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- Title:
- Oral history with Arghwani Begum, 2015 August 31.
- Author:
- Begum, Arghwani, 1922- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Begum, Arghwani, 1922-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Arghwani Begum was born on 2nd January, 1922 at the Princely State of Sahaspur in Uttar Pradesh. Her mother, Ms Ghafoorunisa was a purdah-observing home-maker. Her father, Mr Samiullah Khan was a Governor of the Princely State of Sahaspur with 22 villages in the Bijnor district under his possession and supervision. Residents of the villages were mainly Muslim, Hindu and Christian families and most of them were farmers, she recalls. “Seasonal crops were grown in the villages with mainly rice, sugarcane, pulses and sesame from what I’ve seen. A portion of the harvest would come to my father. That was our family’s main source of income,” she says. The irrigation system for the lands at Sahaspur was well-based. Each village in Sahaspur had its own well.She grew up with three sisters at their haveli (mansion) in Sahaspur. Arghwami Begum is the youngest. Electricity came to Sahaspur in 1934, when Arghwani Begum was 10 years old. “Before electricity arrived in our area, we used to have oil-powered fans,” she recalls.Their haveli was segregated into mardana (male) and zanana (female) sections including the living rooms, dining areas and the kitchens, she recalls. “Men and women living in the house were not allowed to trespass into each other’s sections,” she says. The same rules applied to the servants and the maids, she says. There was a separate building for guests within the haveli and stables for the elephants and the horses as well, and a garage for cars. Food used to be made by the cooks. “We used to have both male and female cooks assigned to the dining areas. The men used to eat outside mainly, while the women ate inside,” she recalls. Copper pans and utensils were mainly used for cooking. “On the first or second of every month, they’d be electroplated,” Arghwani Begum’s clothes, shoes and other household amenities mainly came from Delhi and Muradabad. Jewellers from Delhi used to come to Sahaspur to sell gold and diamond necklaces and earrings as well, she says.Recalling her early childhood days, Arghwani Begum says she was overtly fond of climbing the trees. “I used to get together with my friends and climb the falsa and the morus trees and pluck the fruits.” She recalls having many dolls and playing with her friends. “Sometimes we would marry the dolls and enact a proper Indian wedding in their honour. Our mothers used to stitch the wedding clothes for the dolls,” she recalls. Most of Arghwani Begum’s childhood friends were daughters of farmers from all ethnic and religious backgrounds who used to visit her haveli with their parents quite often, especially during harvest seasons and crops distribution days. “Before I entered my teens, I was officially a boy with no purdah restrictions,” she says.She learnt to read and write in Urdu at home. “We used wooden boards to write in Urdu. We’d use two types of bamboo pens, the ones with flat nibs was used for writing alphabets and the ones with narrow nibs were used for punctuation marks and dots,” she recounts. Arghwani Begum received her early and advanced religious schooling at home as well. She never went to an academic school of learning. “My father was against it. I grew up on Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s compilation of Islamic teachings in Urdu called the Bahishti Zewar and the novels of Maulana Nazir Ahmad Dehlvi,” she says.In 1935, Arghwani Begum and her family went on their first annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia on ship via Karachi. “I used to run around in the ship a lot. We were at sea for 10 days before reaching Mecca. We completed the pilgrimage at Mecca and Medina, and then went to Jeddah. We stayed there for about three months and returned to Karachi via Jeddah,” she says.In 1943, she was married into a family from Delhi. “It was a three-month long wedding considering the time-consuming journeys on elephants. The barat stayed at our haveli for seven days,” she recalls.By 1947, Arghwani Begum, mother of two children, a daughter and a son, was pregnant with her third child. Recalling events leading up to Partition, she said Hindu-Muslim communal tensions had begun to escalate after May 1940, when the Pakistan resolution was passed. “Before that, there was lot of unity and trust between the Hindus and Muslims. We began to see the effects of the resolution when fighting started to erupt in the villages of Sahaspur,” she says.She was 25 years old and at Rang Mehal in Delhi when Partition was announced. She was in her eighth or ninth month of pregnancy. “I really didn’t have any clear understanding of what is going on when our boxes were getting packed with valuables and necessities. My family told me that we are moving out of the haveli and nothing else,” she recalls.They set out from Sahaspar in the family’s motor vehicles with her children, mother-in-law, husband, sister-in-law, uncles and their families for the Purana Qila (Old Fort) of Delhi. “At the Fort, we didn’t have a roof to sit under as there were so many families there and it was raining immensely. One of the families at the camp, in charge of pegging tents saw us and immediately pegged a tent around us. Arghwani Begum spent the night there and the next morning went into labour. She gave birth to her third child, a son, at the Old Fort migrant camp at Delhi, a day after Partition. Arghwani Begum’s sister-in-law had started crying incessantly after holding her new-born nephew “but I didn’t register why”, she recalls. “There were no clothes for the baby. He was draped in one of my daughter’s frocks,” she says.They stayed at the Old Fort for two days and carried on to the Nizamuddin Railway Station in Delhi in the army jeeps that were expected to pick them up. “At the station, while everyone was worried about having something to eat before the train departed, I wanted to get on the train immediately. I hadn’t eaten for nearly three days but had no hunger for food. I just wanted the journey to end,” she says.During her journey to Lahore from Delhi that started on the 17th of August, her train made stops at various stations. Recalling a night’s stay at the Amroha Railway Stop, she says lots of people got off the train in desperation to get water and eatables for the journey but never returned. “At some stations that were downhill, we saw people from the hilly areas rushing towards our train with food and drinks for the refugees for the rest of the journey. It was a relief to see that but I still didn’t have the heart to eat or drink anything,” she says. As her train continued to move, Arghwani Begum witnessed the massacre of Sikh passengers in a train passing by theirs in the opposite direction. “There were men climbing and entering that train with swords and knives. I saw the sudden commotion and heard their screams and cries of panic. I also witnessed men jumping off that train with their women and girls. It was horrifying.” she recounts.Her train finally made it to the Wagah border on the 20th of August but it was not the end of the ordeal as our train had come under attack too. “It was so sudden. We immediately sealed shut the windows of our train with whatever we could get our hands on. My baby almost fainted due to lack of Oxygen in our berth. One of the male helpers in the train helped my baby get some air through the train’s main entrance while the killing spree lasted for an uncertain period. There was a lot of people, especially children from many berths of that train had been killed. I saw their bloodied bodies when we finally got out of the train when the assailants had left,” she says.From Wagah, Arghwani Begum and her family (mother-in-law, sister-in-law and children) moved to the refugee camp at Walton. They were picked up hours later and shifted to the Davis School which had been temporarily converted into a residence for migrants in poor physical shape. She was reunited with her husband and parents three days later. “They’d discovered our whereabouts through announcements on loud speakers at the railway station,” she recalls. From Davis School, Arghwani Begum’s family moved to her daughter’s future husband’s uncle’s house in Model Town where they stayed for two-three days.From there, she moved to a small independent house in Model Town’s C-Block, once occupied by the Hindu families. “There was a 10-kanal vacant plot next to that house which used to belong to an affluent Hindu landlord. My husband purchased the plot and we had a big house built on it for my children,” she says.In the 1950s, her family was allotted some lands at Dera Ismail Khan against their property at Sahashpur by the Pakistani government. “We had no roots or business in Dera Ismail Khan and therefore used those lands for agricultural purposes only,” she says. Her mother-in-law expired in 1971 followed by her husband who died of heart failure in 1975. The couple has two sons and four daughters. Two of her daughters are educated and settled in the US. “My husband had left my sons on a solid footing and taught them all there is to know about leading a responsible life. They practically took care of everything after his demise,” she says.In 1980, she visited her birthplace in India with two of her daughters Nabahat and Sabahat on train. Her daughter says, “She had practically started shaking and crying as we approached her house. It was very intense for her,”Arghwani Begum currently lives at her husband’s house with her maid, one of her sons, daughter-in-law, grand-children, and great-grand-children in Lahore nowadays.
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Panjabi and Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 1 video file
- Publication Info:
- Lahore (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Lahore (Pakistan), August 31, 2015
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_1803
- Title:
- Oral history with Barbara Anne, 2016 April 27.
- Author:
- Anne, Barbara, 1939- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Anne, Barbara, 1939-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Barbara Anne was born [Antoinette D’Souza] on April 17th, 1939 in Karachi, Sindh to a Konkani speaking family hailing from Goa. Her father was a revenue officer with the Sindh Lands Department, and her mother was a homemaker. Barbara is the third of four sisters and five brothers. “I was delivered by Dr Himal Das at his hospital in Karachi,” she recounts. She was raised in Karachi and in Goa, before Partition. Two of her brothers died in their infancy.Barbara shares that her paternal grandfather, one of the early settlers in Karachi from Goa, was the first town planner of the Soldier Bazar. “He was born in 1865. His name was Pedro D’Souza. The Portuguese were peaceful people but not progressive. Many Goans therefore moved to Bombay and Africa for better livelihoods. My grandfather opted for Karachi. He came here with a few of his Goan friends towards the end of the 19th century,” she says. “Karachi used to be a dense jungle in those days. He decided to clear some of the area and build a colony there. It was called the Cincinnatus Town. He also laid the foundation for St Lawrence Church in that town. The road that leads to the town was named after my grandfather, after his demise in 1912, in recognition for his services. We used to have our own little house there. My grandfather had a large family of seven boys and three girls that were living there. My grandmother sold that house after his death, and we moved to Saddar where I spent most of childhood years,” Barbara shares.Her mother used to live in Goa before her marriage. “In those days, the boys in Karachi would travel to Goa to find a bride. They felt their roots were there and fathers would be eager to have their daughters married off to men working in the cities. That’s how my father was married to my mother and they came to Karachi, and settled here permanently.”Her mother used to take her to Goa to be with her grandparents and extended relatives. “Whenever there was a new baby expected in the family, she would take us to Goa. There were no permits in those days. We would get the ship tickets in the morning, and get on it in the evening. My parents made a lot of new friends in Goa, and they would also visit us in Karachi from time to time [before Partition]. On one occasion, we saw the colorful festival of Holi in Goa, and remember that I was scared of the colored powder people were throwing at each other.”In Goa, Barbra used to hear conversations of older people, and picked up Konkani from them. “I’m able to converse in the language and sing songs, but cannot read or write it. One of the Konkani devotional songs for the Church she still remembers is “My love, my love, don’t be afraid, I’m not going to leave you.”Barbara obtained her primary education from St Vianney’s school and high school education from St Joseph Convent for Girls in Karachi. She recounts the system of education at school was based on old-fashioned disciplinarian practices. “They would use the cane if you didn’t study, but it was accepted. The handwriting had to be perfect. You had to be on time and regular. Whatever our teachers said was accepted. Our parents would not take up for us, they would take up for the teachers,” she says.English, Religion, Geography, Art were curricular subjects she enjoyed whereas Needlework, Sports, Debates and Music lessons were regular co-curricular activities. She borrowed books from her high school library. “The British Council library was at a small distance from school but we didn’t need to go there because the school library had ample number of good books.” At home, DAWN, Morning News and Evening Star were widely read newspapers. Barbara says her father was an avid reader.Barbara took piano lessons, participated and won in debating competitions. She remembers her father’s help with academics had a major influence on maintaining good grades in school. “He was a strong believer in our education. He would help us with homework and trained me to be a good debater,” she says. Mr Mobad, a Zoroastrian gentleman living close to their school used to arrange movie nights for students of Catholic families at the Paradise House Cinema in Karachi. Some of the films she remembers seeing at the cinema are Heaven Knows Mr Aniston, The Bells of St Mary, Joan of Arc and the Ten Commandments.At the time of Partition, she had just been promoted to 6th grade, and had started studying History. Barbara recounts that period as ‘the takeover’. “We got these new history books in our class with simplified biographies of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi. There was a whole lot written about independence in the book but it was too much for us to grasp, because these leaders had just taken over. I was eight years old. Independence was a big word for me. I grasped some meaning of it when I saw a big procession of Muslims on [Victorian] carries wearing big garlands. Then there was the takeover in Karachi. The British were lined up and handing over administrative affairs to the Pakistanis. Then I saw the coins coming out with the Pakistani flag on them. Before those, we used to have portraits of King George the VI on the coins. I grasped through it all. But I could feel a certain amount of fear, and a certain amount of nostalgia, and a certain amount of people missing something, because they were happy with the British,” she recounts. “I didn’t experience much of the British rule but got feedback very vaguely, and I took it in.”After Jinnah’s demise in 1948, Barbara witnessed the procession of his burial in Karachi, from her school. She also remembers the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan the following year, became sensational news at her school and a holiday was declared at the school the next day. “That was very sad.”After Partition, her mother’s house in Goa was converted into St Xavier School. “It was handed over to Church authorities by one of my uncles, when my mother was no longer living there. I went to see it once. It’s a grand building now but the school administration still calls it Mrs D’Souza’s house.” In 1973, her entire family migrated to Canada and live there nowadays.In 1961, Barbara joined the St Joseph Convent as Sister. “In those days, it was considered a privilege amongst Goan Christian families to have one or two members become a priest or a nun. Nowadays there is so much of materialism that families are not very happy to part with their children, for religion, because it is a kind of permanent separation from them. I saw my parents for 12 years after joining the Church ministry, and then they left for good,” Her mother passed away in 1992, and her father passed away in 1997.Barbara also saw the Queen of England taking a walk by herself in Karachi in 1961, during her visit to Pakistan, with General Ayub Khan. “She was just passing down the road in Karachi alone and I caught a glimpse of her, and waved at her. She waved back at me.”Her final message to everyone is: “Be happy, think positively, and take things in your stride, remembering what you have learnt by way of values, spiritually and culturally.”
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and English
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Karachi (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Karachi (Pakistan), April 27, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2493
- Title:
- Oral history with Jaya Mehta, 2015 December 16.
