Daily Times

Why, in 1947, was India partitioned? Was partition inevitable? Usually, these two questions dominate political discussions between the people from India and Pakistan. In search of their own answers, a plethora of books, research papers and articles have been written but none of them have provided a satisfactory reason for the partition of India, accepted by at least a close majority of people. Likewise, people who witnessed or were indirect victims of partition have different narratives of communal genocides and displacement. Many are still living with deep hatred against others while some are so affectively and emotionally attached to their ancestral land that any mention about it brings tears to their eyes. I can understand the reasons behind these reactions of people belonging to both categories because they lost their near and dear ones and were displaced from their ancestral lands for no fault of their own. Fortunately, I have met people from both categories and they have been kind enough to share their emotive memories about partition with me.
In the last week of November I met the Sikh brothers whose ancestral place is Lahore. Their affection towards their ancestral land can be measured by the fact that their music shop in Daryaganj, New Delhi, is named Lahore Music House (LMH). The reason why I went there was that Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed, during his recent visit to Delhi, wanted to buy a harmonium. As I did not have knowledge about shops selling musical instruments, I wrote a mail to Devika Mittal of Aghaaz-i-Dosti to do me a favour. After a day she wrote back with the address and phone number of LMH and two other shops. When I mentioned the three options to Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed, without giving any second thought, he opted for LMH. Entering the shop, after we caught a glimpse of the instruments, he introduced himself as a Lahori and started conversation in Lahori Punjabi. Our main aim was to know the reason why the shop was named after Lahore, to explore the roots of the owners and not to get any concessions that we could have gotten at any other shop too.
After the owner came to know that the professor is from Lahore, he became nostalgic and started talking about his roots, partition and other related incidents. The elder brother was six years old when India was partitioned in 1947. The family had been settled in Lahore where his father owned a medicine shop. He said that as the violence spread in Lahore his family packed a few necessary things and left the city. They went to Jammu, from where they went to Amritsar, before finally settling down in Delhi. He also shared memories of his childhood days, his home and the cityscape. The army was already divided on religious lines, he said, and there was no reason to trust the police because of their spewing inter-community hatred. As he was narrating these things tears were rolling down from his eyes. He wiped them them away again and again but they kept on rolling. It seemed as though for many years he had been compelled to keep them under control but, on that day, they became volcanic enough to not be managed by anyone.
Interrupting him, I asked whether he had visited Lahore after the partition of 1947. He said that he had not but his younger brother, who was there, had visited Pakistan as a part of Sikh jatthas (pilgrims) to Nankana Sahib in the 1980s. His younger brother said that during his visit he went to Shahdara and also to Lahore. In Lahore, he visited the medicine shop once owned by his father. The person in charge of the shop, after knowing about him and his past, took him to the ancestral home his family had left behind in 1947. There he met an old woman who was the post-partition owner of their ancestral home. She took him to the mundi of the house where the medicine that his father used to store there was still being kept. When Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed asked why they changed from a medicine to musical instruments’ shop, the elder brother said that their father had been a music lover. He also informed us that in the past, many famous Pakistani singers had paid visits to their shop.
After spending more than an hour of productive time in LMH, both of us left the shop with the harmonium. The questions with which I started the piece will be, time and again, interpreted by scholars from around the world, but what about those emotions with which many were/are forced to live? I may be cynical but the reality is, as the foundation of the relationship between the two countries has been laid down in hatred, it is not going to improve. The elites from both countries have set up various forums to meet, exchange pleasantries and make false promises; they do not care about the emotions of the common people.

The writer specialises in Indian internal security and foreign policy as well as regional water conflicts