The New Beginning

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Hi Mohammad,

Really one of the best articles that I have read in Chowk, because of the intensity and passion with which you have written. I could almost feel myself taking the same journey with you while reading the article.

Lots of innocent people got killed during the communal riots. and humans became worse than animals, because animals only kill when they are hungry. Today when most of the sub continents population is below 25 years of age and did not witness the pain and horror of partition, hopefully there is less emotional baggage to go around.

Time only will tell. However we have only ourselves to blame for the mess that we find our countries in, and unless we take responsibility and corrective action, we cannot blame an outsider.

Gill Sahib
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. We should have learned lessons from such a terrible events of partition as a society. Unfortunately, we did not do much except blaming on each other. I wish there were a leader who had tried all those who killed innocent people, raped women, and looted other`s property. But that is a romance, which can only exist in books. I remeber an old woman in our neighborhood, who were so happy when many sikhs were killed by the indian army after the assasination of Indra Gandhi.
Many of us behave like barbarians when there is a security vacum. It brings a classic arguement , whether humans are savages or civilized?
It seems that you love Mirza Ghalib. I see his ````shair```` in your article.

saya mera muj sey misl duur bhagai hai
pass muj aatesh bajan kis kai thehra jaey hai

Regards.

You write so well with the absence of malice. Reminds me the story of a family friend who parents were killed in front of his eyes when he was eight years old. As he tells it at times he still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.
Have you considered publishing your stories?

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This article is beautiful in the simplicity with which it describes a truly hellish period. History will one day recall the fact that not one man from either side was punished by either government (Indian or Pakistani), and the responsibility (and therefore the blame) for this goes to the leaders on both sides.

I think you should also narrate this before a video. My elder generation (parents, uncles, aunts) had similar horror stories to tell, and I am sorry that I never recorded them. History must never forget the evil that was visited upon innocent people by thugs from both sides, and one day some historian will note the shameful conduct of both governments in allowing the murderers on their side to walk free.

You have also demonstrated great strength of character in not carrying a grudge, and in recognizing that the vast majority of hindus and sikhs were obviously not involved in these murders. This is your final victory over those cowards who attacked those poor grass cutters that day. My family too did not carry any grudges. Indeed my mother`s brother - as he stood at the Lahore train station uncertain of whether or not my mother would even be able to reach Pakistan safely - was offered a knife by a man on the same station telling him to attack the sikh train that was going the opposite way. My uncle of course refused to fall to this level and told the man to have some fear of God if nothing else.

Gill sahib:
Thank you very much for this poignant narration. It is very important for you as well as others to recount such first hand accounts. Sometimes we do not tall our stories assuming them to be mundane and not worthwhile. Not so!

It is honest an chronicle like this that would enable us to understand ourselves better.

Koh kay hoaN baar-e khatir gUr sada hojaaee-ay
bay takkalluf aye sharar jastaa kyaa hojaaee-ay.

Thanks agian.

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Very moving and honest narration Gill sahib. I have a friend here your ``sirnaawiyaN``...every time I see you name reminds me of him and vice versa.

I had few friends in and around JagrawaN or Jagraon...and used to be frequent visitor there many moons ago....Babu Rajab Ali, a punjabi poet, was a also from a small village near there...

do you remember anything about JagraawaN di Roshni mela? It used to be popular back before partition too..may be you been there.

Almost everyone who was alive before 47 have similar heart rendering stories...my father is about the same age as yours, he was in 6th class that year. These stories need to be told, retold and compiled for future generations...certainly some people can use them to propagate hate but most will see thru and feel the tragic and horrible moments in our history.

This is one of the few narratives on the subject which have the Ferozepur - Kasur border exchange as their location.

Thank you, Mr. Gill. You are amongst the few who has put down bluntly some of the untold truths of this population exchange. The parts about the elderly being left behind, the children being buried alive.

Of people leaving their old, their infirm, their womenfolk, their infants, a few members of their families to safeguard property . . . and subsequently inventing tales of heroism to explain their abscence.

Please look at us as, simply, neighbours. As would we.

I would request one thing more from you, Mr. Gill. With your surname, would you visit Sheikhupura and try to analyse what really happened there in 1947? If the massacres were really so terrible, then how come there are so many ``Jat Sikh Muslims`` there today?

Dear Mr. Gill:

More than just a touching account, this is a perceptive look at history and memories.

[I have been living with these suppressed memories for a long time. I have now tried to take them out of my system by writing this piece. I haven’t told this story in any consistent manner to my children although a few things came out now and then. They are also not interested in hearing this narration. I want them to live their life in their own ways without any influence from my traumatic past.]