- Author:
- Mehta, Jaya, 1933- and Saleem, Sobia
- Author (no Collectors):
- Mehta, Jaya, 1933-, Saleem, Sobia, Saleem, Sobia, and Saleem, Sobia
- Description:
- Mrs. Jaya Mehta, nee Jaya Patel, was born in Vadodara, now known as Baroda, India on May 15th, 1933. Because her father was a businessman, her family traveled quite a bit with him between places likes Baroda, Bombay, and even East Africa, where Mrs. Mehta spent a few years of her childhood. Mainly, however, her family lived in Bombay. Hers was a unique family: they had seven siblings from three different mothers. Her father’s first wife had had four children before passing away in childbirth; then her father remarried, but his second wife passed away during the birth of their first child. Mrs. Mehta’s mother had two children and remained the mother for the youngest three-four children. Mrs. Mehta’s elder half sisters were already married by this time, and one had moved away from their family in Bombay to live in Baroda with her husband. Mrs. Mehta’s siblings got along so well with each other—despite their differences in mothers—that they became a role model family for her Gujarati community in Bombay.Mrs. Mehta cannot speak of her childhood without speaking fondly of her father, Mr. Somabhai Patel. When asked how it was that her various siblings got along so well with each other, without hesitating Mrs. Patel credits her father, in her words the man who helped shaped who she is today. He was a very commensensical and practical man. Every evening, he made sure the whole family had dinner together, and every weekend, he also made sure they went to a drive together either to the beach, which was not so crowded in those days, or to their farmlands, 11,000 acres of primarily cotton. Mr. Patel stressed the importance of an education to both his sons and his daughters, supporting two of his daughters in becoming practicing doctors. The environment in the Patel house was, also quite uniquely, one of morals but not religion, something unheard of in those days. However, because Mr. Patel was well-respected within their community, no one bothered him in hs ways, even when most of his children had small civil ceremonies rather than grand religious weddings. Mr. Patel also instilled a sense of independence and health in his children, telling them that even if they wanted a cup of water, they should fetch it themselves, and they shouldn’t eat street food, but fruits with thick skins only when purchasing food on the street.Mrs. Mehta herself was not so fond of studying and reading, so one summer, she took a vacation with her sister and Mr. and Mrs. Sevenoaks to Europe by sea to various countries like the United Kingdom and Austria, among others. She speaks of how, even at 19, she would get into amusement parks as a child because of her thin figure—however, she also speaks of how she would get carded when they went to an over-18-only place and would have to carry her passport accordingly. Mrs. Mehta’s hair was a incredibly long when she was young and even into her middle age—it would near reach the ground! She would turn heads wherever she went and catch people’s attention. One time on her European trip, when they were trying to cross the border, the two guards were arguing amongst each other before they approached her in the vehicle. “We can’t decide,” they said to her and her sister, “if you two are twins!” They couldn’t believe it! Mrs. Mehta’s sister’s hair also cascaded down at least to her knees. The Sevenoaks were kind to the girls, making sure to explain local customs to them, like kissing on the hands as a form of greeting, so that they wouldn’t be alarmed as they passed through different countries, like Austria.During the time of the Partition, Mrs. Mehta says that she herself was not very involved. Her father had a strict rule—education first, everything else after. Thus some of the younger Patel siblings, the students in her family, were even sent away from Bombay to Baroda by her father during that tumultous time to continue studing. Mrs. Mehta recalls though that her elder sisters, who were married and had already completed their studies, were somewhat involved as citizens and activists in the Partition. Following the news and advice of the Indian National Congress, they bought a spinning wheel to spin their yarn and threads to make their own clothing, like Gandhiji was encouraging people to do. They would make themselves simple clothes and wear them until they were tattered all in an effort to make sure they didn’t purchase the British’s mechanically produced cloth. Her sisters would also attend some of the protests and rallies. A few of those, Mrs. Mehta remembers, were right next to their home. The Britsh soldiers and militia would come and beat the legs of those who were injured quite badly. She remembers her father would open their home up to these injured rally and protest attendees and that her family would tend to them and care for them.Bombay had always been a cosmopolitan city and would always be one, according to Mrs. Mehta, so she didn’t feel that it changed very much after the Partition. The Sindhi population in the city increased, and with them, they brought their love for education and built universities around the city. They were also very good embroidery- men and women, and hence with the influx of their populations, Bombay’s embroidered and designed clothing and styles boomed. All in all, Mrs. Mehta says, the changes were small, but whoever migrated to the big city brought with them all the positives and good things about their culture and shared them with the city and its inhabitants.Bombay is where Mrs. Mehta has spent the majority of her life. As a child, she enjoyed attending the Kite Flying Festival on the 14th of January where the children would fly kites and eat sweets, like peanut and sesame brittle. She also loved celebrating Garba with her Gujarati community in Bombay. During Garba, Mrs. Mehta would be able to sing, a passion which naturally ignited in her from the tender age of four, and dance dandian, a two-stick spinning dance style; she also loved the little gifts of metal utensils they would receive at the event. Bombay was where Mrs. Mehta dated her husband for six years; it’s where she eventually married her husband; it’s where she sang on the radio and modeled saris; it’s where she had a her daughter; it’s where she decided to learn to sing formally by moving to Baroda to attending a five-year singing program; and it’s where she finally decided, after her husband passed, that she would give up her life in India to move to America to be with her daughter in 2003.However, Mrs. Mehta has not slowed down one bit since her move to the States. Because of the sense of independence her father instilled in her, she’s learned to adapt, begin new projects, and never be bored. These days, Mrs. Mehta is still quite active: she drives herself, cooks vegetarian meals for her family four days a week, gives the seniors at the India Community Center singing lessons, has a weekly bridge troupe, puts on fundraising Bollywood dance numbers in which she’s often center stage, and is working to collect various memories and stories in to compile her family’s history. Of course, she also manages to share her love with her daugher and two grandchildren.
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- Hindi and Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 4 video files
- Publication Info:
- Fremont (Calif.)
- Imprint:
- Fremont (Calif.), December 16, 2015
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2020
- Title:
- Oral history with Kesho Mal, 2016 October 15.
- Author:
- Mal, Kesho, 1940- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Mal, Kesho, 1940-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Baba Kesho Mal [name at birth Vishnu Mal], was born in 1940 in Rohri, Sindh to a Sindhi speaking family. Father was a dry nuts and sweets shop owner in Rohri and his mother was the homemaker. He is the youngest of an elder brother and sister. Muslims and Hindus were living together in Rohri, he shares. There were 250 Hindu households in the area. Mr. Mal was raised in a joint-family system. His extended relatives lived in Sukkur, and they would frequently visit them. There were several temples in Rohri, Mr. Mal shares. As a child, used to play gilli danda, and flock to his father’s shop in the morning.They had electricity in Rohri’s commercial areas. At home, they used kerosene lamps and oil lamp. The stars and constellations were used to tell time [sun during the day and stars in the evening].Partition only reminds him of the fear, panic and emptiness that took over Rohri all of a sudden. “Within days, the city was practically deserted. Nearly all the Hindus in Rohri migrated to India.”Mr. Mal relocated to Sukkur after Partition, permanently and gave up himself for service to the maintenance and management of Jhulay Lal Mandir in his early 30s. Before that, he served as cook for pilgrims at the temple. Apart from Sindh, he has gone on pilgrimage to Nankana Sahib for Gurupurab.. He has been living at the temple since Partition, and has never married.
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Sindhi and Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Sukkur (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Sukkur (Pakistan), October 15, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2653
- Title:
- Oral history with Khalida Ghousia Akhtar, 2016 February 25.
- Author:
- Akhtar, Khalida Ghousia, 1937- and Saleem, Sobia
- Author (no Collectors):
- Akhtar, Khalida Ghousia, 1937-, Saleem, Sobia, Saleem, Sobia, and Saleem, Sobia
- Description:
- Mrs. Khalida Ghousia Akhtar was born on November 7th, 1937 in Jammu, Kashmir. Mrs. Akhtar’s family can trace their family history at least a hundred years back to her grandparents. Mrs. Akhtar’s family is of Rajput descent: her grandfather and his brothers were warriors. Mrs. Akhtar’s Rajput ancestors, descendants of royalty and known for their bravery, had helped the British beat the local people, and in return, they had been given huge lands that they had willed to their descendants. They were the type of people who valued history and bravery more than wealth. Mrs. Akhtar describes an indepdent in which her ancestors, four brothers, had been told to race their horses as far as they could from dawn to dusk, and all the lands that they traversed would be their property. They weren’t very religious people and didn’t want their father’s lands. When someone came to have them sign papers to give away their lands to her, they asked her servant where the rifle on his shoulder came from. He said he found it on the land, and they recognized it as belonging to their ancestors—this rifle is still in Mrs. Akhtar’s family’s ownershipd. They signed away this enormous property simple to retrieve this ancestral rifle. Moreover, Mrs. Akhtar’s grandmother was from Tashkent, Russia from before WWI. During the first World War, they moved to the state of Kashmir. Mrs. Akhtar’s grandfather was from Jalinder, Punjab, but he was posted in Jammu in the legal department. At the time, Kashmir had two capitals: Jammu, which was the primary capital, and Srinagar, which was the summer capital. Kashmir was a Muslim majority state with a Hindu king, Maharaja Hari Singh. This was a king that everyone respected, Mrs. Akhtar recalls. They felt honored to have him as a king because he seemed to truly care for his people, even if it put himself at risk. Mrs. Akhtar shares that two of her grandparents died of the black plague, which was common and quickly spreading I the area from lack of hygiene and disease carrying vermin. Maharaja Hari Singh would go through the back alleyways and small streets himself, on foot and on horse with his pant legs rolled up to his knees, to see how people were doing and if the hygiene of his kingdom was being properly handled. His advisors would repeatedly caution him not to go, lest he get the plague himself, but he was concerned more about his people than himself. He personally made sure that the streets were sprinkled with a layer of limestone to counteract the plague. Other than standing with his people during difficult times, he also joined peoples of all faiths during times of festivities and holidays; Mrs. Akhtar remembers that he would stand with the Muslims during their Eid prayers and celebrations. Kashmir seemed be happy and well cared for under the Maharaja Hari Singh.Mrs. Akhtar’s own family was also quite strongly involved with the politics of Kashmir: her father’s older brother, her thaya, was Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, the man who would eventually become the Supreme Head, the akin to the Governor General, of Azad Jammu and Kashmir after the 1947 Partition and the struggle that would ensue in trying to allocate Kashmir. Mr. Abbas was very well known in the political circles of South Asia at the time—he was good friends with Jawahar Lal Nehru, Liaqat Ali, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the two men who would become the leaders of the new states of India and Pakistan respectively. Mr. Abbas was good friends with another political leader of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah; however, soon, the friends and political allies founds themselves on the opposite side of a major issue that still sends ripples of political turmoil and violence in the area: Which new country should Kashmir join? While Kashmir’s leader was a Hindu, it was a Muslim majority state, and Muslim majority states that bordered the soon-to-be Pakistan area were generally joining Pakistan; conversely, Kashmir also bordered India, and it had a Hindu leader, so what would be his place in a Muslim-led country? Sheikh Abdullah was of this latter view, believing that Kashmir should go to India; whereas, Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, Mrs. Akhtar’s thaya uncle, was of the view that Kashmir should join Pakistan. When Mr. Abbas was released from jail, despite their political differences Mr. Abdullah was the one who helped him get into Pakistan: he would be taken safely with military personnel; however, he would have to be blindfolded.Mrs. Akhtar shares the poignant and personal story of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas’s daughter, Mrs. Akhtar’s own cousin, and her abduction. A few weeks before the Partition, Mrs. Akhtar’s family members realized that the political tensions in Kashmir were increasing daily and that it might be safer for them to leave the country. Several of Mrs. Akhtar’s family extended family members were escorted with Sikh army trucks to Pakistan—but only 12 or 13 miles from the border, everyone from all of these trucks was unloaded. All the men on the trucks from the ages of 14 to 50 are slaughtered right then and there; all the girls from the ages of 10 to 40 are abducted, including Mrs. Akhtar’s Rahat, the daughter of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas. When his 17-year-old daughter was abducted, Mrs. Akhtar’s uncle was in jail because of his political views. When he got out of jail, Mr. Abbas did everything he could to retrieve his daughter, and although his friend Mr. Nehru was his political opponent, he would still call and apologize to Mr. Abbas about his daughter’s abduction. He also helped in the efforts to retrieve Rahat, saying that these types of things were not supposed to happen. Once Rahat’s kidnapper, a Hindu man by the name of Jagdeesh, realized that she was the daughter of a political honcho, he decided to marry here. It was eight long years before Mr. Abbas’s family was able to locate their precious Rahat, but by that time, she was living in an Indian village with her husband as the mother of three Hindu children. In fact, she had been re-cultured as a Hindu woman as well. She told her family, “I don’t want to go back. I am settled here. Jagdeesh is taking care of me and my kids. I can’t leave my kids behind.” Still, some of her family insisted on at least being allowed to visit her—and they did. She welcomed them but begged, “Please don’t touch this subject of me returning anymore. I know this culture now.”Mrs. Akhtar’s thaya, Mr. Abbas, wanted to meet Jagdeesh, but he feared that he’d be shot; Mr. Abbas, however, wanted integrate Jagdeesh into his family. Mr. Abbas said, “No, I don’t want to shoot you—I want to bring you and your family to Pakistan,” where they had migrated by the time, “so my family can be all together again.” In 1955, Pakistan offered open visas for Indians to attend a cricket match in Lahore. Mr. Abbas told Jagdeesh and his family to take advantage of this visa and come to Pakistan—ad they did. First, Rahat came, then her children, and finally Jagdeesh. She was sort of made Muslim again. Her children and her husband were given Muslim names: Jagdeesh became Khalid. None of the family, however, was happy in Pakistan. As former Hindus, they weren’t accepted as truly Muslim; even Rahat herself was no longer accepted, and she cried all the time. During the wars of 1965 ad 1971 between Pakistan and India, Jagdeesh was under constant observation; because no one trusted him and his loyalty to Pakistan, it was difficult for him to get and keep a job. Rahat and Jagdeesh had three more kids, but two of their six children went crazy because no one in their society accepted. People accepted the songs, eager to marry their daughters into good families, but no one wanted their sons to marry to daughters from a former Hindu family.In that convoy of twenty trucks protected by Sikh soldiers transporting Muslims from Indian to Pakistani territory, there were two more members of Mrs. Akhtar’s family that survived: her uncle and his wife—who was also Rahat’s mother sister. Mrs. Rahat’s aunt, who was 22 or 23 three at the time, was abducted by a person who took her to his home. As she sat there, his father walked by and he recognized him. The kidnapper’s father was a friend of her own father—they book did decorative paintings together. From that point onwards, her father’s friend treated her like his own daughter, and he made sure that she was safely taken to Lahore. Once there though, she had no way of reaching her family, but she was a smart young woman, and she announced her name and location on the radio a few times—“I am so-and-so. Where is my husband? I am in the Jesus-Mary Convent”—until a family friend was able to alert her family to come fetch her. When that refugee truck convoy was attacked, Mr. Akhtar’s uncle, ran and hid under a nearby bridge. He said he stayed there for a day or two; he would spend all night walking way