The past still haunts

Khalid Hussain

THE partition of India into two nations was a great tragedy for the subcontinent. The Quit India Movement saw participation from people of all faiths. They fearlessly fought against the British rule, comrades embraced death happily, but when the political struggle was near its end and victory was close, our brotherhood drowned in communal hatred. Violence consumed centuries of harmony. Religious fanatics slaughtered innocents and raped women belonging to the same race, language and culture. We attained freedom, sure, but at what cost? 1947 was an orgy of horror, terror and brutality.

Jammu and Kashmir was divided too. We lived in the beautiful Udhampur town in the present Udhampur district. Ours was a large family — grandfather, my parents, uncles, aunts and siblings, including two elder brothers and a sister. When ‘trouble’ began, my father, who was headmaster at a high school, sent us children, along with my mother, to a nearby village under the protection of one of his close Hindu friends, Lala Amar Nath Vakeel. His village was called Jagaoon. He entrusted us to one of his reliable men who looked after his farms. He was told to keep our presence at the farm confidential. We were hidden inside a cattle shed. My mother was in the family way. She had already completed her term and the birth of her baby was overdue. It was in the cattle shed that she delivered a baby boy.

While we were leaving our home, my father’s sister had handed over all the girls of our family to a few Dalit households we knew well. Should none of us return alive to reclaim them, they were requested to raise the girls as they deemed fit.

The marauders got our scent as hunting dogs sense the presence of prey. In no time, they were upon us, demanding that my mother hand over the boys to them. My mother, even as she was suffering the rigors of childbirth, resisted the fanatics with all her might and declared that she would prefer to lay down her life as well as the lives of her children than part with them. The marauders went away threatening to return. They knew that my mother had just delivered the baby and could not undertake any travel to escape from there.

But my mother and aunt decided to abandon the shelter that very evening. My mother put tilak, vermillion, on our foreheads so that we could pass off as Hindus. She also gave us Hindu names and told us to reply with those names should someone ask us on the way. We walked through the night and finally reached a forest known as Barta. For the next 10 days, we remained hidden in the jungle.

In the meantime, things began to change. Sheikh Abdullah was released from prison and Maharaja Hari Singh appointed him the administrator. A search for the surviving families was ordered and one team reached us in the forest and rescued us. We were shifted to a refugee camp in Jammu where we came to know that all the male members of our family, which included my grandfather, father and three uncles and two brothers, had been gunned down. At the time, my elder sister, who had rejoined us upon our return, was nine, my elder brother was seven and I was three.

After some time, we were shifted from the refugee camp in Jammu to a refugee camp in Srinagar, along with about 20,000 Punjabi and Dogri-speaking Muslim women and children. We spent seven years at that camp.

Since my father was a government functionary, we received his pension and moved to a rented accommodation in Srinagar. My mother began stitching clothes and struggled to make both ends meet. The sense of abandonment grew stronger with each passing day. The trauma of having lived through those horrific times and loss of dear kith and kin, coupled with poverty and helplessness, became part of my childhood. All this contributed in making me a writer. Writing was the only refuge that I could find. It kept me afloat amid the sea of sorrows surrounding my existence.

My sister passed her matriculation and got appointed as a teacher. And when I completed my matriculation, I landed a job as a clerk. I had to work very hard to come up in life. The struggles paid off and I now lead a comfortable and contented life. But a fear always nudges my heart — fear of the past coming back to the present and destroying the future. I do not want another uprooting. Not for me, not for anyone else. The present times often frighten me.

Our ancestors had betrayed their own and I am ashamed of their savagery. Today, I apologise to all who were targeted, uprooted and destroyed due to the actions of our elders. These elders were Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, but certainly not humans, because they let loose hell upon innocents. I wish we all apologised to our own as it was us who destroyed each other’s lives.

In the 75th year of India’s freedom, I want all of us to pledge that we will not pass on the poison of hatred, fundamentalism and extremism to our coming generations. We will have to stop the storms that seem to be gathering on the horizon and save our land from destruction. Instead, we must work day and night for establishing a cohesive, peaceful society where our children and their children live in peace and prosper as good and caring human beings.

— The Jammu-based Punjabi and Urdu writer is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2021

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