You said earlier you returned to normal life and expunged the bitterness, so catharsis (written or otherwise) has helped you. But I feel that adult children ought to be told about what you have suppressed because they could pick up the signals. And that would remain a mystery. You assume they are not interested in hearing your narration, but they will hear it through books, the Net, films...a ``real version`` would help them because you have moved on, life has moved on...

I am in no position to advice anyone, but I had always wanted to know. Contemporary social mores and ideologies are a continuum from history. What we see today can be attributed at least in part to what happened yesterday...although in big metros of India the impact was not felt, I personally benefited by learning about incidents. I had anyway realised that prejudices were extreme and manifest, but when my mother (who was very young then) told me recently about some things, I did not suffer for her traumas (too strong a word in this case, but just making a point...); we have to live with new ones.

Strangely, I find her less bitter about now than I am. I will never understand why she does not feel so strongly about the `93 riots or Gujarat as much as I do...

I suppose we all have different demons to deal with.

Gill Sahib,

I`m surprised at the level of neutrality you demonstrated in your recollection. You actually underwent all that and yet, there was no passion, no hatred, no discussion of motives or guilt...so close to detachment.

Aap sant aadmi hain

#1 Kaurasach

You have rightly pointed out what fanaticism and bigotry can do. For us, who have shared the same land for eons, it very necessary that this be kept, consciously, foremost in the mind, when looking at India-Pakistan relatiions internationally, and when looking at communal and social issue withon our own countries.

For somebody who was born two decades after partition, the horrors that accompanied it are removed in time and space and impact in a rather cerebral way. I have often been admonished for this to the effect that ``tum peh beetee hotee tou . . .`` or ``jis ghar agg laggdee ay pataa uss nouon hee hounda ay keeh keeh sarr gyaa . . .``

I feel Ustaad Daaman expressed the post-partition ethos very sensitively when he said:

``Laali akhkhyaan dee payee dass dee ay
Roaye tussee vee o, roaye assee vee aan``

Siddiqua Haqnawaa

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Gill Sahib,
thank you for sharing this memory with us.

It will take another generation for the wounds to heal.

I would suggest that all CHOWK readers see Sabiha Sumar`s

movie ``Khamosh Pani`` to get another look at the horrors

of Partition.

Ras

That was a moving story. I was four years junior to you at that time, also stuck on the wrong side of the border. My family too all survived though not without injury. Thank you for sharing these precious memories. Maybe I should also write whatever I remember of that period. A minor point. You say,
``Nobody was thinking of leaving their ancestral homes and hearths in East Punjab and physically moving to the new land.``

I am not so sure. At least some of those who had fervently agitated for the new country must have wanted to go to the promised land once it came into being. I do realise that most of them were in the urdu speaking hinterland and not in Panjab.

Gill Sahib,

Putting aside the rationale for partition, one thing we can all agree upon is that it was executed in the most horrific and callous manner which resulted in a holocaust. The British deliberately let things go out of hand by accelerating the timelines, not planning the process properly and not allocating the proper resources. They encouraged a free for all mentality were each side tried to maximize their so called ``gains``, which was mainly to grab as much as possible from the community which became a minority on their side. They drew arbitrary lines on the map which infuriated both sides and they just did not try to come up with an amicable process of separation.

Why did the Brits allow this to happen when they were in charge? Basically, they wanted to give a parting kick to us desis. They had looted us for 200 years and wanted to continue forever. Thanks to WW2, they could not sustain it anymore but they were frustrated at this major loss of their empire. They wanted to kick our collective rears even as they left the subcontinent, a sort of ``see, this is what you get when you get rid of us`` attitude, to show us how uncivilized and barabaric we were without them to lord over us. Of course, as usual we obliged them as we had for the past 200 years.

It has taken us over 50 years to get over that event. Today you have Punjabis and Bengalis on both sides hugging and kissing each other and giving freebies to visitors from the other side. The same people were killing each other`s kids at that time. It just goes to show that the two sides were perfectly capable of negotiating with each other and working out a decent solution, were it not for the criminal way in which partition was implemented. If anyone should be held responsible for the holocaust, it should be the Brits.

Mr Gill..
You share the surname with Sikh and sometimes Christian Gills. Is Gill named after a place or is it a affiliation based upon group or caste or tribe? There is a book by Khosla that puts forth simialr kind of detail on the fate that befell Hindus and Sikhs of West Punjab ,Sindh and NWFP, seems like Baluchistan was also affected but not to the same level as other places.

If for example the Gills are descended from one ancestor why is it not possible to celebrate the common heritage rather create boundaries based upon religion.