from the bridge, but still wake up under it, in the same place. A former servant of Mrs. Akhtar’s family found him and took him to join the rest of his family in Pakistan. By the time they reached there, they were in terrible shape, but slowly Mrs. Akhtar’s family would reach Pakistan.Mrs. Akhtar is very attached to her extended family because they lived together for many years before (and eventually after) the Partition; her family divided its time between three main cities in Kashmir. Mrs. Akhtar’s father was an inspector of police, and he and his six brothers all lived together in the same house, maintained by her uncle who was a foreign-educated, well-off engineer. As a child, Mrs. Akhtar spent much of her time between Bhadarva, Ranbeer Singh Pura, and Hiranagar. Bhadarva is were she spent a majority of her childhood; in order to reach Bhadarva, which was 200 miles from the main capital of Jammu, her family would rent a bus to a middle city, Batowt, where they would sometimes spend the night. From Batowt, once the path got too narrow, they would take horses on a 12-hour journey. Ranbeer Singh Pura was only 12 miles from Jammu, and Mrs. Akhtar studied there in third grade. Hiranagar was a three-hour bus ride from Jammu; in order to reach it, they had to cross a large river by going around it.Mrs. Akhtar was Batowt when, at the age of nine, she heard that the Partition had occurred, and her family began their migration journey. Although she wasn’t very political conscious at that time, she remembers that it was after the announcement that people in their region started to turn against each other. The Sikhs in the region attacked their house in Jammu. Because they were a part of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas’s family, they were under strict observation and not supposed to leave the kingdom state—but they new that they would danger if they didn’t. Mrs. Akhtar’s family took their bus to Jammu, but they didn’t go to their Uncle Abbas’s house, where they usually stayed—they went to a hotel instead. One of their Hindu servants/friends, Mouni, came to their hotel room. Panicked, he told them, “They’re watching you. On the side of your house, it says, ‘Your house will be raided, and you will be killed.’” Mouni told the Mrs. Akhtar’s family to leave the city and go to Ranbeer Singh Pura, which was only 12 miles from the Pakistani border. They stayed there for a week. Her whole packed their few belongings in only four suitcases and packed into four tongas to go to the Pakistani border, which was only two hours away.Once there, in the middle of the night, Mrs. Akhtar’s father and uncle patrolled and scouted the area to figure out how to enter Pakistan undetected. The best time to cross the border would be between 10 AM and 2 PM, when some of the officers took their lunch. During that time, the whole extended family ran the three miles to cross the border and reach the closest village on the Pakistani side of the border. Mrs. Akhtar remembers that all the women were crying, and her father and uncle were telling them to save their tears for later and just run; everyone was carrying children who were too young to ran fast enough, including herself. Mrs. Akhtar was carrying her one-year-old sister while others were carrying her five-year-old brother and her six-and-a-half-year-old brother. On the way, they drank dirty pond water to survive. Mrs. Akhtar’s father and uncle paid three months rent upfront to a landlord to get a place to stay for their family. Mrs. Akhtar recalls that banks were still accepting checks at least two months after the Partition because that was the currency that her family used to pay people and to withdraw money. To avoid arousing suspicion from their neighbors that they were political refugees on the run, they acted like they lived there. They had no food, so they boiled black stones in clay pots. A few poor land tillers came forward to offer them blankets and food. When an army truck passed through the area, full of ammunition to transport to Kashmir in the ensuing battle to follow for ownership of this northern state, Mrs. Akhtar’s father and her uncle managed to convince the truck divers, after paying them handsomely, to let their family board their empty trucks. The trucks took them to Sialkot, where Mrs. Akhtar’s family would stay for in a hotel for a few days before all 25 or so of them would move for 6-8 years to a villa in Sargoda, given to them in exchange for their lost properties and homes now in India Occupied Kashmir. (Note that Pakistanis now call their portion of Kashmir Azad (Free) Kashmir and the India part of Kashmir Occupied Kashmir—and Indians similarly call their portion of Kashmir Azad Kashmir and the Pakistani portion Occupied Kashmir.) Mrs. Akhtar’s thaya Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas would be moved to Rawalpini, the army headquarters of Pakistan, where he would be make the Supreme Head of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan.After the Partition, Mrs. Akhtar would spent much of her time living her uncle and his British, Jewish wife, Olga, because their home was closer to better school—this couple would become like a second set of parents for Mrs. Akhtar. Ogla Auntie, especially, was like a second mother to Mrs. Akhtar, who calls her a Sufi saint; she would always encourage the girls in their family to student to their heart’s content. Mrs. Akhtar’s mother and father also supported her a great deal, by providing her with resources and strong character traits. When she was a child, Mrs. Akhtar’s father would bribe her to do things by offering her short, ten page long stories to read. Mrs. Akhtar realls a Kashmiri folk tale about “Lil Dilli,” a patient, saintly woman. When she got married and when to her in-laws, her parents would ask her, “What did they give you to eat?” When she wouldn’t answer, they would lift her stomach flap and see nothing. The pious woman that Lil Dilli was, she prayed and asked God to make the stomach flab smooth and un-openable, so that her mother-in-law wouldn’t be dishonored because of how little she had been able to feed her. By the age of 16, she had read through her father’s library, and so he began teacher her to use a revolver, how to fire, and how to ride a horse, the police offer that he was. Mrs. Akhtar says that her mother taught her compassion while her father taught her confidence and courage.Perhaps as a result of Auntie Olga’s support, Mrs. Akhtar went on to complete medical school, with an emphasize in gynecology and surgery, and open her own clinic in the Korangi area of Karachi, the city she moved to after she married her husband. After she got married, Mrs. Akhtar put all the wedding got she had received as a part of her dowry and as presents into the bank, and she took a loan against it. She remembers that people cried at her doing this, but she said the gold did not matter—she needed the capital to create her clinic in this underserved part of Pakistan. Mrs. Akhtar’s clinic, named Khalida Hospital after her, soon became quite popular in the area, and she would see upwards of 200 patients a day. Although she had three doctors working with her and a staff of 37 personnel, including nurses and others, under her, her patients and community only wanted to be treated by her. Soon, people in her community were coming to her not only for medical matters, but social and economic ones as well, writing her letters from as far as Dubai to seek her advice and opinion on personal matters. In the beginning, before she was able to afford a car, she commuted 2.5 hours daily by public bus to reach her clinic. She was the first lady doctor in a ten-mile radius in that region. Although she worked there for 11 years, she had to stop because she couldn’t afford to pay political parties, like the MQM, the bribes they demanded to keep from harassing her clinic. When she finally had to give up her practice, she donated her clinic to Al-Shifa, a hospital and organization dedicated to handicapped children in Karachi.These days, Mrs. Akhtar lives with her daughter in the U.S. Here, she spent her time volunteering at Kaiser Permanente and John Muir Hospitals. She also enjoys her time painting, writing poetry, making pottery, reading, drawing/sketching, playing piano, among other activities—she says she’s finally able to do all those things that she wanted to do when she was ten and couldn’t because the Partition, that she personally believes never should have happened, made her grow up too fast. “United,” Mrs. Akhtar says, quoting the first President of India, “South Asia could have been the largest democracy. The people there have lived together for at least 1000 years, and religion shouldn’t be the basis for nationhood because it allows for the possibility of extremism to creep in.” Even now, Mrs. Akhtar’s family cannot return to India Occupied Kashmir, although they can visit India. Mrs. Akhtar truly hopes she is allowed to return to her homeland and visit it one day. She shares a message for future generations in memory of her own parents: “Live your life every day with courage, confidence, and compassion. They are the three things that have helped me all my life. Keep your mind open, and never fear what tomorrow brings—refine yourself and all of humanity.”
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and Hindi
- Physical Description:
- 10 video files
- Publication Info:
- Walnut Creek (Calif.)
- Imprint:
- Walnut Creek (Calif.), February 25, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2142
- Title:
- Oral history with Mai Taji, 2016 January 16.
- Author:
- Taji, Mai, 1941- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Taji, Mai, 1941-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Mai Taji [name at birth Taj Din] was born in 1941 to a Punjabi-speaking family at Daleri town in Amritsar District, Punjab. Their father Muaaz Din was a farmer, and their mother Fazal Bibi was a homemaker. Taji is the youngest of two brothers and four sisters, and grew up at Amritsar before Partition. Sharing their earliest recollections of childhood, Taji says that the agrarian families in their town were engaged in the barter trade where wheat and rice were exchanged amongst them quite often.The family diet was vegetarian, and brassware was used for cooking and consumption. They used to play the game of Kokla Chapaki with friends in the mohallah from all faiths quite often. The clothing worn at home was plain khaddar, stitched by their mother and sisters at home.Taji says they must have been six or seven years old when they had to leave their homes at Daleri. “There was an announcement in our area. We were told that anyone who wants to leave for Pakistan should do it now or living conditions could get worse in Amritsar,” They recounts.Taji says that their family moved to Lahore via the Wagah Park immediately after that announcement. “It was two months before riots broke out in Amritsar and everywhere else,” They says. Taji did not witness any violence and killings himself but recalls hearing stories from elders about what was happening. From Lahore, Taji’s family went to Kana village in Kasur where they settled permanently. Neither Taji nor their siblings obtained any formal schooling, and Taji’s elder brothers became daily wage workers to support the family. Taji’s father died eight years after Partition. After reaching teens, Taji switched to silk wear for attending special occasions like village festivals, melas and weddings.During the same time, Taji met their first guru. “I found him while buying vegetables at a market near the Kot Lakhpat railway stop. His name was Safdar. He was veterinarian doctor specializing in livestock and cattle, and an army officer. He hired me as his assistant and taught me how to prepare injections for the animals,” Taji says. After spending some years at their clinic, Taji started work at a tandoor where they kneaded dough for rotis, for two decades. They quit the job after developing a form of vision impairment, and have been at their parents’ home in Kasur ever since. They have many followers from the khwaja sira community in Lahore. Taji depends on them for their daily living expenses nowadays. Their mother passed away in the early 1970s. Taji continues to live at their parents’ home in Kani, Kasur, and reverted to male clothing in the late 90s.Taji believes that the generation today is suffering from a culture of individualized lifestyles. “The isolation and the restlessness we have comes from that culture. We need to bring back the days when it was considered normal for people in one mohallah to get together in one place and share their happiness and sorrows like a joint family system.”On nostalgia concerning their childhood at Amritsar, they say: “There is nothing compared to memories of one’s birthplace, the home one grows up in, and friends from the mohallah one used to play with. No one wants to be forced out of their houses all of sudden. The pain of losing home is unbearable, especially when we really had no choice in the matter. It makes me very sad to think of our lost childhood, even today.”
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and Panjabi
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Lahore (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Lahore (Pakistan), January 16, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2058
- Title:
- Oral history with Malika Ali, 2016 March 4.
- Author:
- Ali, Malika, 1945- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Ali, Malika, 1945-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Malika Ali was born Malika Hafiz in 1945 at Hyderabad Deccan to a ruling class family hailing from Lucknow. Her mother was the first Muslim woman member of the Hyderabad State Assembly, and daughter of the Nawab of Lucknow. Her father, was a prominent journalist in India before Partition, carried on the same profession after his migration to Pakistan. He was also an advisor on political affairs to the Nizam of Hyderabad. Her maternal grandfather, besides being the Nawab, was a leading lawyer in British India, famous for winning a case against the British defending the Maharaja of the Princely State of Oudh, Mrs Ali recounts. Mrs Ali’s paternal grandfather was deputy commissioner working directly for the British Viceroy.“In those days, no paper currency was used. Both my grandfathers were paid large sums of money in coins. The coins used to come on donkey carts, and stored in the basement of my grandfather’s palace in Lucknow. The workers would count them all night,” she shares her mother’s memories.Her mother, she says, was driven to politics and philanthropy from a very early age. “In front of our grandfather’s palace in Hyderabad Deccan, there was Hyde Park which was a popular place for activists to rally together during the Independence movement, and give fiery speeches. In Lucknow, there was a Zenana Park [Ladies Park], where women would gather for political speeches. My mother’s grandmother used to take her to the parks in the evening. The ladies from the leading political parties in India at the time used to be there for meetings and discussions. My mother would sometimes would run to the stage and start speaking. The ladies in attendance were very impressed by her talents.”“At the age of seven years, she would buy sweets from her pocket money and distribute them to the workers in her house, instead of spending it on herself like the rest of her siblings,” Mrs Ali recounts.Sharing the unusual causes of her mother’s success in politics, Mrs Ali shares: “My father was the main person to have brushed up her skills. She was engaged to him at the age of seven years, and her rukhsati took place when she was 12 years old. My father was two decades older than her. He refined her public speaking skills and would sometimes write the speeches for her. With her husband’s efforts and help, she had won many admirers before she reached her teens. She was homeschooled and had a great command over the Persian language,” Mrs Ali says. Her mother is also known to have been one of the main speakers at the March 1940 rally at the Minto Park [now Iqbal Park] in Lahore.Mrs Ali is the youngest of four sisters and four brothers. She was raised at her parent’s home in Hyderabad Deccan before Partition. She migrated to Karachi with her family in 1949, after the police action in Hyderabad Deccan.“One of my maternal uncles was appointed as the Minister for the Princely State of Patiala, just before Partition. He helped us a lot in moving to Karachi safely,” she says.In Karachi, they were temporarily settled in the Victoria Chambers on Victoria Road [now Abdullah Haroon Road]. Her mother worked for the homeless refugees coming from India and raised funds to help them resettle in Karachi. “When they used to visit my mother, she used to cry over their sufferings. She went door-to-door meeting with every affluent woman she knew, and with their help, she set up the Women Refugees Rehabilitation Association and helped thousands of people acquire housing, education and jobs. The government had no role in supporting her efforts,” she says.In 1951, Mrs Ali’s school life began at a Methodist Convent in Karachi. She suffered an unexpected meningitis attack during the course of her studies, and was hospitalized for several weeks. She developed severe visual impairment as one of the side effects. She continued her schooling like any other normal child under her parents’ guidance, and went on to completing her bachelor’s education in 1969. The same years, she was married to her husband, a chartered accountant from Karachi, educated in the UK. The marriage took place in Karachi. They have one son, after Mrs Ali survived eight miscarriages. “I am a miracle of God,” she says lightheartedly.She accompanied her husband on his official trips to Egypt, Holland, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. In 1984, she performed Hajj with her husband at Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Her husband passed away in 2011. Mrs Ali lives in Karachi with her son nowadays. She is engaged in various fundraising activities for the repair of ancient mosques in Kashmir, and planning to open a trust in the near future.Sharing her final thoughts on Partition, Mrs Ali says: “Pakistan came forth because of contributions from the rich families of Jalandhar and Amritsar. As Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs although we visit different places of worship, we seek the same God. We should fight the devil out and love the humanity, because it’s better to forgive and forget rather than remember and regret.
