About a month ago, a communal army armed with sticks, tommy guns and hand grenades, surrounded the village. The villagers defended themselves as best they could ... but in the end they had to raise the white flag. Negotiations followed. A sum of Rs 10,000 was demanded ... it was promptly paid. The intruders gave solemn assurances that they would not come back.
The promise was broken the next day. They returned to demand more money and in the process hacked to death 40 of the defenders. Heavily outnumbered, they were unable to resist the onslaught. Their women held a hurried meeting and concluded that all was lost but their honour. Ninety women jumped into the small well. Only three were saved: there was not enough water in the well to drown them all.
The story referred to incidents of communal violence in Punjab which had actually begun some months before Partition, in March 1947. Early in this month, a number of Sikh villages in Rawalpindi district were attacked, over a period of nine days (6-13 March, although in some places sporadic attacks continued upto 15 March). The attacks themselves were said to be in retaliation for Hindu attacks on Muslims in Bihar; also the Sikh political leader, Tara Singh, is said to have made provocative statements in Lahore to which Muslim political leaders had reacted. It is futile to speculate whose was the primary responsibility: the reality is that once it became clear that Partition would take place, both communities, Muslim and Hindu, started to attack members of the other. In Rawalpindi district, in the villages of Thamali, Thoa Khalsa, Mator, Nara and many others, the attacks ended on the 13th of March, when the army moved in and rescued what survivors were left. In many villages the entire population was wiped out; in others, there were a few survivors.
A small community of survivors from these villages lives in Jangpura and Bhogal, two middle class areas in Delhi. It was from them that I learnt a little more about the ‘mass suicide’ in Thoa Khalsa described above. Because they could lay claim to this history, survivors from Thoa Khalsa, even today, seemed to have a higher standing among the Rawalpindi community, than the others. People spoke of them, as they had done of Mangal Singh — in tones of awe and respect. Conversely, the two brothers from a neighbouring village who had lost their sisters to abductors, were spoken of as if they were the ones who were somehow at fault. Clearly the women’s ‘sacrifice’ had elevated their families, and their communities, to a higher plane. The first person from whom we heard the story of Thoa Khalsa was Basant Kaur, a tall, upright woman in her seventies. According to her, she was one of the women who had jumped into the well; because it was too full, she did not drown. I reproduce below a long excerpt from her interview.
BASANT KAUR
‘I keep telling them these stories ...’
My name is Basant Kaur. My husband’s name was Sant Raja Singh. We came away from our houses on March 12, and on the 13th we stayed out, in the village. At first, we tried to show our strength, and then we realized that this would not work, so we joined the morcha to go away. We left our home in Thoa Khalsa on the 12th. For three or four days we were trapped inside our houses, we couldn’t get out, though we used to move across the roofs of houses and that way we could get out a bit. One of our people had a gun, we used that, and two or three of their people died. I lost a brother-in-law. He died from a bullet they fired. It hit him and he died. So we kept the gun handy. Then there were fires all around, raging fires, and we were no match for them. I had a jeth, my older brother-in-law, he had a son, he kept asking give me afim (opium), mix it in water and I will take it My jeth killed his mother, his sister, his wife, his daughter, and his uncle. My daughter was also killed. We went into the morcha inside the village, we all left our houses and collected together in the centre of the village, inside the sardaran di haveli, where there was also a well. It was Lajjawanti’s house. The sardar, her husband, had died some time ago but his wife and other women of the house were there. Some children also. They all came out. Then we all talked and said we don’t want to become Musalmaan, we would rather die. So everyone was given a bit of afim, they were told, you keep this with you ... I went upstairs, and when I came down there was my husband, my jeth’s son, my jethani, her daughters, my jeth, my grandsons, three granddaughters. They were all killed so that they would not fall into the hands of Musalmaans. One girl from our village, she had gone off with the Musalmaans. She was quite beautiful, and everyone got worried that if one has gone, they will take all our girls away ... so it was then that they decided to kill the girls. My jeth, his name is Harbans Singh, he killed his wife, his daughter, his son ... he was small, only eight days old. Then my sister-in-law was killed, her son and her daughter, and then on the 14th of March we came to Jhelum. The vehicles came and took us, and we stayed there for about a month and then we came to Delhi.
