Remembering
Punjab's little-known Schindlers, who saved many during Partition violence
Unlike Oskar Schindler, whose efforts to save
Jews in Nazi Germany are well known, these Indian heroes aren't celebrated in
books or movies.
During
the dark years of Nazi rule in Germany, there were Germans who overcame their
fears of the Schutzstaffel, or SS – a paramilitary organisation under Adolf
Hitler and his Nazi Party – and Gestapo, the state secret police, to save many
Jews from certain death. Theirs was a show of human solidarity against a rabid
ideology that sought to inculcate in the Germans hatred against the Jews.
This is best symbolised in popular
imagination by Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved more than a
1,000 Polish Jews. His life was fictionalised by Australian novelist Thomas
Keneally in Schindler’s
Ark, which, in 1993, was turned into a film – Schindler’s
List – by Steven Spielberg.
The film turned Schindler into a global epitome of humanism that is forever under
stress from the brutality of the bad.
Two years after World War II ended in
Europe in May 1945 – and the Jews whom Schindler had protected were set free –
India too was caught in a swirl of hatred even as it gained independence from
British rule.
Sixty-nine years ago, the chimes of
freedom seemed more a death knell to lakhs who perished in the veritable ethnic
cleansing undertaken in east and west Punjab as India was partitioned and
Pakistan was born. The brute in us stalked the country with death and devastation.
Yet, as was true of Nazi Germany, there
were also people in India and Pakistan whom the virus of communal hatred did
not infect. Not only did they refuse to join the murderous mobs, some took
enormous risks to save people of other religious communities. They were India
and Pakistan’s Schindlers – but largely unknown, mostly unsung and barely
finding a mention in the footnotes of our history.
As both countries celebrate their 70th
Independence Day, here is a list of Little Schindlers who courageously saved
lives. This list pertains to Delhi and undivided Punjab; it is not exhaustive.
Save for two entries, the names have been selected from Ishtiaq Ahmed’s The
Punjab: Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed – eyewitness accounts mentioned here
were recorded by him.
Harijan Baba who saved abducted women
A horrific aspect of Partition violence
was the abduction of an estimated 100,000 women. Subsequently, under the
Inter-Dominion Treaty, signed between India and Pakistan on December 6, 1947,
operations to find the abducted women were mounted in both India and Pakistan.
In Delhi, 200 Muslim women were
recovered. The person who rescued most number of women was an old Harijan (the
caste is now called Dalit). His name is not known, nor his modus operandi. Yet,
when social activist Ais Kidwai would ask the women how they fled their
abductors, a good number of them said: “An old Harijan brought me home.”
About the Harijan Baba, Kidwai writes in
her memoirs on the Partition and the first two years of independent India, In
Freedom’s Shade: “Some [abducted women] were recovered by social workers,
some by Jamiat activists, some rescued by the police. A significant number was
recovered by one man, working alone. This noble chamar rescued scores of
abducted girls and secretly returned them to their homes. How I wish I could
have learnt his name, but that remained forever a secret.”
He was truly India’s child of god.
The anonymous
Khaksar of Rawalpindi
Months before India was partitioned, on
the morning of March 5-6, pages torn from the Quran were
found strewn in the area outside Rawalpindi’s Gordon College. A Khaksar
collected these and put it in a well. To ensure the city did not erupt, he
entered a Hindu-Sikh colony to calm people down. The Khaksar was stabbed to
death. Khwaja Masud Ahmed, then a mathematics lecturer at Gordon College,
recalls, “There is no doubt that the RSS was behind that heinous crime. It
triggered rioting, arson, looting and stabbings…”
Formed by Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi to
drive the British out of India, the Khaksar was a militant Islamic group which,
however, was bitterly opposed to the Muslim League. Some Khaksars in Lahore
joined the Muslim League, but those in Rawalpindi remained loyal to their
commander Ashraf Khan, who inspired them to save Hindus and Sikhs in the riots.
