On trail of Partition memories

Amritlal Madan

Smug and well-settled in the comforts of towns and cities, have we ever given a thought to the then- plight of millions of refugees that descended on the soil of Haryana (then a part of Punjab) 71 years ago in the wake of bloody Partition? Many a thousand of these unfortunate (and fortunate, too) people are around 80 years of age or above. 

They still retain the sad memories of those tragic times with nostalgia. I’d better call them festering wounds. Just a little scratch is enough to make them roll out the stormy events that uprooted a whole Hindu-Sikh populace overnight from their centuries’ old homes and hearths, and relations with Muslim brethren and neighbours and then wade through slushy rivers of blood to reach Indian side. How can they ever forget maddening massacres, the gory incidents of loot and arson and grisly shadowy days and nights, fearing grim uncertainties? And, once on this side of the newly created artificial border, their long, unending queues for ration and clothing in dirty over-crowded refugee camps, and those foul-mouthed invectives of ‘refugees’ and ‘Pakistanis’ in local bazaars and streets. Yet they anyhow continued with the remaining shred of life with hard work, and a sense of self-respect, never begging, never protesting the ill-treatment. And this dignity, this endurance of theirs ultimately won the hearts of the local populace both in rural and urban areas of Haryana. They gradually became an integral part of Haryana through assimilation and mutual exchange of food and ideas .Yet sadly, no concerted attempts were made by the state or Central government to collect and chronicle their little accounts and tales of grit through suffering. In order to rectify this wrong, a young man from Kurukshetra, Keshav Mehta, with a camera sets out on his own to seek out the diminishing generation of elderly persons who still remember in  detail their train journeys, their long marches in refugee caravans, their fateful encounters with death and disease on their way, and also the brave-heart saviours of a different faith who appeared on the scene to save them from a certain death at a great risk. 

Keshav contacted about 100 such persons in  Haryana, Punjab and Delhi and assiduously made an equal number of films of about an hour each. He not only uploaded these on social media, but also showed these to interested audiences at different places in recent months. 

I, myself a sufferer-narrator, was present at two such presentations — one at Kaithal on February 18, 2018, and the other at Kurukshetra Deputy Commissioner Sumedha Kataria’s official residence on March 4.  Sumedha was to join Panipat as Deputy Commissioner the very next day. She had also invited elderly narrators, both men and women, Hindus and Sikhs, from far and wide, to watch a 50-minute film on the memories of Partition, and also to honour them before an elite gathering of social activists, writers and intellectuals. 

The meet was also addressed by Dr Chander Trikha, a former director of the Haryana Sahitya Akademy and a prolific writer on the theme of Partition, and Maadhav Kaushik of Bhiwani, who is now the Vice-President of the Central Sahitya Akademi. They referred to Khushwant Singh’s novel “Train to Pakistan” and to my award winning novel “Sindhuputra” in the context of Partition bloodshed. 

Coincidentally, Dr Trikha, Dr Rana Ganauri, MP Chand and I were earlier invited to watch Keshu Films in September 2016 at a function and recite to a tearful audience our experiences of visiting Pakistan after Partition. Another writer, Udaibhanu Hans, the Rajya Kavi of Haryana since its inception, was honoured at his residence in Hisar due to his age and failing health. All authors were christened ‘Multani Sarhadzaade’. The elderly persons present at the Kurukshetra Deputy Commissioner’s sprawling residence included wrinkled and toothless faces such as Pritam Kaur, Surjit Kaur from Sahiwal of Pakistan, Jagjit Singh Virk from Gujranwala, Sohna Ram (100), Harbans Lal Kathuria (84) , and other migrants from various parts of Pakistan Punjab and now settled in different parts of Haryana. Some of these 40 persons were invited to the dais to express their feelings and most of them broke down while speaking. 

A few women, of course, burst into singing marriage songs or songs of separation from their native land and also from their childhood Muslim friends. The benumbed audience sat glued to their seats with dimmed eyes. Keshav proposes to show these interviews and films in most other towns of Haryana in near future. 

Another valuable service that Keshav is rendering to the people of both countries  is recording the voices of long-lost friends, or of residents of a village or town for the benefit of those on the other side. He has recorded voice-messages of people of my own native town of Taunsa Shrif in DG Khan district and I had bitterly cried while listening to them. Keshav has put up my film on YouTube, the last viewership count was 6,082. Some of such other films have the viewership running up to a lakh even. Most of the viewers are from Pakistan who too cry bitterly having been separated so cruelly by the destiny of two nations. But attempts of organisations such as Keshu Films transcend all man-created barriers of religion or region. Humans are after all one race in this vast universe! 

(The writer is former Principal of Jat College, Kaithal)