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and English
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Karachi (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Karachi (Pakistan), March 4, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2262
- Title:
- Oral history with Mufti Irfan Miyan, 2013 October 8.
- Author:
- Miyan, Mufti Irfan, 1936- and Alam, Zain
- Author (no Collectors):
- Miyan, Mufti Irfan, 1936-, Alam, Zain, Alam, Zain, and Alam, Zain
- Description:
- The composition of Mufti Irfan Miyan’s full name (“Abul Hasan Nizamuddin Mohammad”) provides an excellent glimpse into his identity and the reasons for which he takes pride in the ancestral traditions he lives out to this day. Each part draws from his father and grandfather’s names. Each of their names similarly drew on their ancestry, including the great scholars of the Farangi Mahal ancestry and their Sufi saints in the Qadiri and Razaki silsilas (Sufi lineage or school of thought) from the village of Bansawi.The Farangi Mahal family is well-documented. Mufti Irfan’s brief overview begins with Hazrat Abu Ayub Ansari, a companion of the prophet who lived in Medina and housed him there. The next big figure in the family was the Sufi Khwaja Abdullah Ansari of Herat (in modern-day Afghanistan), where there remains a famous mazar (shrine and tomb) dedicated to him. Abdullah Ansari’s descendants eventually migrated to India and took residence in Farangi Mahal where they established a seminary well-known across India and the Islamic world, particularly for its madrasa curriculum, the Dars-i-Nizammiya.The family, Mufti Irfan explains, was always half Allah-wallas (those who focused on religious commitments) and duniya-wallas (those with more worldly commitments). “Our khandaan was never one of sellers or businessmen,” he takes care to note, even of those who were duniya-wallas. His own household in Farangi Mahal—where he resides to this day—leaned heavily towards the religious pursuits of Allah-wallas. In his youth he always found himself surrounded by Hadith and the Quran, the studies of which his father singularly pursued. With a tinge of sadness, he recounts that this was often at the expense of basic necessities like food, for which others in the family would sometimes pitch int o help with. Their household, fortunately, was interconnected with the rest of the Mahal, and so it felt like his father, two older sisters, and an older brother could always count on the support of their extended family.Sometimes to their material detriment, their father’s philosophy emphasized that whatever God intends to deliver to them will somehow be delivered. “The world to us was like salt compared to faith,” Mufti Irfan said of his immediate family in general. More than once they lacked food to the point that they could not feed themselves for two consecutive days.“Khana (food) is for life—life is not for khana,” continued Mufti Irfan, justifying his father’s views quickly after betraying tears when recounting the hungry days of his youth. The family ate from rations whenever they were offered in Lucknow during the more financially difficult days of young India. The local ration-walla however was sympathetic to the family’s condition. Without Mufti Irfan’s father knowing or being asked, the ration-walla would not charge them the nominal fees required to disburse the rations. This was a fine show of the Lucknowi tehzeeb (manners) that the city was once famous for, Mufti Irfan said. To ask for payment when the ration-walla knew they were unable to was too disrespectful and so he quietly offered them loans instead, extending them for months at times. Surely enough though, Mufti Irfan’s family would always find some way or another to pay the ration-walla back.Even while a student Mufti Irfan sought to support the family and took on a variety of jobs, some as unglamorous as milking and cleaning cows in the neighborhood. Soon though he turned to tutoring students in Hindi, English, and later the Farsi and Arabic he learned in the Farangi Mahal madrasa. His primary schooling was all done in this household madrasa. With focus and discipline though, he was still able to pass his exams and make it to the university.Still to this day, Mufti Irfan outwardly displays with pride that he remains a Lakhnavi man of the Farangi Mahal, sporting a sherwani and topi with no desire to in any way imitate the British and their “suit-pant” style. Similarly, his primary enjoyments come from the songs, literature, and poetry of Urdu culture. He enjoys poems especially because they are what taught him to always look behind appearances to see what’s going on. Accordingly, this behavior informs his political beliefs today and views on Partition.Mufti Irfan’s earliest memories regarding politics are of the figures who passed through Farangi Mahal before independence: Abdul Bari, the Ali brothers of the Muslim League, Nehru, and Gandhi. The split of the entire extended family, he remembers, began from the moment of Partition, when, within his very household, his uncle tried to convince them that they should go to Pakistan. His uncle believed that there was nothing left for them in Lucknow or greater India, now that a separate Muslim country had been made. Because this uncle was the oldest brother of his family, he won the acceptance of Naani (their grandmother) and a few other elders. Little did these migrants know, however, that soon after they settled in Dhaka they would face yet another Partition when Bangladesh would win independence in 1971.Mufti Irfan’s father however was not won over by the Pakistani promise. He remained in Lucknow with the family. They were all overjoyed in the coming months after Partition to see that the city’s tehzeeb and religious unity still triumphed at a local level above the greater national fracture and bloodshed. Still, the presence of Pakistan left the thought of “Do we still belong here?” hanging in their minds for decades to come. The pain became more and more real as relatives in Farangi Mahal gradually began migrating to Pakistan, his father each time pleading with them not to leave. Mufti Irfan realized then what he thinks is the same now: politicals leaders manipulate the people to increase and secure their power, while the manipulated common man fights and only hurts himself.As his family’s economic fortunes and those of the Mahal saw further decline after 1947, Mufti Irfan realized that a career solely as an Allah-walla was no longer a realistic option in the modern world. How could he remain an Allah-walla at his core though, as he so desired, remaining true to his ancestors and their traditions? These were what he grew up with and what he felt were the essence of his identity, after all.As had been the case for his ancestors, he kept education the centerpiece of his life. He gained acceptance to Lucknow University, completed a combined BA in Urdu, English, and Education. This is where he met his first friends outside of Farangi Mahal. His father was quite angry when he found out about this pursuit of a BA, saying that there was no need for the academy’s confirmation, especially considering the exorbitant fees they couldn’t afford to pay. Luckily Mufti Irfan got a scholarship and a tutoring job to make up for the tuition shortfall.He then taught at Islamia College to support his family for a year and a half proceeding to obtain a Master’s and getting married. He had always hoped to pursue a Ph. D as he saw it as a reasonable, fulfilling career able to accommodate his independently-minded streak. It looked less and less likely though as financial troubles returned and grew more pressing. At one point he fell into investing and working in a doomed shoe business with a friend, after a teaching job had ended in Faizabad. The business failed. He lost money and was forced to send his wife home at one point to get his own house in order.His big break came with a senior inspector position at the Muslim Wakf of UP in 1977. His four-hundred rupee salary for the first month was all given to his father, but only through his mother because it would not have been becoming for the father to outright accept it himself. Almost four months later, Mufti Irfan’s father would die. He heard of the news at the Friday juma prayers.Mufti Irfan’s first wife Usmana Saeed died after chlidbirth. His daughter from that marriage today lives in Dewa. Another one of his children from his other wife would fall off a roof and die before the age of three. Still, he counts his blessings, still residing in his ancestral home, doing the noble Allah-walla work of a Mufti in Lucknow just like so many before him.On the subject of religion, he believes: “We are all eating the same dal chawal (lentils and rice)—everything else is just spices or chutney.” Shia, Sunni, and Hindu here have always equally cared for one another—what always matters first and foremost, he continues, was looking after your friends, family, and neighbors. “What we wanted was freedom, not division,” says Mufti Irfan. According to him, the British put Partition in the mind of Indians—an illusion that power for Muslims would only return in this kind of setup where they thought of themselves as a separate, independent nation. Partition might’ve changed some of the little ways people had of talking about “my country” or if India “is” or “is not” our place, but for him, it did not change the overall atmosphere and diversity of India—particular the city of Lucknow.
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 5 video files
- Publication Info:
- Bāra Banki (India : District)
- Imprint:
- Bāra Banki (India : District), October 8, 2013
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_0675
- Title:
- Oral history with Muhammad Saleem, 2016 December 9.
- Author:
- Saleem, Muhammad, Abtahi, Arham, and Shahbaz, Waqas Ahmed
- Author (no Collectors):
- Saleem, Muhammad, Abtahi, Arham, Abtahi, Arham, and Shahbaz, Waqas Ahmed
- Description:
- Muhammad Saleem was born in Gurdaspur. His father, Sufi Abdul Aziz had a business of construction materials in the city but they lived in a village of Gurdaspur. They were well off in India. His mother’s name was Rehmat Bibi. Mr. Saleem believes that he was 8 to 9 years old when Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place and he was a witness to it. He was in Jallianwala Bagh with his father when the shooting started. Mr. Saleem and his father hid inside stairs near which they were sitting. They stayed there all night. Next day, his elder brother who was in army came to get them.In Gurdaspur, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs lived together but there used to be a lot of conflicts on festivals like Holi. Mr. Saleem also discussed different Hindu festivals and killings of people. His area was called Abdullah Pur as it was a Muslim majority area. Now the name has been changed and Sikhs live in that area as he discovered on his tour to India after Partition. He visited India twice and stayed with the Sikh family in Koocha Pundit, Delhi which had saved their lives during Partition. This Sikh family was a friend of his grandfather and so they helped them reach River Beas safely. They called the father of that family Bapu which was used for all the elders in India.On his way to Pakistan, Mr. Saleem has seen a lot of bloodshed and looting which is a painful memory. He is still homeless in Pakistan and adores the freedom that Pakistan has for Muslims.
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and Panjabi
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Lahore (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Lahore (Pakistan), December 9, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2844
- Title:
- Oral history with Muhammad Yousuf, 2016 May 12.
- Author:
- Yousuf, Muhammad, 1941- and Shaheen, Taha
- Author (no Collectors):
- Yousuf, Muhammad, 1941-, Shaheen, Taha, Shaheen, Taha, and Shaheen, Taha
- Description:
- Muhammad Yousuf was born to Mian Imamdeen and Noor Bibi in 1941 in Kotkapura, Faridkot. Mian Imamdeen was a farmer. He owned land. At the time, Muhammad Yousuf had only one younger brother.He used to go to a madrassa for religious studies. They learned the basic prayers and how to offer the Salah. After that he and his friends would run after wheels that had been taken out of cycles. To make the wheels go faster they would be hit with sticks.The city was a Muslim majority city. Friday prayers were held in the mosque and Eid prayers would be held in the Eid-gah.His memories of the Partition start with hearing of violence. When this started people from the surrounding villages came to the city seeking safety. The population of Kotkapura suddenly grew. He recalls that at this time police were doing regular raids in the neighbourhood and confiscating anything that could be considered a weapon.He shares that the Raja of Faridkot wanted his people to make it to Pakistan safely. Some from the Sikh community forced him to choose one city between Faridkot or Kotkapura to save. He chose Faridkot. Faridkot was emptied and its people reached Pakistan without any problem. The kafla that left Kotkapura was 20 miles or so in length. They encountered no attackers on the first day. On the second day, Muhammad Yousuf remembers seeing people hiding in the fields. He asked his father why they were there and his father told him that they were harmless onlookers. An hour or two later there was an explosion and a lot of people died. The people hiding in the fields also attacked the kafla. The kafla was divided in two with Muhammad Yousuf and his family in the front half. They escaped.A girl that his mother knew came running to them. She told them that the attackers had killed everyone (her family). Muhammad Yousuf remembers looking back and seeing the attacking mob cutting down people.The kafla rested that night next to a large body of water. There was blood in it, shares Muhammad Yousuf. They were attacked that night as well. The kafla was there for three days and it rained all the time. Those that drank that water got sick with cholera.The third day military from Pakistan came. They announced that the original plan of crossing over from Head Sulaiman was no longer possible and they would be crossing from Head Ganda Singh. This meant going back from the way they had come. The sick and elderly were loaded into trucks and brought to Kasur. The rest walked to Kotkapura. They stayed one night there.He shares that they had left behind a buffalo with their neighbors in Kotkapura. Muhammad Yousuf’s father went to pay them a visit. The buffalo had not given milk since they had left. Imamdeen milked her and gave it to the neighbors.The next day the left the village. At the Indian side of Ganda Sigh, they stayed the night. They were fed cooked wheat by the locals. It was poisoned and a lot of people died. He also speaks of corpses piled as high as houses on the side of the road. Muhammad Yousuf shares every time he goes to a funeral, he sees the mountains of the dead and thinks of how lucky the deceased is. He has a hundred or so people praying for him and is buried respectably. No one had held any funeral services for the dead he had seen, no one had buried them. They had been tossed into piles.They crossed over to Pakistan at Head Ganda Singh. Rain and cholera killed more people there. The four of them lived in a tent. A few days later a train came. It took everyone directly to Lala Musa. They came then to Gujrat. The government announced that there was no space in the city. New arrivals would be accommodated in the villages and given houses and land.Muhammad Yousuf and his family walked to Jalalpur Jatta. From there they rode donkeys to Tandamota near Kashmir. Whichever house you liked you would point to it and the officials would break the locks for you.The family lived for a month or so in Tandamota. Then a war broke out in Kashmir. Dying and mutilated people escaping the carnage started pouring into Tandamota. Muhammad Yousuf shares that he and others were afraid of what might come next. They had barely escaped from India and now they would be caught up in a new conflict. The police wouldn’t let them leave because if everyone left, the city would be become abandoned. The family left it secretly at night. They had no baggage. They first came to Jalalpur and then to Gujrat. From there they took a train to Lahore. From there they came to Dunga Bunga. He joined school and did his matriculation from here.They were allotted part of their land in 1958. The rest of the land Muhammad Yousuf had to go to great lengths to get. He had to deal with red tape and bribery for years. He received the land in late 1960s. He shares that his father, till his dying breath, believed that they would return one day to Kotkapura. He never tried to claim the land they had left behind.He married in 1958 or 1959 to his cousin. He has eight sons and two daughters. He has never been to India. He believes that there is no point in going back. He believes that it is good that they came to Pakistan where they are free to follow Islam.