In Delhi there were four of my brothers, they read about this — the camp — in the papers and they came and found us. Then, gradually, over a period of time the children grew up and became older and things sorted themselves out. My parents were from Thamali. Hardly anyone survived from there. You know that family of Gurmeet’s, they had two sisters, the Musalmaans took them away. Whether they died or were taken away, but they, their bodies were never found ... Someone died this way, someone that, someone died here and someone there, and no one got to know. My parents were burnt alive.
That whole area was like jungle, it was village area. One of my brothers survived and came away, one sister. They too were helped by a Musalmaan, there were some good ones, and they helped them — he hid them away in his house — and then put them into the vehicles that came, the military ones. The vehicles went to Mator and other places. In Mator Shah Nawaz made sure no harm came to them. People from Nara managed to get away, but on the way they were all killed. Then my brothers read the papers and got to know. My husband, he killed his daughter, his niece, his sister, and a grandson. He killed them with a kirpan. My jeth’s son killed his mother, his wife, his daughter, and a grandson and granddaughter, all with a pistol. And then, my jeth, he doused himself with kerosene and jumped into a fire.
Many girls were killed. Then Mata Lajjawanti, she had a well near her house, in a sort of garden. Then all of us jumped into that, some hundred ... eighty-four ... girls and boys. All of us. Even boys, not only children, but grown up boys. I also went in, I took my two children, and then we jumped in — I had some jewellery on me, things in my ears, on my wrists, and I had fourteen rupees on me. I took all that and threw it into the well, and then I jumped in, but ... it’s like when you put goyas, rotis into a tandoor, and if it is too full, the ones near the top, they don’t cook, they have to be taken out. So the well filled up, and we could not drown ... the children survived. Later, Nehru went to see the well, and the English then closed it up, the well that was full of bodies. The pathans took out those people who were at the top of the well — those who died, died, and those who were alive, they pulled out. Then they went away — and what was left of our village was saved, except for that one girl who went away.
I was frightened. Of course, I was, but there was also ... we were also frightened that we would be taken away by the Musalmaans. In our village, already, in the well that was inside the village, girls had jumped in. In the middle of the night they had jumped in. This happened where the morcha was. The hundred ... eighty-four women who jumped in they were just outside, some two hundred yards away from Lajjawanti’s house. In the morcha, the crowd had collected in Lajjawanti’s house. She was some seventy, seventy-five years old. A tall, strapping woman. She did a lot of seva of all the women, she herself jumped into the well. Many people were killed in the morcha, and the Musalmaans climbed on top to kill others, and then many came and tried to kill people with guns, one of them put a gun to my jeth’s chest and ... and we began to jump in. The others had died earlier, and we were in the morcha, the well was some distance away from Lajjawanti’s house, in a garden. There were two wells, one inside and one outside, in the garden. My nanan and her daughter, they were both lying there ... close by there was a ladle, I
mixed afim in it, and gave it to them, and she put it in her mouth ... she died, and I think the village dogs must have eaten her. We had no time to perform any last rites. An hour or so later, the trucks came ... just an hour.
She did path, and said don’t throw me away, let me have this afim, she took god’s name and then she died. We had afim because my jeth’s son used to eat it, and he had it with him and he got more and gave it to everyone. My jeth’s son, his daugher-in-law and his daughter, they died in Jhelum later, when we were going to the Dinia camp, on March 15 or so. The camp was close to the Jhelum. Four days we fought, and we remained strong, then around the 12th we got into the morcha, on the 13th our people were killed, and then the trucks came in the evening and took us to Rawat, a village.
They brought us there [to the well]. From there ... you know there was no place ... nothing to eat, some people were eating close by but where could I give the children anything from ... I had barely a few paise ... my elder son had a duvanni (two annas) with him, we thought we could use that ... my brother’s children were also hungry ... but then they said the duvanni was khoti, damaged, unusable ... [weeping] such difficulties ... nothing to eat ... we had to fill their stomachs ... today they would have been ranis ... so many of them, jethanis, children ... I was the youngest ... now I sit at home and my children are out working and I keep telling them these stories ... they are stories after all ... and you tell them and tell them until you lose consciousness ...