About Ashraf Khan, Amar Singh, who left
Rawalpindi to come to India, said: “I must…pay tribute to the Khaksars,
especially their leader, Ashraf Khan. He and his comrades saved many Sikhs and
Hindus.”
Another eyewitness Rashid Ishaq says,
“Our leader Ashraf Khan had taken a vow from us that we would do all we could
to protect whosoever was in distress. Therefore, the Khaksars were always in
the forefront and saved many non-Muslims.”
The Dutt
brothers and Dr Abdur Rauf
During Partition violence, even
hospitals weren't spared. A hospital in Amritsar came under attack from a
Hindu-Sikh mob. Dr Proshottam Dutt and his brother, Dr Narain Das, took out
their guns and confronted the assailants.
Dr Dutt is quoted as having have told
them, “This behaviour of yours is very cowardly…. You can even now repent and
leave otherwise (for) as long as we two brothers are alive and our rifles have
bullets, we will never let you touch the Muslim patients in this hospital.” The
mob dispersed.
A very different logic prompted
Amritsar’s Muslim doctor, Dr Abdur Rauf, to save 200 non-Muslims who were
cornered in Katra Karam Singh locality. Dr Rauf was asked to decide on their
fate. Though said to have been engaged in imparting military skills to Muslims,
Dr Rauf invoked Islamic teaching of moral conduct to counter those who wanted
to avenge the mistreatment of Muslims in other parts of Amritsar. All
non-Muslims were set free.
The Sikh who sheltered hundreds of
Muslims
Amritsar, too, erupted in March 1947,
and many localities witnessed pitched battles between Hindus-Sikhs and Muslims.
One man who is still remembered among Amritsari Muslims in Lahore is Bawa
Ghansham, a Sikh who was a member of the Communist Party of India.
He gave refuge to hundreds of Muslims in
his house. Most eyewitness accounts testify to the salutatory role the
communists played on both sides of the border during Partition violence.
Mother Courage
and her seven sons
In Gujjial village, Jhelum district,
there were seven brothers who were in the British army and were captured by
Germans during World War II. Their salaries and property were managed by
Raghbir Singh Sahni’s parents.
When the raiders attacked Gujjial
village, 70 Sikhs took shelter with the Sahnis. The mother of seven brothers
exhorted them: “Mein dudh tadd bakshan gi jey
tusi annadey kum aoy (For
the milk you have sucked from my breasts, go forward and save these Sikhs.)”
The brothers took positions on the
rooftop of Sahni’s house with their rifles, warning the assailants that they
would be shot at in case they dared to attack the Sikhs. The assailants melted
away. The Sikhs were evacuated to Chakwal – and then to Patiala. Of the
brothers, Sahni remembers one name: Bostan Khan
The police
officer who guarded a mosque
On August 17, 1947, in Firozepur, east
Punjab, Lala Dhuni Chand informed the father of Malik Muhammad Aslam about an
attack that the RSS and Sikhs were planning. Sure enough, the attack began at
10 pm. Around 300 Muslims took shelter in a local mosque, which was chosen
because of its proximity to a police station.
The station head officer, Trilok Nath,
was quick to post armed Muslim guards outside the mosque. Nath was an exception
because many police officers turned partisans in Punjab. Aslam cites Nath’s
neutrality as the reason why the mosque wasn’t attacked.
However, Aslam’s father had not carried
his insulin injection to the mosque. As the sugar level steadily rose, the
father became visibly ill. At 3 am, slipping through the city under curfew,
Dhuni Chand’s son, Amarnath, came to the mosque to inquire whether Aslam and
his parents were safe. Amarnath offered to fetch insulin from his father’s
medicine shop.
Amarnath never returned.
Aslam later learned that Amarnath was
shot dead by the RSS for helping Muslims. In his oral testimony, he said: “I
still remember the night when Amarnath volunteered to go to his shop to get the
medicine my father needed but was killed by fanatics of his own community. His
father and mother must have been devastated.”
Aslam’s father became too ill to join
the caravan going to Pakistan on foot. He too died.