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and Panjabi
- Physical Description:
- 15 video files
- Publication Info:
- Bahawalnagar District (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Bahawalnagar District (Pakistan), May 12, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_3262
- Title:
- Oral history with Naseem Mirza Changezi, 2016 October 23.
- Author:
- Changezi, Naseem Mirza, 1910-, Popli, Ritika, and Parashar, Jayant
- Author (no Collectors):
- Changezi, Naseem Mirza, 1910-, Popli, Ritika, Popli, Ritika, and Parashar, Jayant
- Description:
- Naseem Mirza Changezi was born in the year 1910 in his ancestral home at Pahari Imli, near Churi Walan in Jama Masjid, in Old Delhi and was a freedom fighter, and fought alongside the likes of Bhagat Singh and Rajguru for Independence from colonial powers. He has been profiled and documented numerous times, by leading scholars and academics of history owing to his deep knowledge and memory bandwidth about his Persian roots and the Mughal history of Northern India. He says, “The study of my genealogy tells me that successively 23 generations of mine hail from the family of Genghis Khan, the founder of the great Mongolian empire. My ancestors travelled from Mongol to Iran, and then to Afghanistan. By that time Babur, who lay the stone of Mughal empire in India, asked his ancestors to leave Afghanistan within two or three months. The two clans were both Mughals but Babur’s side was Timuri Mughals and we were Changezi Mughals, so Babur did not want a fight and loss of soldiers, hence, he asked my ancestors to peacefully leave."He then adds that, his family left Afghanistan and moved to the area of Sindh and as they settled there, the forces of Mirza Jaani Beg Khan and Mirza Ghazi Beg Khan attacked the region of Sindh, which was being ruled by Jam Feroze, who was the last ruler of Samma dynasty. Simultaneously the region of India and neighbouring states (Hindustan) had just started to be ruled by the Mughal ruler Humayun. Then, by the time Akbar’s rule came about and he asked his ancestors to become equal stakeholders in ruling Hindustan, but his ancestors refused. Then Akbar preceded to send an army of two lakh personnel under the leadership of Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana and they fought for almost a year, and his ancestors lost the war. His ancestors were then brought to Akbar and he dismissed them to stay in Agra. He recalls, “When Shahjahan, in the early 17th century decided to shift his capital from Agra to Delhi, my ancestors also came along. They built a palatial palace right in front of the Delhi Gate of the majestic Red Fort (Lal Quila). And since then, we have lived in Delhi.”He says with utmost pride, “My family fought for the Independence of this country and has been doing so for the last 150 years.” His great-grandfather was the deputy collector working for the British crown, but, he participated in the first revolt of Independence in 1857, and in turn was awarded life imprisonment. He says, “There had been various wars for Independence prior to 1857, within the kingdoms, but the reason it is known as the First War of Independence is because this was the first time that the masses at large took part in it.” He also adds that, today the Hindu dominated area like Sitaram Baazar in Old Delhi, was earlier a Muslim area with many old palaces that were of the Muslim feudal landlords, which was later vacated. His mother passed away when he was just 2 years old, but his father decided to never remarry. He recalls an interesting a very interesting incident about the religious relations between the two communities prior to the Partition through the motif of parrots. He says that keeping parrots as domestic pets was a very widely accepted norm during those times, and the Hindu women would teach Urdu poetry and couplets to the their parrots, whereas the Muslim women would teach poetry and couplets from Hindu literary texts to their parrots. When he was four years old, he remembers going to the Ganges river with Hindu families and would also celebrate Holi and Diwali with them, and would be done so respectful of each other’s boundaries.He remembers the Indian lawyer, and philanthropist Rash Behari Bose, who was the key person in organising the Indian National Army. His work was to organises and agitate the young revolutionaries against the colonial power. He says that, “In those times, the young men of the historic Anglo-Arabic school of Ajmeri Gate would participate heavily in this movement initiated by the Indian National Army (INA). May father was one of them and I clearly recall that he would tell me how he was taught to make explosives and bombs that could be used for revolts. My father along with Rash Behari Bose would be on the forefront of such activities, and I grew up amongst all their idealism and members.” He recalls the interesting Delhi Conspiracy Case which also involved his father, “When Lord Hardinge’s howdah, the then governor-general of India, was passing through the streets of Chandni Chowk, Bose was dressed in the garb of a woman, and my father had put his ladder on the backside of Company Bagh. Bose then took out a homemade bomb and threw it on Lord and Lady Hardinge but it only ended up injuring them through splinters.” He says that they were told not to come under the scanner of the police, and he and his contemporaries all hailed from Anglo-Arabic school, who participated actively in the freedom movement. He says they worked under the leadership of Jugal Kishore Khanna, who lived in Dariba Kalan, and was associated with the Congress and later the INA. He says, “We would work as secret messengers and would take old cloth bags and tie it around us with some pieces of silver and gold and then walk on the streets pretending to be sellers, and shout out aloud if anybody had silver to sell. The person would then come down and take away the message from us, and that is how we would not get caught.” He recalls that the Congress workers who were under the leadership of Asif Ali, later came under Brahma Prakash who went onto become the first Chief Minister of Independent India.He has continued to live in his ancestral home for 106 years now, and was in that same house when the Partition took place. At the time of the Partition, he was 37 years old, and had an illegal pass by a Hindu name ‘Ram Kishan’ which helped him to travel around the city and not be contained by the curfew that would be put on the Muslims in Delhi. He says, “Many killings took place during that time. My work would be to make a daily trip to Nizammudin station where the trains would be leaving for Pakistan, and people would travel from Delhi, and they would get injured during those travels so I would escort them till the camp at Jama Masjid so that they could be quickly treated. The trains would leave from Old Delhi railway station, and the Muslims were treated very badly. The wagons that were provided by the Corporation to transport cattle, were used by the Muslim refugees to load their own belongings and they would pull it themselves and go to camps at Purana Qila.” He says that Partition was solely a result of various political forces, and stresses on the love both the religious communities had for each other before the Partition took place.Post Partition, he says that in Old Delhi the refugees who came later put up their own businesses on the pavement right in front of the shops, and started selling the same products at a lesser cost which affected their business. This was one of the major points of discord. He says, “The decision to stay on in India, and not migrate to Pakistan was very simple for me and my family because my ancestors had through the generations fought on this land. My father fought for the Independence of this country, so there was no question of leaving our own home. Although, my father did receive many persuasive letters from authorities in the newly formed Pakistan to come there. However, his father sat him down and asked him to write a reply, in which he clearly recalls that he wrote, ‘Do rivers like the Ganges or Yamuna flow in Karachi? Does Lal Quila stand on that land? Is there my beloved Jama Masjid there? If yes, then I will come in a jiffy. If no, then don’t ever write to me again.’ Although, his father never stopped him or any of his siblings from migrating but none of them did. But today he is pained at the current state of affairs, and completely opposite to what they had hoped for when fighting for Independence. He angrily adds, “The nation today might be independent, but it is not even close to what we had dreamed of as young revolutionaries.”He completed his matriculation from Punjab University. He was an ace hockey player and was selected by Delhi Hockey Association in 1942, played with Dhyanchand and participated in various tournaments, and visited Karachi and Lahore before the Partition took place. One of his friends named Qayyum, who was also a great hockey player migrated to Pakistan after the Partition. He says that all his friends and contemporaries who passed away and today, he is the only now left who saw all the incidents unfolding in front of him. Today, he lives with his son and wife.He relays a very important and historical memory of his life wherein he was given the task of providing food and shelter to Sardar Bhagat Singh for two months, when he had in the process of planning to explode bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly. He says, “There are many who laid down their lives for the country, but there are few like who had the grit and determination of Bhagat Singh. He always wanted to be a martyr for the country and was ready to lay down his life in a matter of minutes if it would get freedom from the colonial rulers.” He then pauses to sadly reflect and says, “But this is definitely not the freedom which any of us wanted. I never wanted to die, because I wanted to live and work for Independent India.” He says that Partition shouldn’t have taken place as both the countries would have been stronger united in all spheres of development.
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- Urdu and Hindi
- Physical Description:
- 4 video files
- Publication Info:
- Delhi (India : Union Territory)
- Imprint:
- Delhi (India : Union Territory), June 5, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2527
- Title:
- Oral history with Salima Hashmi, 2016 January 18.