They have told them, don’t listen to her stories ... We mark the day, 13th march in Bhogal, martyrs day ... what did Gurmeet tell you? Did he tell you about Thamali? Thamali was my parent’s home. They took young girls away from there — did he not tell you? In our village there was one temple and one gurudwara, but no masjid. The Muslims came from outside. In Thamali there were a few Musalmaans, those who ground wheat, grain, channas ... They used to participate in some customs, it was a sort of ritual. They did nothing, they used to eat our salt.
My husband? My nephew killed him, my nephew. Because they had killed the girls, his daughter, sister, grandchildren, with their kirpans, and then my jeth’s son had a pistol and he killed his mother, his uncle ... then my nephew killed my husband with a pistol. He had a small daughter, one-and-a-half years old, she also ate pistol shots. Yes, my husband was killed by my nephew as I told you, he killed him because my husband said he did not want to become a Musalmaan. Imagine ... fifteen, twenty thousand people, and we had four guns. Those also they took away. The same thing happened in Thamali, they had collected all the weapons, but then they had to part with them. Then they killed them. My nephew was young and strong. My jeth’s son ... he had shops. It was not this boy’s father who died from burning, but my other, older jeth. I had eight jeths. This boy, he also killed himself after this. I have a son who killed his wife, his daughter, a small son ... one jeth came to Rangabad, where his son was, one died from burning, another one — the eldest — kept watching all that was going on, he did not say anything, people thought why kill this man, he has no children, no daughter, no son, nothing. Two of my jeths had no children ... All this had happened before, and then we jumped into the well. All this had happened earlier, some things happened on the 12th, some on the 13th and then, as night fell, the military trucks came to take us away. Four women were pulled out of the well, they held them by the arms and pulled them out, the Musalmaans. Four women, one was really beautiful, she had eight children, she was saved. She threw her children in and then jumped in after them, but she was saved ... You see, you work it out, many died, but when the water could not rise any more, those near the top were saved. Wives, grandchildren, daughters-in-law, Bahmanis (Brahmin women), we had some higher castes in our village, their women, with their children ... later, Nehru came to our village, he wept. Then they closed down this well, and later, they went with the military to open it. Some months later, at the time I was coming to Delhi. From Dinia camp, my brothers brought me. My brothers were here, they used to run trucks.
In our village there were a few Musalmaan families, but we never had any problem. We lived together, there were marriages, we would attend them, we lived fairly close to each other. Close by there were other villages where you would find Musalmaans, Tihai, Saintha, Sadiok, Sadda, small villages. I was born in Peshawar. I was about nineteen or twenty when I came to Thamali, though I was married in Thoa Khalsa. My father was ninety years old when he was killed. He was in Thamali when he retired, he kept taking a pension for a long time. Around forty or forty-five rupees. Just before 1947 his pension went up to ninety rupees. My father said, child, all the other sisters have gone, you are the only one left, it’s time for you to go. I said no need, I’ll go when I need to — after all we lived well so ... I also take a pension now, but it’s in my husband’s name, not mine. Why should I lie? We brought four boris of sugar into the morcha, two of chuaras (dates), boris of moongphalis (peanuts), and a few other things, you see we used to buy wholesale, so we had mountains of stuff with us, gur, rice, etc. The Jhelum river was some twelve miles from us.
There were Hindu houses in our village, maybe thirty, forty or fifty. And the rest of the village was with the sardars. There were twenty or twenty-five houses of Bahmans, Thoa was like a town, it was quite big. The Hindus did their own work, the same sort of things, shops, cloth shops, hundreds of things. The same give and take. The Sikhs were all kattar Sikhs, they all had pattas from Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s time.
There was a wave of violence, it began in Rawalpindi and Lahore. Then it was as if they had decided on a day, let’s finish them off on this day. Things happened in Rawalpindi, but no one got killed, all the deaths took place in the villages around. At first, I think it was in Rawat, the place where there used to be a committee (a market) of donkeys, of horses — you don’t understand what a committee is do you? Child, it was a mela, people would come from far away to Rawat to sell their horses and donkeys, there was a thana there also. The violence was then in Choa, Thamali, Thoa, Nara, Bewal — they did not leave anyone here, they took all the weapons ... We had four guns, they took them away. There were two more, with two men, a servant and another who had come on leave from the military, they too had weapons. From Rawat, things spread to Pindi, and then it came to our villages.
