Hoshiarpur: Punjab, December 1, 1982. That winter day was special. The dense fog and cold was usual but it was fading away, with the warmth and love that came with the reunion of a family who had been separated in the India-Pakistan Partition 35 years before.
As she made her way from Lahore to Amritsar and the final destination, Hoshiarpur district in Punjab, Parduman Singh was waiting for his sister Jaswant Kaur, who was now Razia Sultana of Mandi Bahauddin district, Pakistan.
Before coming to India, Jaswant Kaur alias Razia Sultana had sent a telegram, informing her brother that she would be finally coming to Hoshiarpur. But, despite Jaswant Kaur’s telegram, which she sent some days before, Parduman Singh was anxious about his sister’s visit, as there was no other way to reconfirm if her visa was approved.
The only modes of communication during those days were letters, telegrams and select phone calls, which took longer than usual owing to India and Pakistan’s sour relations.
Finally, at around 2 pm on that, Parduman Singh received a call from Jaswant Kaur that she had reached Amritsar. Winter beauty was at its peak and so was fog that had led to zero visibility. It took a little longer for the taxi to reach Hoshiarpur, where Parduman Singh along with his family were eagerly waiting for his sister.
Parduman’s family used to stay in Mian Channu in Pakistan. Among the millions who were displaced, killed, raped and dismembered in the sectarian violence during Partition, Parduman Singh’s family managed to come to Hoshiarpur in an army truck, where one of his sisters had already got married before the Partition took place. En route, the family survived on chappatis and lassi.
However, the night the riots broke out, Parduman’s two sisters – Jaswant Kaur alias Razia Sultana (16) and Harbhajan Kaur alias Irshad Begum (10) – who had gone to meet a relative in Sargodha, Pakistan could never be traced. That’s where the family’s ordeal of tracing their daughters began. Over the years, hope kept them going.
The helpless family tried their best to find the girls but that became impossible, as a Muslim man, who saved the young girls that night, changed their names to save them from rioters.
Also read: Fragmented Identities: (Re)Living the ‘Partition’ Today
Rahim, a vegetable vendor, and his wife from Sargodha hid the girls in their house for months and projected them as his sisters – Razia Sultana and Irshad Begum. Later, he shifted them to Mandi Bahauddin. It was here that he got Razia married to Chaudhary Noor Ilahi, a tehsildar, while Irshad married Mohammad Afzal, a doctor.
An old photo of Parduman Singh along with his sister Jaswant Kaur alias Razia Sultana, when she first visited Hoshiarpur on December 1, 1982. Photo: author provided
Reunion after 35 years
Since the Indo-Pak Partition in 1947, many stories of tragedy, love, separation and unity have been documented both on the silver screen and in books. But there are still thousands of stories which either went unnoticed or could never be shared.
Talking to The Wire, Barjinder Singh, the nephew of Jaswant Kaur, who is a Punjab government official and settled in Hoshiarpur, said, “How can we forget that day! The moment it was confirmed that our aunt was coming, we remained on the terrace tracking every taxi that crossed our house. That joy, anticipation and nostalgia is hard to describe in words.”
Barjinder Singh and his wife Harpreet Kaur at their house in Hoshiarpur, Punjab. Photo: author provided
Barjinder Singh said that their wait ended at around 9 pm, when a white ambassador car stopped outside their house. “The moment we noticed a taxi driver was inquiring about my father’s name, we rushed downstairs to receive them. There in front of us was our maternal aunt and her son Chaudhary Khalid Mehboob. Every second of that meeting was deeply moving. The hugs, tears and sobs that followed the meeting left everybody teary eyed. I remember how my father and aunt cried. One moment, they were trying to speak and the next they were in tears. More than words, my aunt’s tears narrated her emotions. That day still gives us goosebumps,” he recalled.
For Barjinder Singh’s family, the only grief was that his grandmother Bhagwant Kaur – could not see her daughters. “Post Partition, a train used to come from Pakistan bringing refugees in it. Our grandmother would visit Hoshiarpur railway station in search of her daughters and return home crying. By the time she died, she had lost her eyesight due to crying and her only desire to see her daughters could never be fulfilled,” he shared.
