Other Side Of Silence Page 6

  His letter made me uneasy. I wrote back. I told him I thought he was lucky — at least he had stayed on in the family house. ‘Don’t call me lucky, dear sister,’ he said, ‘do you know that ever since I have converted I have not had a single night’s peaceful sleep. Every brick in this house seems to curse me. I rejected what was mine and I have not been accepted by the faith I adopted.’

  When he took my mother away I had no idea that Rana had any dishonesty in his head. But I was very worried, I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d send the children to Suniti, my elder sister, in Mussoorie. So I wrote her a letter — saying this place is not safe and I am sending the children to you, keep them with you for some days and when things improve I’ll bring them back. Thinking that now that they were taken care of, and I had some time, I joined Miranda House and took up Russian. I had always wanted to study Russian. I stayed in the hostel. That was in July 1946. There was a lot of tension, and things were very bad, but I thought at least the children were safe. But Suniti sent the children back, saying we are here on holiday and I can’t look after them. But then Ranjit told me don’t worry, we are going to the village, we’ll take the children with us, they’ll be fine and you carry on with your Russian. So — because Ranjit was a very good friend — I continued with the Russian.

  The first six months passed well, and then there were holidays and I went to Nabha. When I came back after the summer vacation, suddenly things became very bad. What happened was that there was this Principal, Rajaram, and with him we girls would get into his jeep and go off shopping, so he said let’s go, it was Sunday so we decided to go out for a bit. But when we got out, things were so bad, there were bodies everywhere. We went from the University area upto Red Fort. I remember that. At Red Fort I saw that in a tonga, there were four girls and one man with a knife. The girls jumped out of the tonga and that man ran after them, I don’t know what happened after that. The place was full of bodies. So Rajaram asked for the jeep to turn towards Rajpur Road. There was a police station there and he said let’s go and inform the police. He went and informed the police, but they said we have no police force at all, we can do nothing. And then, I don’t know for what reason he went to the railway station, and the place was full of blood and all that. And then, he said I don’t think we should go any further, and we came back. He dropped us to the hostel.

  In my room there was a Muslim girl whose name was Zahira Ilahi, I think she was Sir Syed Ahmed’s niece, she was very well connected ... There was a lot of loot and arson there in the University ... There was a history professor, Quereshi; I remember seeing boys, I still remember, a boy holding his coat and tie. And I heard from people that he had some very valuable paintings etc., they looted all of that and took it away. We were told that ... there was so much tension that we were all frightened. I think there were only some six or seven of us girls in the hostel. There was the warden, and she had a plump daughter, and we used to wonder how we could keep ourselves safe inside. One day we had just sat down to eat, and one man came running and he caught hold of Zahira by the hand and he said let’s go. He didn’t even wait and we were completely stunned as he dragged her out. Later we came to know that he was her brother and he had got to know that there was a mob which was going to attack the hostel or something like that. So he took the girl away, and all her stuff, big boxes and all that, it kept lying in the room. Later we heard that they were living in Kota house. Then he took her to Hyderabad or somewhere and I lost track of Zahira. But the mob came, and they kept shouting ‘We want Zahira, we want Zahira, bring her out’. We were all locked into one room, and after that the warden rescued us all and sent us to Rajaram’s house.

  Since she wasn’t there, the mob realized she had escaped. After that we stayed at Rajaram’s house for some days and I remember when people went from here, they took big boxes full of looted stuff. A couple of times they stopped, we were just girls standing outside and they even offered to sell us silks and all that in case the girls needed them for getting married.

  Then, the girls had to all go to their own places, so they went off, all of them. But I had nowhere to go to. I couldn’t understand where I should go, I had nowhere ... you know, it was a very peculiar situation. So I thought a lot, I was a bit daring and I thought I’d go to Maharaj Nabha’s office. I went there and said I used to work in Nabha, and I am stranded and I want to go to Nabha. So someone in his office said we have cars going every day and we’ll send you in one. So they arranged for me to go in a car, in which a friend’s mama was also there, and in that military car I went to Nabha. I had taken leave from there, I had got fed up of the Nabha job, I’d done it for six years, and nothing was firming up on the marriage prospects. There was tension, personal problems, so I thought I’d get out and increase my qualifications and try for something else. Then we came back, and near Ambala we stopped. It was night. I was really frightened, and I said to the gentleman, uncle can you drop me at the railway station? He said, no don’t worry we are all there and you are our responsibility ...