- Author:
- Hashmi, Salima, 1942- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Hashmi, Salima, 1942-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Salima Hashmi [name at birth Salima Sultana] was born on 14th December 1942 to an Anglo-Indian family in Delhi. Her father, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, was an army officer, poet, political activist, editor of the Pakistan Times, and founding editor of the Daily Amroze. Her mother, Alys Faiz, was a political activist, writer and homemaker.Narrating the story of her name, Mrs Hashmi says: “The surname is a very Western idea. In our family, we had the tradition of giving a complete name, a first name followed by the second name. My mother liked Rehana, and Sabiha for the first name but my father didn’t approve. He named me after Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, his friend who was a scientist and also an artist. Hence I was named Salima with Sultana as my second name, and my sister was named Moneeza Gul,” she says. Mrs Hashmi dropped her second name, after the expiry of her second passport.Her father’s family was from Kala Qadar, a village in Sialkot. Her mother’s maternal family was from France, and paternal family is from London, England. Sharing a family lore about her paternal grandfather, Mrs Hashmi says that after a chance encounter with an Afghan trader in Lahore, he rose to prominence from being a peasant of Kala Qadar, to an educated, well-respected and envied treasurer of financial affairs at the Court of the King Shah Abdur Rehman the II, in Kabul, Afghanistan. “There were many controversies and conspiracies cooking up against him. There was an Englishwoman, a doctor, who was in charge of the women of the king’s harem and introducing the small pox vaccine. Rumor has it that she was in love with my grandfather and when she heard about the controversies and conspiracies against him at the harem, she informed him immediately, and he fled to India. Later on, he went on to England to study law at Cambridge. During this time, the Afghan King sent him a proposal to take up ambassadorship of the Afghan government at Queen Victoria’s court in England, which he accepted.One of the women her grandfather married was a princess of the Hazara tribe. “The novel Vizier’s Daughter by Lillias Hamilton is actually based on the life and character of my grandfather. After completing his studies, he returned to Sialkot and started his law practice. He was a close friend of the poet Muhammad Iqbal,” she says. “My grandmother was the only Punjabi woman my grandfather had married. She hailed from a village in Sialkot, near Kala Qadar. The rest of his wives were Afghans.”Mrs Hashmi says that her mother’s maternal family had settled in England during the 17th century. Her great grandfather used to own a posh bookshop on Swallow Street near Piccadilly. “The Prince of Wales used to sit there, and buy books from him. After the economic depression of World War I, they moved and settled in East London, where they had to rebuild their lives from scratch. During that time, my mother joined the Communist Party and became involved in the Freedom Movement for India.”She left London for Amritsar in 1938 where husband of her elder sister M. D. Taseer was posted Principal of the M.A.O. College in Amritsar. “My father was an English teacher at that College,” She says. Mrs Hashmi’s parents were married in 1941.Before Partition, Mrs Hashmi and her younger sister Moneeza [born in Simla] were raised in Delhi, Rawalpindi, Quetta, Simla, Lahore and Srinagar as a result of their father’s various postings in the army.Sharing her earliest memories from childhood, Mrs Hashmi says she was two years old when she was with her family in Rawalpindi. “I remember that because I fell and had hurt my head. I was taken into a hospital and given stitches. It was a military hospital. Parents weren’t allowed to stay with the patient but the maids were. My mother asked my paternal aunt to pretend to be a maid, and then she was allowed to tend to me for the night at the hospital. I almost died of blood poisoning because of that injury. In those days, Penicillin was newly invented. My father being in the army had some privileges, so I was given Penicillin and survived.”Mrs Hashmi’s first spoken language at home is Urdu. “My parents had decided that their child should grow up on one language and that would be Urdu. My mother had learnt Urdu, and she taught me to read and write at our home in Delhi. When my English grandparents visited us in 1947, I couldn’t understand them and they couldn’t understand me. It was at the age of four and a half years, I started learning my grandparents’ native language. My grandmother was fun. She used to tell us stories, and would act for us. She came fully prepared with puppets and things to entertain the children,” she recounts.In early 1947, Mrs Hashmi was enrolled at a nursery school in Lahore. “I remember my mother telling me it was a Hindu school. Of course I never knew what that meant at the time. I remember going in and playing there. I used to weep copiously every morning when I was sent to school and that continued for most of my life,” she says.Describing herself as an introvert and quiet person, Mrs Hashmi’s closest friends from childhood were her cousins Mariam, Salma, and Billu [the late Salman Taseer].At the time of Partition, Mrs Hashmi, her mother, sister, grandparents, maternal aunt and uncle were in Srinagar. “My father, a Lieutenant Colonel in rank, had resigned from the army in February of 1947 and moved to Lahore to set up the Pakistan Times and Amroze newspaper offices. My grandparents had just arrived from London so we had decided to spend the summer in Srinagar. We celebrated Eid there and afterwards, our father sent us a message from Lahore to leave Srinagar immediately as the situation was getting worse,” Mrs Hashmi recounts.They took a bus from Srinagar to Murree. On the way to Murree, Mrs Hashmi says she saw a bus at Thrait that was full of Sikhs who had been massacred. After reaching Murree, her mother organized the women in a procession to stop the rioting and bloodshed. “I remember she sat me down on a donkey and handed me a white flag. I was the leader of the procession waving my white flag. I was scared of the donkey but at the same time felt proud to be leading a rally of women. There was a certain performance to the role and I really enjoyed it,” she says.After a day or two in Murree, Mrs Hashmi and her family continued on to the Rawalpindi Railway Station on the bus, and took the train to Lahore. They shared the compartment with another English woman, the artist Anna Molka Ahmed [who founded and headed the department of fine arts at Punjab University] with her daughter.“There were so many people on the roof of the train. They were from Rawalpindi trying to crossover to India. There was mayhem and crowds, and there was no light in the train compartment,” Mrs Hashmi recounts. “We arrived at the Lahore station, which was under curfew at the time. There was a terrible hush in the city. My father had a curfew pass, so we managed to leave the Station and stayed with Begum Shah Nawaz at Lawrence Road for a while and in the meantime my parents started looking for a place to stay,” she says. They found a grand house not too far on Lawrence Road which is now a Government Office Building. Sharing her memories of her mother’s reactions on visiting that house, Mrs Hashmi says: “The lawn was completely dug out. The house was in bad shape, ruined by the miscreants. The electrical sockets had been pulled out, fans were taken off. There was a prayer room in the house that was defaced and badly desecrated. I remember picking up a children’s comic book from the rubble and my mother snatched it from my hand and threw it down yelling at me: we are not to touch anything here,”Mrs Hashmi and her family settled in an undamaged upper portion of a well-known doctor’s house on Empress Road and began rebuilding their lives. Recalling sights from the damaged lower portion of the house Mrs Hashmi says that she saw a refrigerator slashed by an axe. Her paternal grandmother had migrated to Gujranwala from Gurdaspur barely escaping the violence, and was eventually allotted residential property in Lahore against the lands she owned in Gurdaspur.In late 1947, Mrs Hashmi was enrolled at the Convent of Jesus & Mary where she wasn’t allowed to speak Urdu because everyone at the Convent was encouraged to speak English. “The nuns were aghast that I was an Englishwoman’s daughter but didn’t know any English. They refused to let me speak in Urdu and I used to weep and would sit at the edge of the door waiting for school to end. My grandparents used to pick me up in a tonga. I used to rush at the sight of them, I hated that school so much.” She says. 104/2, U B;pvk Ph 2, Street 3,At home, Mrs Hashmi says that daal chawal had always been her favorite dish cooked by her mother, and mangoes are the love of her life. “She also used to make Irish stew and Shepherd’s pie that I loved. Her specialty was homemade ice-cream, which she made using an icebox when we didn’t have a refrigerator. My mother was always particular about hygiene. I remember she used potassium permanganate to wash the dishes and the clothes to keep epidemic diseases like cholera and dysentery at bay. She was very particular and strict about table manners. That was her Englishness that used to persevere. We always had napkins on the table.” Mrs Hashmi recounts.In 1948, she was enrolled at the Queen Mary Convent where she studied for three years then moved on to the Kinnaird High School in Lahore from where she completed her matriculation. Despite her inclination towards the arts, Mrs Hashmi derived inspiration from the sciences, particularly Physics.In 1951, Mrs Hashmi’s father was incarcerated by the Pakistan government. Recalling an incident of her final year at Queen Mary’s, Mrs Hashmi says that she was invited by one of her school fellows to her birthday party. “I hated going to parties but since I had become reclusive after my father’s arrest and no news on his whereabouts, my mother insisted that I should go. I was eight years old at the time. There were some men sitting on the table at the party who started asking me questions about my father’s whereabouts which turned into a kind of interrogation. I started putting on a bravado act despite not having heard from him in three months. I told them my mother has just received a letter from him. I knew I was doing the wrong thing but I was so scared at the way they were interrogating me I told them what they wanted to hear. My mother found out about the incident. She called my school fellow’s family and gave them hell for it. I still remember the way she yelled on the phone,”In 1956, she opted to study at the Lahore College for Women for her intermediate degree in fine arts and in 1962, she completed her intermediate certification course on design from the National College of Arts in Lahore. In the same year, she travelled to London and studied for a three-year diploma in art education at the Bath Academy of Art in Bristol majoring in photography and painting. In 1990, she completed her MA honors in Art Education from the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States.In mid-1965 Salima was married to playwright, writer and artist Shoaib Hashmi whom she’d met on several occasions in Lahore and London, due to their overlapping interests in the performance arts. Sharing the tale of her marriage, Mrs Hashmi says. “Our marriage took place after my grandmother’s approval. She had no idea that Shoaib and I already knew each other. She looked at him once and said that he is a nice boy and I should definitely marry him.”The marriage took place in Karachi were Mrs Hashmi’s parents were living at the time. Mrs Hashmi moved to Model Town in Lahore with her husband after marriage, and lives there today with her immediate family. The couple has one son, Yasser Hashmi and a daughter, Mira Hashmi.Soon after their marriage the 1965 war had broken out, and Lahore was under curfew once again. “The whole of Gulberg was empty. Most people had run for their lives but we stayed behind. Shoaib used to have a curfew pass. He was doing a program called Parakh, and I was doing a puppet show called Babloo aur Naazi for PTV. During the war, we used to go and do those, and I still enjoy doing that.” she says. “We used to walk around in the darkness with the curfews going on and the noise of sirens. It was a short war but a lot of people died because of it. During this time my father wrote the poem called Blackout.”In 1966, Mrs Hashmi returned to London where she joined an infant school and invested most of her time on art education for children. In the meantime, her husband took up his studies at the London School of Economics. The couple stayed there for three years. In 1969, Mrs Hashmi took up teaching Fine Arts at the National College of Arts in Lahore whilst continuing to build her team of artists for television shows Mr and Mrs Hashmi were producing together. She also served as the Principal of National College of Arts for four years. She’s organized, curated and implemented several art exhibits and design projects, conferences and seminars in Pakistan and around the world. She also has several publications to her credit.In 1981, Mrs Hashmi’s husband was arrested and jailed at Kot Lakhpat with 400 people for their progressive views. “It was déjà vu for me at many levels. My daughter was the same age I was when my father had been arrested and the superintendent of the Kot Lakhpat jail where my husband was, was the same jailer during my father’s tenure in prison,” she says.In 1955, Mrs Hashmi visited her birthplace Delhi with her father during the Asia Writers’ Congress organized by the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Her father was the head of the Pakistani delegation. “I remember we went across Wagah on foot and then went on to Amritsar by train where we had lunch. We arrived in Delhi and met with friends from pre-Partition days. I also remember meeting Nehru,” she says.In 1962, Mrs Hashmi revisited Delhi with her mother to watch celebrations of the India Republic Day. “It used to be celebrated with royalty and pomp, with elephant processions and fairs during Nehru’s time,” Mrs Hashmi recounts.Sharing her final thoughts on Partition, she says: “There is no closure because people’s stories have yet to be properly documented and understood. They were the ones who had to pay the price for a decision in which so much was left to chance, and neither side envisaged what they were unleashing. It was a terrible carnage which was totally unnecessary. The issue of Partition keeps re-emerging with the 3rd and 4th generation today who don’t have those immediate memories but they do carry the stories that were handed down to them.There are a million ways to look at Partition. Over the years I have heard stories of bitterness, of great optimism, of loyalty and of gratitude. As a child, I’ve heard stories from my parents who witnessed it. My mother worked in the refugee camps. I was at the Lahore Railway Station when a train full of dead bodies had arrived and my mother had yelled at our driver to take me away from that carnage. There was a deathly silence on the platform in Lahore which I understood years later.My father, even though he was from this side, could not reconcile all his life with the biggest bloodbath in the history of this region. It is evident in the fact that he managed to write only one poem on Partition. It’s these stories that lead us to know why it happened the way it happened.The fact remains that the British set this up to drive the point home. This was their last good bye to the Sub-Continent. It could’ve been nipped in the bud very easily but they chose to look away when they had the means not to. I feel we really have to accept that there was this separation and we need to come to terms with it if we want to move forward. Otherwise, we are only going to trivialize all the carnage that has happened and it will weigh on our shoulders if we don’t find a way to cope with it.
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu and Panjabi
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Lahore (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Lahore (Pakistan), January 18, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2056
- Title:
- Oral history with Shafi Refai, 2016 March 13.
- Author:
- Refai, Shafi, 1942- and Saleem, Sobia
- Author (no Collectors):
- Refai, Shafi, 1942-, Saleem, Sobia, Saleem, Sobia, and Saleem, Sobia
- Description:
- Mr. Shafi Refai was born on May 27th, 1942 in Surat, Gujarat, India. His ancestors hail from the region of Iraq. In the 18th century, the migrated towards the South Asian Subcontinent, and since then, his family has always been in the Gujarat region—until some of them more recently migrated to the United States. Mr. Refai shares that his ancestors may have migrated to the Subcontinent because under the Mughal Empire, the region was a melting pot for different types of people. Once Mr. Refai’s family migrated to India, they established the Refai Sufi Order based on tasawwuf, or spirituality rather than mere physical rituals and practice. His family can trace 40 generations of their forefathers directly back to the Prophet Muhammad; they keep this history of the names of their links to the Prophet within their family and they carry it within their historical family name: Syed. Mr. Refai’s family received the name from their famous 11th century Sufi forefather: Ahmed Kabir Rifai. Ahmed ar-Rifai was a humble man, despite his wealth, and he was known for founding the Refai Sufi Order in present-day Iraq.Mr. Refai’s paternal grandfather’s untimely death is what made his own childhood more than of a prince than of a Sufi scholar. Mr. Refai’s grandfather, the household patriarch, was a Sufi leader and scholar. In fact, Mr. Refai’s home was a Sufi khanqa, a school of sorts for lay people; however, Mr. Refai’s grandfather passed away when his son, Mr. Refai’s father, was only five years old. After the death of his father, Mr. Refai’s father was raised by his grandmother. Mr. Refai’s great-grandmother was the daughter of the navaab, the Muslim king, of Surat, Gujarat. Because of his father’s upbringing in a navaab house, Mr. Refai’s own childhood was spent playing with Surat’s royalty—his cousins and second cousins—when the navaab at the time would visit their family. Mr. Refai’s maternal grandfather also had links to royalty: he was the secretary of the maharaja, the Hindu king, of Baroda (present-day Vadoda). His mother’s side of the family were Syeds and mirs. Mr. Refai shares that when the maharaja of Baroda wanted to marry the maharaja of Maysur’s daughter, he had Mr. Refai’s maternal grandfather send the proposal to the family.Mr. Refai grew up in a joint family with his parents and his three siblings as well as his uncles and aunties. The men generally worked outside the home while the ladies took care of the housekeeping. Mr. Refai is the oldest son in his family; he has an older sister, and two younger brothers and a younger sister. Because of their shared home, Mr. Refai grew up in a warm, close-knit family environment. He shares that even though they were from Gujarat, Mr. Refai’s family was Urdu speaking at home. The children learned several languages at school: Urdu, their native language; Gujurat, the state language; Hindi, the national language; English, the global/colonial language; and their choice of Persian or Sanskrit, traditional/historical languages. Mr. Refai shared that he and his siblings took Persian because when their family migrated from Iraq, they transitioned from Arabic to Persian before eventually speaking Urdu. He discovered this while examining the books that his family kept with them throughout the years, although he confesses that many of them are now lost, disintegrated due to bookworms, or indecipherable because no one in his family speaks that level of Arabic. As a young man, Mr. Refai especially enjoyed the Urdu poetry of Iqbal and Ghalib.As a child, Mr. Refai would enjoy many activities and holidays with his friends, family, and family friends. As a young man, for example, he particularly enjoyed played cricket outside their home. He would occasionally visit a few mosques with his family for daily prayers and weekly Friday prayers. Sometimes, his family would visit Doomas, a seaside city eight miles from their home where they would enjoy the water and play in the side. Eid was Mr. Refai’s favorite holiday. On this far, Mr. Refai’s family would make biryani, goat curry, tikka, and seekh. Family and friends would visit their home to share in the food and festivities. The children received small cash presents. Another holiday Mr. Refai enjoyed celebrating as a child in India, although he shares that he hasn’t celebrated it since arriving to the U.S. in ’71, is Diwali. On this celebrative day marking the Hindu new year, firecrackers were lit, and people enjoyed themselves. Mr. Refai would visit his grandfather’s Hindu friends with him on Diwali; they would be given firecrackers to light and sweets to consume. Surat was actually known for its sweets like ghaani and barfi. Mr. Refai also loved the kite-flying holiday of Utraaon on January 14th, when the city would be filled with young and old flying kites. Movies though, Mr. Refai explains, were the main source of entertainment for his family and young people in those days, and his family loved going to the cinema.Mr. Refai’s family home was rather large. Besides the khanqa, the lay people’s Sufi school, Mr. Refai’s family’s grounds also included a family cemetery. Near their home was the River Tapti, although the received water from a pipe based water supply system. Sometimes, they had to collect water in an underwater tank for emergency purposes, just in case the pipes were blocked or clogged. Mr. Refai’s family home itself had huge courtyards; the home really consisted of four home together, so that each of Mr. Refai’s paternal grandfather’s sons had their own home. For transportation, Mr. Refai’s family either used the French car that his father bought or the Buick that his grandfather would later purchase. Other times, they used their horse and tonga to get places. At one time, all the people who lived in the home and at the khanqa kept up the tradition of preserving the Refai Sufi Order and school in India; however, Mr. Refai explains, as time when on, people lost touch with being fulltime Sufis. More and more people left home to work and even went abroad, like him. These days, Mr. Refai cherishes the rituals of rational thought more than religious dogma.In those days, Surat was a small town of only 250,000, but these days Mr. Refai says, the city has changed and grown to a bustling city of five million. Before the Partition, Mr. Refai’s grandfather had been interested in politics, so he had gone over to a small town near by, Randair, where he served as their mayor, but these days, Randair has been incorporated into the larger Surat. Most people in Surat followed the Gregorian calendar, but at home, people might also follow their own religious or ethnic calendar, much in the way that Mr. Refai’s family followed the Hijri Islamic calendar in their homes. They used this calendar to mark and celebrate people’s birthdates. For their birthdays, Mr. Refai’s family would get people cake, flowers, money, and gifts. Surat was a modern enough town with electricity and movie houses. Seller would go through the streets and sells fruits, vegetables, chocolates, and biscuits. The majority Hindu town had good interfaith relations before and after the Partition. For example, the school that Mr. Refai attended with Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim boys began as a madrasa school in a mosque until it eventually became its own entity and transformed into a government sponsored school.In Mr. Refai’s childhood home, the food that didn’t come from the markets and mundis came from his grandfather’s farms. Mr. Refai’s grandfather owned quite a great deal of land and several properties. He would lease them out to farmers and others, but he also kept some farmland for himself. He particularly enjoyed growing mangos, although he also grew javaar, a grain. Mr. Refai’s family no longer owns these lands though because his grandfather has long since sold them and given up the farms with the grains and fruit that would be directly delivered to their home. In fact, these fresh and homemade traditional foods are what Mr. Refai revealed that he missed most when he first came to the United States; although these days, they are easily accessible.The Partition was something that Mr. Refai and his family barely noticed. As a child of five, the only strong memory or impression he has from during those years is that his grandfather and his father would sit with friends close to the radio and would listen to news about the Partition and the split that would soon take place in the South Asian Subcontinent. Mr. Refai isn’t aware of any political movements, social upheaval, or chaos in his area of the Gujarat at that time. He does remember that Ghandhi assassination came as a bit of a shock to everyone at his school.Much has changed since the Partition for Surat and for Mr. Refai as well. Surat no longer has a navaab. All of the children in his immediate and extended family went abroad to the U.K. and the U.S. to study, and so they no longer maintain the old kingdom. As he grew older, Mr. Refai knew that he wanted to go to a country that was more based in rationalism and thought than religion and tradition. After studying civil engineering in India, Mr. Refai applied for an American visa and waited. During this time, he married and moved to Dubai for work, but soon, his visa was accepted, and he left his job in Dubai for San Francisco, where his wife soon joined him as well.These days, Mr. Refai works as a civil engineer for the City of Oakland, California; when he’s not working, he enjoys reading books in history, politics, and religion—or texts that intersect these three areas. He also enjoys attending events sponsored by the Urdu Academy in the Bay Area, where they hold mushairas, or poetry events focusing on a single poet, their life, and their poetry. He still enjoys the poets from his youth: Ghalib, Iqbal, and Mir.Mr. Refai’s philosophy, in the words of one he admires, is that “no single people have a monopoly on truth—it is spread everywhere.” Although, Mr. Refai reflects, the goal of the Partition for some was to unite the Muslims into one country, they are now instead divided amongst three countries in the Subcontinent: Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Mr. Refai believes that Jinnah himself did not expect that those in power would agree to divide India into two countries; as Mr. Refai sees it, Jinnah simply approached Parliament at the time to ask for rights for Muslims in the new nation that was to be rather than to create a separate nation. Mr. Refai leaves future generations with the following: “We should try to rationalize the world and follow it—not towards our own self-interested but for the interest of all of humanity. […] Most problems in the world today are not God-made, but man-made, and them come from our own selfishness.”
