4 days to cross Jammu border

Brig SS Virdi (retd)

My father, Dr Man Singh, had set up a rural eye centre in a remote village of Shakargarh tehsil in Gurdaspur district to provide medical cover to the poor, sacrificing a promising career after graduating from King Edward Medical College, Lahore. The hospital was north of the Ravi river; the rest of the district was south of the river. It had no road or communication link, and no electricity. Even telegrams and newspapers reached us after three days. In the days leading to Partition, communal riots had erupted in several cities and we thought these were for the delineation of the border.

I was studying in a rural high school and had no trouble appearing for my Matric examinations, which commenced on March 7, 1947. I was preparing to join Khalsa College in Amritsar, where my father had studied and had built a house opposite the college. Everyone thought that once the British were out, the boundary was marked and a democratic setup started functioning, the riots would stop. We were living in a fool’s paradise.

The boundary with Pakistan was not defined till a few days after Independence was declared, and no one could tell us whether Shakargarh was in India or Pakistan. Those who lived away from the projected border knew for months that they would come under Pakistan, and might have to shift. They had made suitable plans, but we never thought we would be called upon to move.

Thus, on the fateful day of August 23, we saw the villages between the hospital and the Ravi being set afire. Rifle shots could be heard and we were completely taken off guard when the wounded started arriving in the hospital. My father started attending to them but when the influx became heavy, he realised that he too was a Sikh and his family could be the next target. He collected all his eight children, the eldest being my sister who was 17 and the youngest just three, and asked us to hide in the corn fields. He took his double-barrel gun.

His staff members were all Sikh, so everyone panicked since the nearest route to safety was across the Ravi, but every village between our location and the river had been set on fire and residents were being shot at indiscriminately. It was a precarious situation since all the villages in the area were Sikh-dominated.

My father thought it would be safe to go to Kanjrur, the Hindu-dominated town 4 miles away, so he gathered a few precious items, locked the house, and we set out on foot in the evening, thinking of returning when things stabilised. There, we found that everyone had already fled. We had to change course and follow the Basantar river, a tributary of the Ravi, and by the morning, after walking for about 10 miles, we reached a high rail embankment leading to the Dera Baba Nanak bridge. It was at this time that my father spotted a group of men on horses coming full gallop, brandishing weapons. The villagers who had accompanied us ran behind the embankment and only the two of us were left to face the attackers. My father loaded both barrels and fired two shots in quick succession, downing the leading horseman. The rest veered around and galloped away.

We were expecting another attack so we hid in the fields. By evening, my father decided to move towards the west i.e. deeper into Pakistan where he expected some setup for help. At an abandoned village, we were halted by a posse of policemen. They lined up everyone and the SI ordered his sepoys to shoot at random. My father reacted strongly: “What kind of a Muslim are you, attacking unarmed and beleaguered men, women and children?” He responded, “What your ASI Brindavan is doing to Muslims in Dera Baba Nanak, I am doing here. In any case, who are you?” When my father spoke his name, the SI asked his men to move away and sought forgiveness. Both his parents had been operated upon for cataract by my father.

He then told us that going westward meant sure death and we should instead move north to Jammu where we had a better chance of survival if luck favoured us. We changed direction and started moving north towards Dhamthal, but since it was dark and everyone was tired and hungry, we slept in an abandoned village.

On the third day, we resumed our march and reached Dhamthal, but here too everyone was leaving for Jammu. Some had horses and weapons like spears, etc. A group of young ex-Army Sikh jawans came to my father and told him that the next village was Muslim-dominated and everyone was being attacked. They, however, said that they would lead the group the next day and hence my father should give them his double-barrel gun and take their .16 bore single-barrel gun. Since we were a large family, we were told to come in the rear of the column.

Everyone was dead tired and the children could hardly move. My mother was exhausted and was pleading that she should be left to die, but we coaxed her to somehow carry on. My scalp had become so sore from carrying an attaché that even to touch it was painful, but the instinct to survive egged us on.

As we neared Zafarwal village, a Dogra soldier in civvies met my father and told us that we should follow him as that very morning a group had been attacked. We saw a huge pile of small weapons like spears and axes with which the earlier group had defended themselves, and my father’s double-barrel gun in that heap. A policeman in uniform was guarding it.

We turned east as per the directions of the Dogra soldier and when we emerged on the other side, we saw a huge Muslim crowd with swords, spears and other weapons in the west. We were lucky that we had turned east. They started moving menacingly towards us.

My mother had fainted by now, so we requested a man with a buffalo to allow us to load her on its back. I was carrying the attaché case on my head and my three-year-old sister on my shoulder. My elder sister was handling smaller children and my father with other men faced the menacing Muslim crowd, now shouting at the top of their voice and brandishing their swords and other weapons. My father had also raised his arm to show that he had a gun.

We quickened our steps on the direction of the Dogra soldier. After about an hour of the traumatic chase, we had left them far behind. By late afternoon, on the fourth day, we crossed the Jammu border to safety. There was a small tail-end distributary of Ranbir Canal with flowing water so we had our fill and were very grateful for having survived.

The threat was over but the issue of moving via Madhopur to our house in Amritsar, 300 km away, in an extremely disturbed environment took 16 more days. In Amritsar, our house was located on GT Road to Lahore. On the other side was the rail track just 100 yards away. Thousands of Muslim refugees from India were moving in convoys on foot, with Pakistan army protection and trainloads on the other side. Curfew and rifle shots were a daily routine. Many trains were derailed and looted.

As the convoys moved, there were piles of bodies left behind. It was a gross display of savagery by those who had been living together for millennia. The British had successfully planted such hatred in the name of religion.

The only silver lining was the conduct of my father’s eldest brother, who had a flour mill and would get tubs of water filled and placed on GT Road and as many chapattis as possible cooked daily for the Muslims moving on foot before the curfew siren was sounded. He used to say it was thanksgiving for sparing the lives of his younger brother’s family.

It took over three years before our family attained some kind of normalcy. We lost our elder sister and my father was jobless till he got posted as a Medical Officer at Qadian in 1950.

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