rasul’s anecdotes were usually about the Sikhs. It is through these anecdotes that I got to know the racial characteristics, the habits and customs of this strange community. According to Ghulam Rasul the chief characteristics of the Sikhs were the following:

  All Sikhs were stupid and idiotic. At noontime they lost their senses altogether. There were many instances to prove this. For example, one day at 12 noon, a Sikh
was cycling along Hall Bazaar in Amritsar when a constable, also a Sikh, stopped him and demanded, ‘Where is your light?’ The cyclist replied nervously, ‘Jemadar Sahib, I lit it when I left my home; it must have gone out just now.’ The constable threatened to run him in. A passer-by, yet another Sikh with a long white beard, intervened, ‘Brothers, there is no point in quarrelling over little things. If the light has gone out it can be lit again.’

  Ghulam Rasul knew hundreds of anecdotes of this kind. When he told them in his Punjabi accent his audience was left helpless with laughter. One really enjoyed them best in Punjabi because the strange and incomprehensible behaviour of the uncouth Sikh was best told in his rustic lingo.

  The Sikhs were not only stupid but incredibly filthy as well. Ghulam Rasul, who had known hundreds of them, told us how they never shaved their heads. And whereas we Muslims washed our hair thoroughly at least every Friday, the Sikhs who made a public exhibition of bathing in their underpants, poured all kinds of filth, like curd into their hair. I rub lime-juice and glycerine in my scalp. Although the glycerine is white and thick like curd, it is an altogether different thing — made by a well-known firm of perfumers of Europe. My glycerine came in a lovely bottle whereas the Sikh’s curd came from the shop of a dirty sweetmeat seller.

  I would not have concerned myself with the manner of living of these people except that they were so haughty and ill-bred as to consider themselves as good warriors as the Muslims. It is known over the world that one Muslim can get the better of ten Hindus or Sikhs. But these Sikhs would not accept the superiority of the Muslim and would strut about like bantam cocks twirling their moustaches and stroking their beards. Ghulam Rasul used to say that one day we Muslims would teach the Sikhs a lesson that they would never forget.