Tales in search of listeners: memories from post-Partition Punjab
This essay concerns two tales, narrated by two different people -- one a Sikh and the other a Muslim -- about the perpetrators of genocidal violence in east Punjab in 1947.
The first telling dates to January 2003, when I was returning to Delhi from three hectic days at the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad where my documentary Ek Minute Ka Maun was screened. It was on that journey on an overcrowded train that I met Sidhu, a burly middle-aged Sardarji with a weather-beaten face, who ran Sidhu Refrigeration and was an expert at setting up entire air conditioning plants by himself. The train lurched forward, gently nudging us closer, the distance further bridged by our common mother tongue of Punjabi. In the way strangers open up to each other, he rambled on about a lifetime spent in Hyderabad. It was inevitable that the conversation of two Punjabis would turn inwards to confront the ghosts of India’s Partition in 1947. Sidhu remorsefully told me about how his paternal uncle had killed Muslim children, holding them aloft on his spear.
The first telling dates to January 2003, when I was returning to Delhi from three hectic days at the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad where my documentary Ek Minute Ka Maun was screened. It was on that journey on an overcrowded train that I met Sidhu, a burly middle-aged Sardarji with a weather-beaten face, who ran Sidhu Refrigeration and was an expert at setting up entire air conditioning plants by himself. The train lurched forward, gently nudging us closer, the distance further bridged by our common mother tongue of Punjabi. In the way strangers open up to each other, he rambled on about a lifetime spent in Hyderabad. It was inevitable that the conversation of two Punjabis would turn inwards to confront the ghosts of India’s Partition in 1947. Sidhu remorsefully told me about how his paternal uncle had killed Muslim children, holding them aloft on his spear.
“My father broke off all ties with him,” said Sidhu. After a long pause he continued his story. “My uncle was punished severely for his acts. None of his children survived. Born with some disability or the other each died within a few hours of birth.”
Echoes of Sidhu’s story surfaced almost a year later when I was shooting Kitte Mil Ve Mahi, a documentary bringing to light the deep bonding between Dalits and Sufism in Punjab. Roaming the villages of southern Punjab for local histories, I met Hanif Mohammad, who had a similar Partition story revolving around a mazaar near the village entrance. Hanif Mohammad had retired as peon from a local high school. He was a tall frail man of around 60, with an unlined face, a flowing grey beard and a white skull cap. I realized with a shock that in my 40 years, this was the first time I had seen a Punjabi Mussalman. The story of the shrine turned into the story of Hanif Mohammad; Hanif’s story turned into the story of Partition, intertwined with the fate of Punjabi Muslims of East Punjab. Recounted without bitterness, it was a seamless blend of multiple tales, which began in 1947 when Hanif was five years old. Hanif wound up his narrative recounting that the local villagers who tried to desecrate the Pir’s grave in 1947 lost their mental balance and died of madness. It was an echo of Sidhu’s story.
These two tales, as different as they were, both invoked a folk morality. The perpetrators paid for their crimes in their own lifetimes; people were witness to this justice. These stories seemed familiar to me, because lodged in my memory was a narrative I had overheard in my childhood from a villager during a visit to our village Akal Garh in Punjab...
