He was born in Lahore when Pakistan had not yet been created. Some years ago, when he was still around, he told me his story. And this is how it goes, as far as it is possible to reconstruct it faithfully.
My memory is hazy. I was 14-years-old and had just started high school. Being in high school made me feel a bit like a grown up. Still, I did not understand much that was going on. Looking back now I am trying to make some sense of it. It was early in 1947. There was a big procession of Hindus and Sikhs meandering through a predominantly Muslim area. I joined it as a curious teenager but safely, at a distance. The procession was suddenly attacked by a group of local Muslims. By now a large number of Muslims had rallied around the idea of a separate state of Pakistan. And they did not take kindly to a procession protesting against the award of Lahore to what would soon become the new independent state of Pakistan. The resultant violence pitted Muslims against Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore, and soon spread elsewhere.
The communal frenzy did not make sense to me. And nobody sought to explain it to me either. Being born Hindu was supposedly a sufficient explanation in opposing Muslims and the other way around. I was frightened stiff at night with the ‘war cries’ of rival communities bellowing across street barriers. To be sure, India had communal riots before. But this time it was different. There was a finality of sorts: to expel or kill.
It all seemed apocalyptic to a child already afflicted with myriad insecurities. I was the youngest child in a large family. In an essentially hierarchical family unit, I was at the bottom of the heap, which meant that everyone else had authority over me. Such delegation of authority down the line was a convenient and, perhaps, necessary way of running large households. My mother and father had so much to do and there was no way they could look after us all equally. But this is hindsight. At the time, I was miserable. Being the youngest, I ended up being everyone’s ward and nobody’s responsibility.
It was an adult world. Children were supposed to remain out of sight but not out of reach. I had to account for my day’s activities. And I was accountable to almost everyone in the family but most of all to my eldest brother. He had a special status in the family. He was not only the eldest but was also bringing money home and had virtually replaced my father as the family patrician. The family’s relative prosperity owed so much to his energy and enterprise.
At 20, he was considered right for marriage. My parents soon found him a bride. His marriage was my nightmare. I was only six-years-old at the time. His metamorphosis from a brother into a family tyrant was swift. Being the youngest I felt it the most. He even started to dominate my parents. In no time my father virtually abdicated in his favour. It was his way of coming to terms with the new reality. My eldest brother, the newly minted family patrician, had successfully revived my father’s languishing business. And now dominated business and the family.
There was some opposition from my mother who did not like her eldest son’s new, imperious ways. She attributed it to his wife’s nefarious influence. The shadow fight between my mother and my brother’s wife was an ugly affair. However, it was an unequal fight, causing my mother misery and humiliation. She did not even have my father’s support as he made peace with the changing reality. My mother was a sad woman.
I was a witness to my mother’s humiliation. But at that age I did not understand the complexity of a changing family equation. In many ways, my mother seemed as helpless as I was. And this created in me a special bond with her born out of shared adversity. However, my mother was not aware of her youngest son’s emotional state. She had so much on her plate, managing a large family. Besides, children were not supposed to have feelings. I was, therefore, unable to reach out to my parents or anyone else for sympathy, understanding and love.
Besides this family drama, other momentous events were taking place in the outside world. I was about six-years-old when World War II started. The country was under British rule. Indian soldiers were fighting for the Raj against Germany and Japan. I remember snippets of the war period picked up from adult conversation at the time. I remember the glee with which men in the neighbourhood greeted a string of British defeats early in the war. I remember the periodic blackouts in Lahore for fear of Japanese air raids, which never eventuated. I also vividly remember charity collections for the Bengal famine of 1943. The famine, which cost an estimated three million lives, was believed to have been largely man made by the British fear of Japanese advance through Burma.
World War II hastened India’s freedom struggle. As a child I did not quite understand what colonial rule actually meant but I did know that the British were different from us and they came from a far-away place across the oceans, and were somehow superior to brown and black-skinned Indians. At school, we were told stories of the Englishman’s rectitude, strength of character and patriotism. I particularly remember one story (told a number of times) of an Englishman who refused to buy cheaper Japanese goods and insisted on buying British items. The moral of the story was that they deservedly were the ruling class because they had virtues we Indian lacked.
Even as a child I vaguely felt inferior as an Indian. I recall how a group of us children ran into an English boy, probably a little younger than us, during a daytime stroll through the picturesque Lawrence Gardens in Lahore. From a safe distance we started sniggering at him, as children often do to overcome their sense of inferiority. But we ran for cover as soon as the English lad picked up a stone from the road to aim at us.
(To be continued)
The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at [email protected]