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- Urdu and Hindi
- Physical Description:
- 5 video files
- Publication Info:
- Fremont (Calif.)
- Imprint:
- Fremont (Calif.), March 13, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2199
- Title:
- Oral history with Shahezadi Begam, 2015 July 25.
- Author:
- Begam, Shahezadi, 1943-, Chakraborty, Deborshi, and Banerjee, Debraj
- Author (no Collectors):
- Begam, Shahezadi, 1943-, Chakraborty, Deborshi, Chakraborty, Deborshi, and Banerjee, Debraj
- Description:
- Shahezadi Begam could not remember her birthday or the year she was born. However, we can apprehend that she is at least seventy-two years old from her narrative of her whole life. She was born in Calcutta in the park circus region where her family had a large house. She told that it was a joint family and many of her relatives used to stay with them in that house. She had four sisters and she was the youngest. Her father was in construction business and had a successful professional life.After Partition her family decided to migrate to Pakistan but the reason behind it was unknown to Shahezadi. They took a train from Calcutta and came to Shahjanpur railway colony in Dhaka crossing the border. As she could remember, her family was not able to sell their house so she believed that someone later occupied it. She did not go to school but learned Arabic and studied the Quran at home. After few years, she married Abdul Hamid who was a worker in Shahjanpur railway factory.But the 1971 Liberation War jeopardized her family life. They were driven out of their quarter for being Urdu speaking. Goons looted her house and she told that few of her relatives also died during the course of war. They were in custody of Indian military in Rajabag for a month without having necessities of livelihood. They were taken to Mahammadpur Geneva camp where they still live. Her sister went back to Calcutta and is living there. Her daughter went to Karachi in RePartition but they could not go. So her daughter is living in Karachi for last forty years and they have never met since Liberation of Pakistan.
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 3 video files
- Publication Info:
- Dhaka (Bangladesh)
- Imprint:
- Dhaka (Bangladesh), July 25, 2015
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_1801
- Title:
- Oral history with Syed Nizam Shah, 2016 March 3.
- Author:
- Shah, Syed Nizam, 1932- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Shah, Syed Nizam, 1932-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Syed Nizam Shah was born in Kashmir to a Kashmiri-English speaking family on 25th February 1932. He is from the Naqshbandi family. His father’s family hails from Tashkent and is known to be the founders of the Naqshbandi order of Sufi Islam in Kashmir. There are several shrines of the Naqshbandis still existing in Srinagar today. One of the shrines belonging to his family is the Khankahi Sokhta or Dodmut Khankah [in Kashmiri].Mr Shah’s father was the first Muslim governor of Kashmir at the time of the Punjabi-speaking Dogra Dynasty in the early 1930s. The Naqshbandis enjoyed an elevated position as a prominent Muslim family and had extensive landholdings spanning five villages. Mr Shah’s father was learned and fluent in Arabic and Persian, considered to be languages of scholarship in those days. They had a family library going back to several centuries of hand written manuscripts and literature. Mr Shah’s mother’s family hails from a village 20 miles off of Srinagar. She was a homemaker. Mr Shah was raised with one elder half-brother and one elder half-sister, and two younger sisters at their residence in Srinagar. His mother passed away three years after his birth. For a while, Mr Shah and his siblings were brought up by an Afghan royal family that was settled in Kashmir. “They were exiled after losing the wars with the British and were allowed to settle in Kashmir by the then-Maharaja. We still maintain ties with that family.” Mr Shah’s stepmother was a Christian woman his father had married after her conversion to Islam.Mr Shah says that in those days, people in Srinagar used to live in mohallahs. “In our case, the mohallah would comprise of various Naqshbandi families. In the family enclave, we used to have our own mosque called Khosha Sahib which still stands in Srinagar, named after the Sufi saint Khowaja Shah Niyaz. It’s a very small mosque and used to cater to families living in the mohallah. It has some historic relics of Islam there, one of which is known to be the hair of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, gifted to our ancestors by the Sultan of Turkey, on his spiritual expedition to Istanbul. It is displayed publicly on the birthday of the Holy Prophet. It is only accessible to the trustees of the mosque today.” The upper class Hindus – the Brahmins and Kashmiri Pundits – used to have their own mohallahs. There were very few Sikh families living there, and would dine with the Muslims and vice-versa. There was a school for Sikhs built by Maharaja Ranjith Singh. Shia Muslims lived in their own mohallahs. There was no animosity between people of various sects and faiths. There was a lot of respect for Hindu, Muslim and Sikh festivals and under his father’s governorship, they were observed jointly by all communities, as Kashmiris.Mr Shah was brought up in a mansion in the family enclave with a big garden, he remembers. In childhood he remembers having this love for cars in his family. Most of the growing up years were spent in the gardens. Describing the structure of the mansion, Mr Shah says, “Houses in Kashmir in those days used to have courtyards in between the gardens. My father had built the front portion of the house in the 1920s. My sister, myself, my step grandmother and father used to live in it. My brother and his family had the rear section of the courtyard. Diwali, Dussehra and Eid were celebrated jointly amongst Muslims and Hindus. Wazawan was a special dish made for weddings, cooked only by professionals trained in cooking the dish. White Kashmiri rice with gravy of various types was another popular delicacy.” He says. They had running electricity in Srinagar. They also owned an antique telephone that had the Morse code mechanism. They also owned a radio. The postal system was run by the British. King Edward’s stamp was used on the envelopes for letters. Villages in Srinagar didn’t have electricity.The rice, maize and corn farms and the peach and cherry orchards supplied food for the household. “We had cows and chickens but no buffaloes. There were no buffaloes in Srinagar. Due to my father’s hold on extensive agricultural property and orchards, our family was self-supporting. We used to grow mainly rice, corn and maize. The water for irrigation was channelized from the mountain stream and wells.”Mr Shah says that the lands on higher altitudes four five miles from Srinagar would be given to the British army officials and Maharajas from other States on rent during the summer and they would use them to hunt and play golf etc [nowadays the place is occupied by the Indian army].The famous Nedou’s hotel in Srinagar was owned by his sister. “There was one branch of it opened in Lahore, its name was changed to the Avari Group of Hotels after Partition,” he shares.Mr Shah was fond of hiking on the mountains and fishing with his father. He played hockey and cricket with his friends. “We had three horses. My sisters liked riding. I hated it.” He says. Some of his closest friends were Hindus, especially the children of Maharaja of Jaipur’s family.Mr Shah’s father was one of the first Kashmiri Muslims to go to a missionary school [Church Mission School] inaugurated by the Church of England, founded by Tyndale-Biscoe, a Kashmiri Englishman. “It was considered a big event to be enrolled at a missionary school in those days since it used to be the only school where English was taught. The others were typical schools where Arabic and Persian were studied.” Two of his younger sisters were the first from a Muslim family to enroll in a mission school called the Presentation Convent at Srinagar, as well. “That was run by the Catholics and it was the girls’ first English medium school.” He says.Purdah was not observed in the family which was a breakthrough because of his father’s status. “We were a modern family,” he says.Mr Shah’s early education started at home. He was taught by an English governess and Muslim cleric. At the age of ten, he was enrolled at one of the branches of Biscoe’s school in Srinagar that was run by his son at the time. Commenting on his father’s knowledge of English, Mr Shah says that it considered a mark of honor and respect even though the British Raj was not in Kashmir. Used to cycle to school frequently, sometimes picked and dropped by father. In those days, it was strictly required by law for bicycles to have a rear lamp reflector, and light in the front that would come on after sunset. “If you were well-off, you would have the dynamo light on your bicycle. One day when I was cycling back home in the dark, the traffic police officer stopped me because my dynamo wasn’t working. He reported the incident to my father and he was very angry and reprimanded me for it,” he recounts. Recalling his schooling with children of different religious backgrounds, Mr Shah says that some students faced difficulties adapting to the school activities. “There were many Kashmiri Pundits in the school and they couldn’t play football with us even if they wanted to. One of the tenets of their faith was not to touch leather since they were made out of skins of cows and buffaloes, like the football,” he says.In their house there were three kitchens, one for the servants and the maids, one for the family, and one for the guests from Hindu families with a set of cooking utensils and cooks specializing in their cuisine. “As a matter of strict protocol, utensils in that kitchen were never to be used for cooking meat, only vegetarian food,” he says.Just before Partition, the option available to Mr Shah’s father was to send him to the Doon School at Dehradun in India for higher studies. “He sensed that Partition could stir a lot of trouble because people had already started to evacuate areas amidst rising political tensions. My longtime school friend Karan Singh went on to the Doon School and I was left behind,” he says. In 1946, Mr Shah was sent off to England with a guardian and some Indian students on scholarships. They took to Rawalpindi by road and then took a train to Bombay [now Mumbai]. From Bombay they set sail for Liverpool by sea, and from Liverpool, took the train to London. Mr Shah completed his A Levels from the King Williams College in London.In the meantime, Mr Shah says that after the takeover of Shaikh Abdulla in Kashmir in 1947 and deployment of the Indian army at Srinagar, hell broke loose in many parts of the State. “My father kept me posted on updates who continued to serve as the Governor of Kashmir during the period of Partition maintaining a neutral stance between Jinnah and Shaikh Abdullah. The Poonch area became a hub of refugees who ultimately migrated to Rawalpindi and Wah Cantonment. My brother was in the civil services of Kashmir, and was attacked by Abdullah’s mobs in Srinagar while he was out running an errand. He fled to Karachi after that episode. Jammu became a horrifying example of ethnic cleansing. The whole exercise was unnecessary. In summary, Kashmir was made the victim of two nationalist ideologies.”Mr Shah was cut off from his ancestral home and family income at Srinagar during Partition, and he was soon looking for a job in England. “I had just gotten admission into Oxford and the London School of Economics but couldn’t study in those institutions,” he says. In 1950, he joined the British American Tobacco Group that was doing business in Imperial India and in Pakistan.In 1953, Mr Shah acquired a temporary passport to travel from the UK to Pakistan as a result of his posting at Akora Khattak in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by the British American Tobacco Group (BAT). We were the first batch of Pakistanis recruited selected by the company on the basis of our strong family backgrounds. During my first posting to Pakistan, I was not acknowledged as a Pakistani citizen. I could use that passport for only three months. For years, I was without a nationality, and this applied to all the Kashmiris in exile. We all lived in this foray of hope that the UN resolution will lessen the tensions between the two countries and we could cross borders, take on a 7-8 hour journey from Rawalpindi to Srinagar by car and visit our ancestral homes. This dream never came true. The Kashmiris who had migrated to Pakistan were considered stateless. They weren’t treated like refugees from India but from a disputed territory with no identity. During the plebiscite, the migrant Kashmiris in Pakistan were not allowed to vote,” he says.Starting as their assistant manager, Mr Shah served with BAT for 30 years, and six years as the company’s Chairman. In 1984, he took an early retirement. He was also posted in Dhaka, Chittagong and Karachi. Sharing his experiences of working in Dhaka and Chittagong, he says: “The Nawab of Dhaka was of Kashmiri origin, and because of that association, I received a neutral and respectable treatment,” During his tenure in Karachi, Mr Shah observed the sub-human living conditions of refugees from India in the waterlogged slums of Karachi. “There were hundreds of men, women and children lying around the railway tracks across the slums to relieve themselves. It was one of the most horrific sights of Partition that I could recall. The government paid no attention to that situation until the 1960s,” he says.After his retirement from BAT, he worked as a policy consultant for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank for various years on energy and projects in Pakistan. He continues to take up their projects.In 1955, Mr Shah says his father became the first Kashmiri allowed to visit Pakistan from Srinagar after Partition. In the 1960s, during General Ayub’s government, he says, Kashmiris finally became eligible for allotment of evacuee property on the condition that they would surrender that property if their homeland became a part of India. “During this time, Sheikh Abdullah paid a goodwill visit to Pakistan to improve ties with India, after consulting with Jawaharlal Nehru. One of my cousins was in that delegation. Shortly after his arrival in Pakistan, we heard news of Nehru’s demise, which was an unfortunate blow to the purpose of that visit, which was also lost. In Nehru’s time, Kashmir was given a special status. It retained its position as a State and had its own Prime Minister.”“Kashmiris suffer a perpetual state of statelessness and the government of Azad Kashmir in Muzaffarabad is only theoretical. In order to write a letter to my family in Srinagar, I had to send the letter to a third country for postage. I saw many refugees without any food or shelter from Poonch settling in Wah and Rawalpindi. I could have chosen India but there was this euphoria over having a new homeland and all the promises made, so I opted for Pakistan in a euphoria of hope that we could go home when we want to.”Mr Shah was allowed to visit Srinagar for the first time during Nehru’s government in India when Bakhshi Ghulam Muhammad was the Prime Minister of Kashmir, he remembers.He was married in 1958 to his wife through an arrangement by the Afghan royal family they were friends with in Srinagar. He has four children, educated in Karachi and abroad, and settled in the United States and the United Arab Emirates, nowadays. Mr Shah resides in Karachi with his wife nowadays.Sharing his final thoughts, Mr Shah says: “Srinagar to me is paradise on earth. I’ve travelled all over the world but have not found a place like it. I compare the Kashmiris to the Jews, being driven away from their homeland for God knows how long. “Every invader that has come to this land has inflicted persecution upon the Kashmiris and forced them out of their homes. Kashmiris did not get the benefits a lot of other communities did as a result of Partition. The way it was done was most criminal, it need not have been done this way. Partition to me is the largest religious ethnic cleansing and displacement in world history, which was dismissed by the British as a casual thought. I have not seen anything more horrific than this in the history of the world.”