  It was 2.30 at night when we got to Nabha. He said to me at the school gate, if you want you can come home with me and I’ll bring you here in the morning. I said no, it’s okay, after all one’s home is one’s home. At this time of night I thought where will I go. So he just put me down at the gate and left. The chowkidar was called Jiwna. I began to shout Jiwna, Jiwna. There was nobody. I gently pushed the gate and it opened. I came in, and there was this huge place, completely empty, with not a single light. I saw that Jiwna’s room was closed. It didn’t dawn upon me that they had all gone to Pakistan. There used to be Saira, I called her too. No one. Walked towards the house, the house was locked. All these people had gone to the village. Ranjit had taken my sister and brother. Sudha, my sister, had got married. And I had put my other sister, Bhutcher, in a hostel in Jalandhar in Kanya Mahavidyalaya. So she had gone. Billo, my younger brother had run away and gone to Lahore. I’m not sure where Munna and Mataji were. No, Rana had taken Mataji, but there was nobody. The whole house was empty and this huge six or seven acre place ... deep night and not a soul around. I was terrified. And I could not figure out what to do. I sat in the veranda for some time, but I was frightened to death, there was darkness on all sides. There were Muslims everywhere. Then I thought that I have been foolish, I have taken a risk. Suddenly I remembered that behind the school we used to have a Mashki. His name was ... I can’t remember. Then, I sort of crawled, clinging to the walls, and went to the back. I called him, and he got up, shocked, saying bibaji where are you, where have you come from? He jumped the wall and came in, and he opened the lock, and I went inside and he slept outside in the veranda. In the morning he took a cycle and went to Ranjit’s village and she came. So I stayed there for some time.

  During this time, I went to Lahore once, to ask Rana to send my mother back. I promised to look after her. That is when I saw the letter lying there, and I realized it was a letter saying Subhadra will eat up the property, don’t let your mother go. And I realized it was no use now. I begged and pleaded that he should send Billo who had run away to him. I thought if he has brought my mother for property, he will then kill my brother. So he did send Billo.

  This was ... before Partition. This was in 1947, this was a little before Partition. I went to Lahore twice. Both visits were before Partition but I don’t remember exactly when. Like a fool I took a tonga from Lahore station to our home. Without any fear or anything. That was right in the midst of fights. The second time I begged and pleaded, saying how will you feed him etc., and then I brought Billo. In the train he was in the other compartment. At some point someone came and said that the boy who was travelling with you, he’s fallen out of the train. And I went mad, I ran, but he was perfectly safe. Then he went to Gurgaon to get a job, but of course he was a sort of a drifter ... in this way the children sort of got settled. Then I had to go to Simla where your father was, I couldn’t find any way. No trains were going there. And I kept on trying, then some
one told me that there were taxis and you have to pay six hundred rupees to get one seat. So I collected the money and I paid it and I got a taxi from Delhi to Simla. I left my stuff along with Zahira Ilahi’s boxes — these were never found. I left them in the care of the hostel warden. We did find the trunks later, with the locks intact but with nothing inside them.

  It’s difficult for me to say how I felt when I saw him again after you took us back. When I saw him at the airport I thought he was not at all like the thin lanky youngster that I had left behind forty years ago. He had put on weight and he looked so much like my father. Though Bikram was also just as tall — about six three — he was quite fair. Rana, as he stood before me was a virtual image of my father. Memories flooded in, of my father, my childhood, my mother, the great betrayal ... Yet, I found I did not hate my brother. I felt sorry for him. He looked to me like a fugitive caught in his own trap.

  As I went and put my arms around him he whispered, ‘Are you still angry with me?’ I was weeping. We were children of the same parents, the same blood, yet today we were like strangers, inhabitants of two enemy countries. I thought it was not the conversion that mattered so much to me, but I could not forgive him for what he did to my mother.

  He’d brought his car to take us home. We were driven to a place which had been my home for so many years. As we drove in, I looked at the house: the same majestic look, but, as I peered through the dark to see, I found two things missing. My father’s name no longer decorated the gate, and the big ‘Om’ which had been drawn on the water tank above the house did not seem to be visible. We met Rana’s family: his wife and three sons — the fourth was away. We made ourselves comfortable: it was the month of December, but the rooms were warm, with room heaters in each of them. Pakistan has a cheap supply of piped gas. It was only in the morning that I noticed that all the fruit trees had gone. Rana said he had had to get rid of them because of water shortages. But I felt a real sense of loss, an almost physical hurt. My father had loved his trees more than anything else. It seemed like a betrayal. I thought, we had lost so much in Partition — what did a few trees matter, yet to me at the time they seemed like a symbol of everything we had lost ...

  That day your friend Lala came and took me sightseeing in Lahore. So much had changed. I wanted to go to Hall Road to see my old college, but when we reached there, the college was not to be seen. It had been shifted. I visited many places I had known well, but nothing was the same: this wonderful cosmopolitan city had now become a Muslim one. Loudspeakers called the faithful to prayer ... shops, streets, everything was different ...

  I had been in Pakistan and our house for a full day but I had not gone into the other rooms. I wanted very much to go into what had been my room but I did not have the courage. Just one look beyond the drawing room made me draw back. The rooms on the other side were full of dowry articles for the impending wedding. And no one seemed to be living in them. Perhaps they all lived on the first floor. At dinner, however, the whole family assembled and we had a delicious and pleasant meal.

  A few days later, Rana came into our room. And he began to talk. He shut the door behind him. He said, ‘if this house had not been there, I think we all would have been together. I would not have converted and lost every moment of peace in my life.’ But surely, I asked, the conversion was his choice. Yes, but he said he had still not been accepted. ‘For them I am still a Hindu. If a girl had not been getting married and my presence was necessary I might well have been in jail.’ We were stunned. Then he told us that one of his sons had filed a case against him, accusing him of being a Hindu spy. ‘I am like a stranger,’ he said, ‘a man haunted in my own house by my own children.’ He told me time and again that he had come to one conclusion and that was that one should never change one’s religion.

