When I first listened to Bir Bahadur’s story, and every time I have gone back to it since, I have been struck by the combination of pride, grief and sense of real loss with which he describes the incidents relating to the deaths of women. His sister, Maan Kaur, killed by his father is, for him, not only a woman who gave up her life to save the honour of the community, but also one of the people whose sacrifice should occupy a place in the struggle for independence of this country. In the remembrance ritual that takes place in the local gurudwara every year it is often Bir Bahadur who comes and recounts the stories of women who ‘killed’ themselves, and of those who were killed. These valorous acts of martyrdom are what, for Bir Bahadur, set Thoa Khalsa apart from other Sikh villages in the area. He seems to imply that the men of Thoa did not allow their women to be abducted, that they did not show this sign of weakness. Instead, they avoided this by making the women into martyrs.
On one of the occasions that we met Bir Bahadur we were carrying with us the book that I have referred to earlier, which has a district by district listing of all the Hindu and Sikh women who were abducted in Pakistan. We wanted to ask him about this book, whether he recognized any of the names in it. But before we could do so, Bir Bahadur asserted that there were no names from Thoa in our book, since the men of Thoa had protected their women. This is not correct of course. Thoa Khalsa does figure in the book, as do many other villages, but we realized that it was essential for Bir Bahadur to deny rape and abduction in Thoa in order to justify the ‘martyrdom’ of the women: if the specific purpose of the ‘martyrdom’ had been to prevent rape and abduction, and if those had taken place anyway, it would have been pointless. So many deaths would have gone waste.
In Bir Bahadur’s statements there is no sense of censure, no questioning of the logic that makes men kill people of their own families. One of the stories often told about Partition is how families tried to barter their daughters for freedom. Bir Bahadur describes one such story when the villagers decided to give a girl away in order to secure their freedom. ‘When it comes to saving your life,’ he said, ‘nothing else counts.’ They were stopped from doing so by Bir Bahadur’s father, who then took the decision to ‘martyr’ the girls and women. I was struck by the fact that in all of this Bir Bahadur saw his father as a victim, as someone who was helpless (majboor), an instrument of God’s will. When he tried to kill his own daughter, the father did not succeed the first time round. He tried again, this time successfully: in Bir Bahadur’s eyes both the father and the daughter knew what they were doing. Although no words were exchanged between them, ‘just the language of the kirpan was enough’.
Bir Bahadur also speaks movingly of the ways in which Hindus and Muslims related to each other. He places the responsibility for Partition at the door of the Hindus who, according to him (and he includes Sikhs in this) did not even give the Muslims the consideration due to a dog. Nonetheless, at a later stage in his life, Bir Bahadur turned more centrally to politics: I have not met him for many years but I believe that he is now a member of the BJP. This would explain why, despite his initial openenss about Hindu-Muslim relations, he comes back to asserting the age-old B]P arguments about the rapid increases in population among the Muslims. Throughout his interview, I am fascinated by the co-existence of seemingly paradoxical situations: first, his identification with Hindus and his recognition of how they treated Muslims, then his growing sense of a Sikh identity and a simultaneous sense of alienation from what he sees as a Hindu State, then his empathy, at Partition, with Muslims and his fear, that now they will take over the Indian State, and underneath this, somewhere, his political loyalties and his religious identity. To me, this interview became important for all of these reasons.
BIR BAHADUR SINGH
My name is Bir Bahadur Singh. My father’s name is Sant Raja Singh. My village is Thoa Khalsa, zilla Rawalpindi, tahsil Kahuta. Our village was in district Rawalpindi, it used to be seen as a model village because in the whole area, if you left out Gujjar Khan, Thoa Khalsa was the largest tahsil. There were wholesale shops and approximately 50-60 large traders. And the smaller villages that surrounded ours ... they had no shops, these were Musalmaan villages, that was why everyone would come to Thoa Khalsa to purchase things and jathas and jathas would come for this. For example, a woman from one of the Musalmaan villages, if she was going to buy something, she would not go every day to make her purchases, instead she would buy provisions for a whole month, because otherwise the markets were quite far for them. And some twenty, twenty-five men and women would get together and come to get their provisions, and there would be a good crowd, like in a kasbah, in Thoa Khalsa ... the main thing about this place was that Sant Attar Singh ji, who is from Mustawana Sahib, he made Gurudwara Dukh Bhajni Sahib here. This gurudwara was very well known and respected and people would come to it from far away. Twice a year there used to be a mela there and thousands of people, both Hindu and Sikh, would collect for this. Even Musalmaans would be there in large numbers, Musalmaans also paid homage to this saint. The place where I belong, Thoa Khalsa, close to that there is one Saintha village, in this village the population is some thirty or forty families. Along with that there are some smaller villages. In Saintha my father had a shop, and my early upbringing was in that village. My teachers were Musalmaans and our house was the only Sikh house there, the rest of the village was Musalmaan.