The abduction and rape of women, the physical mutilation of their bodies, the tattooing of their sexual organs with symbols of the other religion — these acts had been universally condemned. But no mention was made of this kind of violence by anyone — neither the families, nor the State, nor indeed by historians. And yet, its scale was not small. Virtually every village had similar stories. Gurmeet Singh, a survivor from village Thamali, also in the same district, described their flight:
On the night of the 12th of March we left at 4 a.m., in the early hours of the morning. Our own family, all the people, we collected them in the gurudwara and got some men to guard them. We gave them orders to kill all the young girls, and as for the gurudwara, to pour oil on it and set it on fire.
We decided this among ourselves. We felt totally helpless — so many people had collected, we were completely surrounded. If you looked around, all you could see was a sea of people in all four directions ... wherever the eye could reach, there were men. After all, you get frightened ... people collected together to comfort each other. But then we found we were helpless ... we had no weapons, whatever little we had they had taken. Then they took a decision in the gurudwara that all the young girls and women — two or three persons were assigned the task of finishing them off. Those in the gurudwara were asked to set it on fire with those inside ... first, we killed all the young girls with our own hands; kerosene was poured over them inside the gurudwara and the place was set on fire ... women and children, where could they go?
Over the years, as I spoke to more and more people, both men and women, I was to come across this response again. The tone adopted by the Statesman report above, was similar to that adopted by families when they spoke of the hundreds of wom
en they had ‘martyred’ in order to ‘save’ the purity of the religion. Some time after we met Basant Kaur, I came across Bir Bahadur Singh, her son. He gave us a more detailed account of incidents of community violence in Thoa Khalsa.
In Gulab Singh’s haveli twenty-six girls had been put aside. First of all my father, Sant Raja Singh, when he brought his daughter, he brought her into the courtyard to kill her, first of all he prayed, he did ardaas, saying sachche badshah, we have not allowed your Sikhi to get stained, and in order to save it we are going to sacrifice our daughters, make them martyrs. Please forgive us.
Then there was one man who used to do coolie work in our village. He moved forward and ... caught my father’s feet and he said, bhapaji, first you kill me because my knees are swollen and I won’t be able to run away and the Musalmaans will catch hold of me and make me into a Musalmaan. So my father immediately hit him with his kirpan and took his head off. Then Nand Singh Dheer, he said to my father, Raja Singa, please martyr me first because my sons live in Lahore ... do you think I will allow the Musalmaans to cut this beard of mine and make me go to Lahore as a sheikh? For this reason, kill me. My father then killed him. He killed two, and the third was my sister, Maan Kaur ... my sister came and sat in front of my father, and I stood there, right next to him, clutching onto his kurta as children do. I was clinging to him ... but when my father swung the kirpan (vaar kita) perhaps some doubt or fear came into his mind, or perhaps the kirpan got stuck in her dupatta ... no one can say. It was such a frightening, such a fearful scene. Then my sister, with her own hand she removed her plait and pulled it forward ... and my father with his own hands moved her dupatta aside and then he swung the kirpan and her head and neck rolled off and fell ... there ... far away. I crept downstairs, weeping, sobbing and all the while I could hear the regular swing and hit of the kirpans ... twenty-five girls were killed, they were cut. One girl, my taya’s daughter-in-law, who was pregnant ... somehow she didn’t get killed and later my taya’s son shot her with a pistol ... but she was saved. She told us, kill me, I will not survive. I have a child in my womb. She was wounded in the stomach, there was a large hole from which blood was flowing. Then my mother and my uncle sat together and Harnam Kaur — her name was Harnam Kaur — she said, give me some afim (opium). We arranged for afim, people used to eat it those days ... in a ladle we mixed opium with saliva ... she said the japji sahib path ... just as the japji sahib bhog took place so did her bhog. Completely as if she was prepared for death ... few people can do that ... she had death in her control and it was only when she wanted it that death took her. For hearly half an hour she did the path ... half an hour and then as she spoke her last shlok she also ended. She knew she would die ... so much control ... over death.
Other Side Of Silence Page 18
