The story Intikhab Alam remembered

My late father, Baba Harkishan Singh Bedi, who served as the Chief Electrical Engineer with the Simla MC from 1939 to 1948, was instrumental in saving the lives of his Muslim colleagues during the Partition. Our house was located in a small colony — a cluster of a few houses in Kaithu called Court Hill — where families of Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus and Christians lived.

Simla had been, by and large, quiet and free of riots but by August 1947 some people from the plains, who were survivors of the massacres in Punjab, caused tension. The Muslim families in the colony decided to migrate to Pakistan. A camp was established near the gurdwara on the Simla-Kalka road for Pakistan-bound migrants.

Muslims of the colony, including one of our neighbours, the Khan family, took shelter in our house. However, some Sikh migrants were keen to avenge the massacre of their kin in Punjab. They approached my father to hand over the Muslims to them. Refusing to do so, he warned that they could only harm them over his dead body. The leader of the Sikhs indicated that they would not harm the ‘direct descendants’ (Bedis) of Guru Nanak, but said these Muslims would have to move to the migrants’ camp set up by the government. The only route to the gurdwara was from Circular Road, passing above our house. Thereafter, they kept a close vigil on our house. I was about 10 and we could see two or three Sikhs with unsheathed swords in their hands, sitting at a place overlooking our house.

Early one morning, my father woke everyone and pointed to the foggy weather outside during the rainy season. He arranged for the evacuation of the Muslim families to the Electric Power House located below our house in the thick tree-covered jungle area through a pagdandi, and further to the Simla-Kalka road through a jungle track. All affected persons from the colony reached the camp safely.

This incident came to mind after what former Pakistan cricketer Intikhab Alam told our celebrated spinner Bishan Singh Bedi when they met at Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib recently. Alam narrated that his family, while living in Kaithu area of Simla, had been saved from the rioters by a Bedi family. It’s admirable that there are still some people in Pakistan who cherish the memory of a selfless, brave Sikh.

The act of saving the Muslims was in stark contrast to the incidents of bloodshed on both sides of the border in 1947. It’s a lesson to emulate today amid the menace of hate speech and derogatory references to faiths followed by different people.