... In our area the people who used to live in towns, in the kasbahs, there were small villages where they would go to set up shop, and they used to live there with their families. And I remember that from the time I was admitted into school, in the first class, till class five, I studied there ... There was a Musalmaan woman, dadi dadi we used to call her. Her name was ma Hussaini, and I would go and sit on one side in her lap, and her grand-daughter would sit on the other side. I used to pull her plait and push her away and she would catch hold of my jura, my hair, and push me away. I would say she is my dadi and she would say she is my dadi. Look at this: that girl was small when we used to play together, I was in the fifth class, she was younger than me, and now her son has become a young man, he was in Dubai and from there he wrote to me, calling me mamuji. The girl wasn’t even married then, and her son is forty now, he saw my letter in his grandparents’ home and asked who is this. He was told by his mama that this is also your mama, your uncle. Such good relations we had that if there was any function that we had, then we used to call Musalmaans to our homes, they would eat in our houses, but we would not eat in theirs, and this is a bad thing, which I realize now. If they would come to our houses, we would have two utensils in one corner of our house, and we would tell them, pick these up and eat in them and they would then wash them and keep them aside and this was such a terrible thing. This was the reason Pakistan was created. If we went to their houses and took part in their weddings and ceremonies, they used to really respect and honour us. They would give us uncooked food, ghee, atta, dal, whatever sabzis they had, chicken and even mutton, all raw. And our dealings with them were so low that I am even ashamed to say it. A guest comes to our house, and we say to him bring those utensils and wash them, and if my mother or sister have to give him food, they will more or less throw the roti from such a distance, fearing that they may touch the dish and become polluted ... the Musalmaans dealt with us so well and our dealings with them were so low. We, if a Musalmaan was coming along the road, and we shook hands with him, and we had, say, a box of food or something in our hand, that would then become soiled and we would not eat it: if we are holding a dog in one hand and food in the other, there’s nothing wrong with that food. But if a Musalmaan would come and shake hands our dadis and mothers would say son, don’t eat this food, it has become polluted. Such were the dealings: how can it be that there are two people living in the same village, and one treats the other with such respect and the other doesn’t even give him the consideration due to a dog? How can this be? They would call our mothers and sisters didi, they would refer to us as brothers, sisters,
fathers, and when we needed them they were always there to help, yet when they came to our houses, we treated them so badly. This is really terrible. And this was the reason Pakistan was made. They thought, what is this, what has happened? How can this be?
Two people living in the same village and one loves the other so much while the other hates him so much that he will not eat food cooked by his hand and will not even touch him ... if a Musalmaan shook hands with you and you had something in your hand, you could take it that the thing was finished, destroyed ...
We don’t have such dealings with our lower castes as Hindus and Sikhs did with the Musalmaans. I’m really saying that today I feel ashamed of this. I went to a Musalmaan’s house and he asked what will you eat. I said what will I not eat, you tell me. I’ll eat everything. What is there in eating and drinking? If you go to someone’s house and they hate you so much that you have to pick up your own plate and go and have yourself served in this way ... am I a human being that I will eat in your house like this?
Brahmanism was there in Sikhi also, it was there and we were all caught in this dharam kanta, this dilemma that was why the hatred kept growing. Otherwise there was so much love, so much love that you ... if you look at these stories I tell you of my younger days, till today I get letters ... even our own first cousins, real relations, were not so close to us as our Musalmaan friends. It was only when we came here after Pakistan was created that we realized that the woman we used to call our dadi was not our real dadi, she was a Musalmani. She used to have a garden of fig trees, and she had kept one tree for me and she would not even give the fruit of that tree to the masjid, she had reserved it for me. Her grandson also died saving me. I was small, and you know the ploughs that kisans have ... to dig up the ground ... the man stands on his legs, like this, and there is a bull in front. I was standing once between his legs, his name was Arif ... and a snake went past and sort of leapt towards me, as I was standing between his legs. Arif was without anything on his feet ... you know kisans don’t have shoes or anything, and he did like this and the snake bit him. Only one grandson she had and he too died. But she never once said a word, never a word of blame ... in fact she used to say that my grandson’s sprit is alive in this young boy ... so God fearing a woman was she. Till today in my life I have never seen a woman like this. She used to use the plough herself ... yes, herself. Her husband had died while she was still young. And Musalmaans often marry a second time, but she is the only woman I have seen in my whole life who did not do that, who could and would do everything with her hands, she is the only woman I have seen who would and could work a plough ... otherwise women generally do not touch the plough. Yes, in Punjab you see them on tractors. Now they even drive them. So in this way we had very close links and relationships with Musalmaans. This is only brahmanvad, and politics which have brought ruin on us. Brahmins have cast such spells, bound people in such devious webs that perhaps for the next hundred generations to come we will have to suffer this punishment they have made for us. I feel that our elders were so guilty towards the Musalmaans, that they sinned so much against them that for the next hundred years we deserve to suffer whatever punishments there are for us. We deserve them, we have sinned so much.