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- Urdu and English
- Physical Description:
- 2 video files
- Publication Info:
- Karachi (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Karachi (Pakistan), March 3, 2016
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2197
- Title:
- Oral history with Taj Begum, 2017 February 6.
- Author:
- Begum, Taj, 1937- and Hassan, Fakhra
- Author (no Collectors):
- Begum, Taj, 1937-, Hassan, Fakhra, Hassan, Fakhra, and Hassan, Fakhra
- Description:
- Taj Begum was born in 1937 in Delhi to an Urdu-speaking literary family. Her father, born and raised in Delhi, was a landlord and her mother was a homemaker. Sharing the story behind her name, Taj Begum says, “My father says on my birthday King George VI was crowned in England, and therefore he’d decided that my name would be Taj.” Her parents’ marriage was set by her paternal grandfather in Delhi, when her mother was four and a half years old, and her father was six years old. “Several years after her marriage, my mother obtained an English education from Queen Mary School, and could read the English newspaper, and converse in English,” she shares.Taj Begum is the third of five sisters and one brother, and was raised at her paternal grandparents’ residence in Khari Bavla mohallah and their parents’ residence on Court Road (near Delhi Sabzi Mandi) before Partition. Her paternal grandfather used to own a horse cart, and her parents used to own a car. Her father was avid hunter, and would often to go to Delhi for hunting tigers and deer, and had a great collection of guns for hunting that he’d keep hidden at the basement of the house. “Every week we used to watch him disassemble his guns, clean them, and reassemble them,” she remembers.Her father had recently built their house on Court Road before her family moved into it in 1944. It had a lawn with a swing for children, a kitchen, and five rooms, with curtains. The rooms of her house were divided into zenana (female-only) and mardana (male-only) sections. Cooking was done by the male cooks in copperware and brassware utensils. “The male cooks were forbidden to enter the living and dining areas without their heads covered,” Taj Begum remembers. “My grandmother had not once heard the crackling of cooking utensils nor had seen cooks make food in the kitchen,” she says. Taj Begum recounts only the elders in her house were allowed to listen to the radio. “In our father’s absence, we would switch it on and listen to songs on it. As soon as he’d return, we’d switch it off, cover our heads, and go back to reading our books,” she recalls.The police station and vegetable market was close to their house. During Diwali and Gurupurab, Taj Begum and her family used to get sweets from their neighbors. During Eid, Taj Begum would visit her paternal grandparents’ home at Khari Bavla, where the entire family would get together for Eid prayers, and katchoris and vermicelli with milk was made and distributed in the mohallah. In 1942 Taj Begum joined her elder sister at the Saint Mary’s School in Delhi. She says that it was a school run by the nuns. Her most vivid memory from that school was standing in a queue outside the canteen to get their share of breakfast – biscuits and an apple.At the time of Partition Taj Begum was in 3rd grade at school, and she recounts way the neighborhood changed. “I used to rely on the elders to understand what was going on. There was a family at the vegetable market, close friends of my father’s. The women of that family had not once stepped foot outside their house. One day, they were forced to flee their home, with their children and some of them came to our house for refuge. I used to see them cry and narrate stories of how the English killed one of their sons, and how they saw his dead body on the streets. From the lawn of our house, we could see fireballs flying all over the place. It felt like we were in the middle of some kind of war. The fighting lasted for three days,” she shares.She remembers that her father asked her mother to cook and gather as much food as possible, as they prepared to leave their home for Purana Qila when neighbors had warned them of a police raid. “Being few in number, the neighbors told our father it would not be possible for them to protect us if such a raid took place,” Taj Begum says.Taj Begum, her immediate family and her cooks moved on to the Old Fort, while her uncle stayed behind at their home on Court Road. “He had hoisted the flag, and luckily, our house was spared from the violence and destruction we’d feared.” The refugee camp was miserable: “There was no food getting distributed there, and no roof on top of our heads. It was raining. Once we hid under one of the army trucks to avoid getting wet from rainwater. It was the heaviest rainfall I’d seen in Delhi.” Her father had plane tickets to Lahore, but the earliest flight for Lahore was not for another 15 days. “The living conditions at the Old Fort were getting worse, we couldn’t wait that long, so my father wasted those tickets and bought train tickets to Lahore instead.”Taj Begum remembers the train ride to Lahore. “The berth was literally stuffed with people, and the windows were sealed shut. My baby cousin’s mouth was stuffed with a cloth so that he may not make a sound. Our uncle told us insurgents are sharpening swords on the platform, if we make a sound, they would massacre the entire train,” she shares. It was a 36 hour journey to Lahore via Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. Her paternal aunt was living in Lahore, as her husband was posted as a civil surgeon there. After crossing the border at Wagah, Taj Begum stayed with them for a few days, and then moved on to Karachi and settled temporarily with her maternal aunt at a two-room flat on Jacob Lines. Her father was offered an evacuee property in Karachi against their residential property in Delhi. “My father saw that house and noticed half-eaten stale roti and a plate of rotten daal on the table, with a glass of water half-empty, as if the person left his home in the middle of lunch/dinner. He refused to take that house as we also had left ours in a similar state,” she says.It was difficult to adjust to their new home in Karachi. There were no fans, and the bathroom was filthy. After living at Jacob Lines for three years, Taj Begum and her family moved to a guest house at Pakistan Chowk, and eventually her father built their own house at Nazimabad in Karachi. Taj Begum’s mother struggled in Karachi to find a suitable school for her daughters, and eventually had them admitted to Government School on Jacob Lines. After matriculation, Taj Begum obtained her intermediate and bachelor’s degree from Frere’s College in Karachi in English, Urdu Advanced and political science in 1957, and B.Ed in 1958 from Karachi University. She took up lectureship in Urdu at the Government School on Jacob Lines in 1959. She also taught Urdu and English at the Government School in Nazimabad for a decade. In 1967 she studied for her master’s in Urdu from Karachi University. In 1989 she joined the Government College for Women at Korangi in Karachi as principal, and served there until her retirement in 1997.She married her husband, author and broadcaster, Dr. Aslam Farrukhi, in 1955 in Karachi. The couple has two sons. Her husband passed away in August last year due to heart-related complications. Currently she lives with one of her sons and his family in Karachi. Since Partition, Taj Begum has not visited her birthplace in Delhi, though she shares her late husband has made sixteen trips to Delhi, particularly to attend the Urs of Nizamuddin Auliya. “More than the love for my birthplace, I have fear of it. I can never forget those awful days of Partition.”
- Topic:
- History and History
- Language:
- Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 1 video file
- Publication Info:
- Karachi (Pakistan)
- Imprint:
- Karachi (Pakistan), February 6, 2017
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2886
- Title:
- Oral history with Zeba Rizvi, 2015 December 17.
- Author:
- Rizvi, Zeba, 1940, Saleem, Sobia, and Islam, Nabila
- Author (no Collectors):
- Rizvi, Zeba, 1940, Saleem, Sobia, Saleem, Sobia, and Islam, Nabila
- Description:
- Zeba Rizvi was born in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh in 1940. Her family traces its roots to Persia, from where most of her forefathers made their way to Badaun and settled. Her grandparents resided in Badaun until they migrated to Pakistan at the time of the Partition, although her own immediate family did not. She will never forget the words of her father, a government officer: "I have made my final decision, we are staying."Mrs. Rizvi, born Zeba Roshan Raza, had a rather large family with seven siblings. As a child, Mrs. Rizvi recalls that her family had an unusual dynamic. She remembers that the children were encouraged to read and learn about the world, but they weren't allowed to go outside and watch the street entertainment. They could leave the house, but only with a caretaker. Mrs. Rizvi particularly loved her summer holidays, fun and carefree. One of her favorite activities was attending the exhibitions in which sellers from different places would come and showcase their goods. Oftentimes, circuses accompanied these sellers at exhibitions and the whole affair could last up to a month. Perhaps because of their strict household environment, Mrs. Rizvi and her siblings grew up reading quite a bit. When she was a student, Mrs. Rizvi became involved with debating at her school from the sixth grade and into her university years. She excelled and won multiple debating trophies. She recalls that trophies stayed at the school and were put on display there while the medals for participants were taken home. Because of her winning track, her trophies always stayed with her schools. Her excellent reading and debating skills led Mrs. Rizvi to later major in Urdu and begin writing short stories in college.As a child, Mrs. Rizvi's family included her father, her mother, her siblings, and her amma. Amma was Mrs. Rizvi's family's domestic helper who took care of the children and the household; however, at that time, it was common to not address servants by their names, so instead her family called the woman "mamma," or mother. When she was small, Mrs. Rizvi understood her life as having a "Mummy" and an "Amma." Her Mummy would teach her important life lessons, such as to live within one's means. Mrs. Rizvi's amma took care of her on a daily basis and told her stories from various traditions. The Partition was something that was distant from the minds of Mrs. Rizvi and her siblings. She attributes this to the fact that her family moved out of the Badaun, where her extended family and other Muslim families lived, very early on because of her father's job. As a government official, he had to travel quite a bit for work, and he always took his family with him. Their family always lived in large, beautiful compounds in the Civil Lines, where government officials were housed. Their homes had spacious central courtyards where the family would sleep in the open in the summers, reserving the surrounding rooms for the cold winter months. Their rather large compound would include the surrounding wilderness, sometimes even with the Ganga on one side as when they lived in Ghazipur. In the Civil Lines, Mrs. Rizvi reveals, they were not Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, or Christians, they were considered as government families. She says that there were no religions in friendship, religion was just a reminder to love others.After Partition, Mrs. Rizvi married Mr. Yusuf Zaki Rizvi. The marriage was an arranged one and he grew to be her lifelong companion. They wed in Lucknow, lived in Raipur for a little while, and moved to Mumbai where they raised their children. During her life, Mrs. Rizvi has enjoyed being a homemaker, a wife, mother to three, and a grandmother to six. She strives to promote friendship and understanding between all people in her daily life. Mrs. Rizvi also volunteered for various NGOs and social organizations. She has guest starred on several All India Radio shows focused on women. These days, Mrs. Rizvi lives with her daughter's family in the United States where she also continues to write short stories inspired by current world events and joyous occasions in her life that she shares with her friends.
- Topic:
- History
- Language:
- English, Hindi, and Urdu
- Physical Description:
- 5 video files
- Publication Info:
- Cupertino (Calif.)
- Imprint:
- Cupertino (Calif.), December 17, 2015
- Genre:
- Filmed interviews
- Identifier:
- partitionArchive_2021