An ashram that became a refuge
When Delhi and its vicinity reeled under
communal violence, a small ashram of Swamiji of Narela became the refuge of
Muslim peasants. He guarded them from marauders for days. When the violence
abated, Swamiji suggested that they temporarily shift to their relatives’ homes
in Uttar Pradesh, even accompanying them across the Yamuna to ensure they were
not attacked. He promised he would facilitate their return as soon as normalcy
was restored.
Unlettered, Swamiji secured permission
from Gandhi to call the Muslims back and rehabilitate them. They remained in
his ashram for months, as he persuaded the landlords to restore their customary
tenancy rights.
Since Kidwai doesn’t mention the name of
Swamiji, who was a Congress member, I asked writer and scholar Gopalkrishna
Gandhi to help me identify him. He referred me to Supreme Court lawyer Anil
Nauriya, who has a keen interest in and has written on the national movement.
Accessing the archives of the Centre for South Asian Studies, Cambridge
University, Nauriya identified him as Swami Saroopanandji.
Of him, Kidwai wrote: “After meeting
some fine Congressis like Swamiji, I often thought to myself that Man emerged
once again in these rural areas. Bapu’s deeds weren’t in vain… He planted a few
trees, under whose shade weary souls would find rest.”
The Tapiala
Dost Muhammad Village Peace Committee
It is a village located in Sheikhupura
district, Lahore Division. Two-third of its population was Muslim, the
remaining Khatri Hindus plus two Sikh families. A display of arms during
Pakistan‘s Independence Day celebrations in the vicinity of Tapiala prompted
its residents to organise a peace committee.
On August 25-26 in 1947, some 1500 armed
outsiders attacked Tapiala. Around 60 Khatri Hindu families barricaded
themselves in two large houses. The peace committee’s resistance was overcome –
and the two houses were set on fire. Some Hindus killed their female family
members before they tried to escape.
It was only around 11 am the attackers
retreated. Gurbachan Singh Tandon, then in Class VIII, received a blow from an
axe and fell unconscious; his brother was killed, but family elders survived.
The survivors were sheltered in the
village for another 10-12 days, during which three more attacks were launched
against them, each repulsed by the peace committee, which was now better
prepared. Of the peace committee members, Tandon says, “I remember two names
now – Chaudhri Mu’af Ali and Sheikh Muhammad Bashir.”
The man who
saved Sunil Dutt’s uncle
The ancestral village of late film star
Sunil Dutt’s was Khurd, about 20 km from Jhelum town. He was brought up by his tayaji, or uncle, who was among the principal
landholders there. When the army evacuated the Hindus from the area, Dutt’s tayaji refused to go.
In his Friday sermon, the local Maulvi
asked why a non-Muslim was living in Khurd. Dutt’s tayaji shifted to an adjoining village, Nawan
Kot, where resided Yakub, a classmate of Dutt’s father. When Dutt’s absence
from Khurd was noticed, the assailants swooped in on Yakub’s residence.
“But Yakub and brothers took out their
guns saying that their guest was dearer to them than their own life,” Dutt told
Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed in an oral testimony before his death. Yakub gave a horse to
Dutt’s tayaji to ride in the middle of night to the
refugee camp at Jhelum.
The saviour of
cricketer Inzamam-ul-Haq’s family
On a tour of India, Inzamam-ul-Haq was
met by a young man who gave the cricketer the telephone number of his mother,
Pushpa Goel, requesting that he hand it over to his parents in Multan. Sure
enough, the call from Multan came. Haq’s father hadn’t forgotten Pushpa, whose
parents had sheltered him and his family from a murderous mob in Hansi, Hissar
district, Haryana.
Pushpa was invited to the cricketer’s
wedding. "It was like coming back to one’s own family," she said.
"I can never forget my visit to Multan.”
In 2016, though, both India and Pakistan
seem to have forgotten the heroes of Punjab whose conduct during the horrific
Partition violence remains a lesson to us on what it means to be human.
Ajaz
Ashraf is a journalist in Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, has as its backdrop the demolition of the Babri
Masjid. It is available in bookstores.