The Musalmaans believed in us, trusted us so much ... that for example those who were workers ... those who used to serve ... if a money order came for someone no one would go to their homes to deliver it. There was one post office ... as in our village there was one post office and there were many small villages around. They used to have to come themselves to collect the post and money orders.
[The post office] was in Thoa Khalsa, and the postman would not reach people’s mail to them or get money orders to them. That was why when Musalmaans went to work away from their homes, they would give our address as the place to receive their money orders ... and money would come for them there. My father used to make entries in his register scrupulously ... this belongs to such and such, this belongs to such and such ... and then people used to come and buy their provisions out of this. In a sense this was like getting advance money. If there were a hundred money orders for a hundred rupees each, that would be ten thousand rupees, so you could use those ten thousand rupees to buy rations, or you could use five and keep the rest to run the shops ... those people trusted us so much. But we did not even think we should treat human beings as human beings ... I am not saying that you should change your religion and become a Musalmaan, after all, religion has its own place, but what I am saying is that humanity also has a place and we simply removed that, pushed it aside as if it did not exist. The same people who used to look up to us, when they were asked about Partition and asked how the Sikhs dealt with them ... if I am telling you how badly we treated them, then when a Musalmaan will speak to a Musalmaan obviously he will exaggerate a bit and tell him about this in more detail. And of course there is no doubt in this that all the Musalmaans said that we dealt with them very badly and that they could not continue to live with us. No doubt. Why should they stay with us? Why? By separating they did a good thing. We were not capable of living with them. And all the punishment we have had at their hands, the beatings they have given us, that is the result of all this. Otherwise real brothers and sisters don’t kill and beat each other up. After all, we also had some sin in us ... to hate someone so much, to have so much hate inside you for someone ... how can humanity forgive this?
In Thoa Khalsa when the fighting and trouble began, then for three days they kept fighting, our jawans kept fighting for three days and chasing the Musalmaans out. ... When the Musalmaans came in thousands we kept fighting, but in the end it was decided to come to an agreement. Some Musalmaans came forward to discuss this. In the agreement they made one condition ... there’s one girl, she’s still in Pakistan ... actually everyone knew about her, even I knew and I was a child, so the whole village must have known ... something that a child knows the elders also have to know ... she had a relationship with one of them. So the Musalmaans said, give us this girl. But my father said, look, we’re not the type of people who work like this, you want money, you take it, you want anything else you have that, but ... even in Kabul Kandhar when Ghazni took our girls away, we brought those girls back, and today you are asking us to give you this girl, absolutely not. And they, they were seven brothers, my father and his brothers, and two sisters, and the children of all the brothers and sisters, even these added up to some twenty-five or twenty-six girls, leaving aside the boys ... so those young people ... the young people, the newly married girls and the unmarried girl ... my father and my uncle, Avtar Singh, they collected them in one place, they collected them and said to them, whatever may happen we are not going to agree to this condition, we would rather kill you all. There was no protest at this, no noise, all of them, all the women said kill us ...
There were some 1000-1200 people in the village. There was one Sardar Gulab Singh — we had all collected inside his haveli, it was a large house, all of us had collected there ... 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, he said sachche padshah, we have not allowed your Sikhi to get stained, and in order to save your Sikhi 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 ... he stepped forward and caught my father’s feet ... Ram Singh caught his feet and he said, Bhapaji, first you kill me because my knees are swollen and I can’t run away ... you will all run away and I will not be able to 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. After that, Justice Harnam Singh, who was Chief Justice of Punjab, Justice Harnam Singh, his behnoi, meaning his father-in-law’s sala, he, Sardar Nand Singh Dheer, he said to my father, Raja Singha, please martyr me first because my sons live in Lahore ... do
you think I will allow 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 on to 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 in 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. Then he killed himself, he and his father both, they became shaheeds, martyrs ...
Other Side Of Silence Page 20