  That was my last night in Pakistan. I remember when I sat down to eat the next morning, before we left, Rana pulled out a bowl of white butter from the refrigerator. ‘I have not forgotten how you loved white butter. I bought it yesterday.’ He put the bowl in front of me, and my eyes filled with tears. That was the last time Rana and I spoke.

  I have not been able to decide whether Rana was telling the truth or not. Was his problem really one of conversion? But there are many people who have converted and stayed on — is religion so important after all? Or was he simply lying, choosing a method of survival he had resorted to many times earlier? I don’t really know.

  3

  ‘Facts’

  Part I

  DIVIDING LIVES

  The plan to partition India was announced on June 3 1947. For people who had been directly or indirectly involved in the many discussions and the protracted negotiations that preceded this decision, the announcement came as something of a relief. ‘We were so tired and fed up with all the to-ing and fro-ing,’ said Sankho Chaudhry, a political worker with the Congress at the time, ‘that we were grateful some decision had been taken at last. We thought, well, here’s a solution finally and now we can relax.’ His sentiments were echoed by several others. ‘At last,’ said a couple who later become relief workers, ‘the dithering and bickering was over and a new beginning could be made.’

  The solution, however, wasn’t really a solution, nor the beginning a beginning. And if political leaders and the State heaved a collective sigh of relief that things had finally been decided, hundreds of thousands of people were left with a sense of bewilderment. What did this really mean? In the months leading up to Partition, and indeed after the announcement of the Plan in June 1947, the offices of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) received large numbers of letters from people wanting to know what was happening. What will become of us, they asked. We believe India is to be partitioned: where will we go? How will we go? What will happen to our jobs? If we have to move, will we get our old jobs back in the new homeland? What will happen to our homes, our lands, if we have to move?

  ‘Shri J.B. Kripalani,’ said one letter dated May 14 1947:

  Your advice to the Punjab minorities [i.e. the Hindus and Sikhs who saw themselves as minorities] that those who cannot defend themselves may migrate is extremely shocking. That only indicates that the so-called mighty Congress has failed or cannot or does not desire to defend or protest the helpless minorities of Punjab, Bengal and Sind.

  The Congress having made the Hindus defenceless by preaching the gospel of Ahimsa, now comes with the advice of migration. Can you please let us know, what areas have been allotted to the migrants. What provisions have been made so far to get them settled honourably. Where should they migrate. In what numbers and in what manner. What they are to do with their immovable property. Will you be please able to find jobs for every one, or some business for all. Are they to come like beggars, settle like beggars in your relief camps and depend and subsist upon cast away crumbs of your people in U.P., C.P., Bihar, Bombay etc.

  We have been and are as respectable in our own land of five rivers as the Biharis, Madrasis and Bhaians of U.P. We fully realise that you have secured independence for your 7 Provinces at our cost and you care a hang for what may happen to the Bengalis or the Punjabis. If that is all that you can do for us, if you in no case can advise the Hindus to kill or fight the Mohammedans either in minority Provinces or in majority Provinces, and if you cannot protect us and we are to protect ourselves, then for God’s sake keep off your hands from our affairs. No one of you should trouble your exhaulted (sic) feet to traverse our heated soil. We need no such advice. We cannot be saved by mere lip service. That gives us no material support. We need substantial help to defend ourselves and to maintain the integrity of your mother India.

  We cannot migrate like nomads or gypsies. We shall fight to the last, and God willing shall succeed and survive. But — but if otherwise the fate of Rawalpindi awaits us then it is better — far better — far, far better to become Muslims than to remain Hindus and be beggars to peep for alms at your doors; and be scorned and laughed at by you and your descendants.

  If
you can’t protect us we can’t accept your advice. We are human beings just as you people are. Our lives are as precious and worth living as yours. We don’t want to be Butchers for your magnanimity or elevation. We want to live and live honourably. If the Congress is impotent to protect us then dissolve Congress organisation in the Punjab and let the Hindus have their own course. We need no messages or sermons from high pedestals or from the skys that you soar in.

  Cowards that you are, cowardly that your gospel, and cowardly that you have stuck to it: we bid you adieu. We may perish or survive; we may live or die or live as Hindus or as whatever we may like, for Heaven’s sake if you are not to render us any material help, please go off, keep off and do off.1

  These questions — which remained largely unanswered — and the sense of profound betrayal this particular letter reflects, came from those who understood, or at least apprehended, what could happen. There were others — thousands, perhaps millions — who simply did not believe there would be change, or that it would be of so permanent a nature. Surely their lives could not be upturned that easily? ‘Politicians, kings, leaders have always fought over power,’ said Rajinder Singh, voicing something that was to be echoed by many people again and again, ‘and kings and leaders may change, but when have the people ever had to change?’ (Raje, maharaje badalte rehete hain, par praja kab badli hai?).

  He was wrong, though, as were many others. The people did change, and the change did not relate only to geographical location.