Chaudhary Khalid Mehboob, the younger son of Razia Sultana who had accompanied his mother on her maiden visit to Hoshiarpur, told The Wire over the phone from Mandi Bahauddin that after staying un Hoshiarpur, they had gone to Delhi to meet their eldest maternal aunt.
“I was around 22 years old when I first met my maternal uncle. The warm welcome, respect and hospitality that we received in Punjab and Delhi was out of this world. Wherever we went, from tea stalls to paan wala, sweet shops and road side eateries, all that we received was love and affection. People came to greet us,” he shared.
Back home in Pakistan, Jaswant Kaur, who was married to tehsildar Chaudhary Noor Ilahi, had distributed ladoo and jalebi the day she found her lost family in India. “That day was celebrated by our entire locality. My mother’s Indian and Sikh roots became the talk of the town. I have been to the US, UK, Canada and Europe but I must admit that Jeda maza India vich hai na, oh hor kitey nahi (The feeling I get in India, I don’t get anywhere else). We feel proud of our blood relations with our cousins in India. Borders might have separated us, our parents are also no more, but we are connected through hearts,” he added.
Barjinder Singh along with his two cousins, the sons of Jaswant Kaur – Masood Akhtar Bhatti and Chaudhary Khalid Mehboob –during his visit to Pakistan last year. Photo: author provided
Tracing the family
Masood Akhtar Bhatti, the elder son of Jaswant Kaur settled in Islamabad, Pakistan, shared that his mother used to remain sad and would often cry quietly. “As children, we would notice her crying but had no idea that the reason behind her emotional state was the pain of separation from her family during Partition. It was in the later years, when we grew up, that she disclosed her Sikh roots and how she lost her family in the Indo-Pak Partition. But despite the trauma of Partition, she maintained a calm composure in life,” he said.
Recalling the night, which brought a turning point in his mother’s life, Masood Akhtar Bhatti said that once his mother was watching Khabarnama, a news programme on TV, when suddenly she started crying loudly. She just could not control her tears.
Also read: Those Were the Days: The Post-Partition Refugee Life
“The year was 1978. And the programme was about the visit of a Sikh Jatha (devotees) from India that had come to pay obeisance at Nankana Sahib, Pakistan. Seeing the Sikh men and women from India on TV, my mother turned emotional. She pleaded that please go and search, my brother might have come from India too. Being the eldest, I decided to visit Nankana Sahib to search for my maternal uncle. That very night, I took the last train from Mandi Bahauddin and reached Nankana Sahib at around 4 am the next day. I also got carbon copies of the family pedigree chart that my mother made to be distributed among devotees,” he added.
Bhatti said that at Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, he distributed the carbon copies, which mentioned the details of Parduman Singh’s family. “Noticing me, a Sikh devotee, Avtar Singh from Ludhiana inquired what it was all about. I narrated the entire story and to my surprise, he said that he knew a friend in Hoshiarpur, who might help in tracing Parduman Singh. That divine moment lifted my spirit. Excited, I returned home after exchanging our addresses and phone numbers for the much-awaited communication,” he added.
Around a month later, Jaswant Kaur’s family received a letter from Avtar Singh, who shared that he had got in touch with a Sikh, Parduman Singh, whose two sisters were lost in Partition. “From there began a new chapter of my mother’s life. Her wait and yearning were over. We started exchanging letters and shared old memories to verify if they were the same people, whom my mother was searching for all these years. However, the only trouble was delayed postal communication, which took months and visa approval to visit India,” he said.
Barjinder Singh’s wife Harpreet Kaur, who is a freelancer with leading newspapers like Hindustan Times, Punjabi Tribune and Ajit in Punjab, said that it is ‘Mitti di khich (desire for motherland)’ that brings people both from India and Pakistan close to each other.
The couple has been to Pakistan many times and hoping for a visit again to hold a ‘path’ at Nankana Sahib ahead of their son’s wedding in October.
“We are eagerly waiting for our relatives from Pakistan. Not just our family, even our cousins in Pakistan, their wives and children also take pride in their shared roots. And no such thought of we being Sikh and they being Muslim ever crossed our minds. In fact, people in India and Pakistan also take pride in everything that unites the two countries,” the couple added.
Masood Akhtar Bhatti also said that their family was waiting for a visa to attend the traditional Sikh wedding in Punjab. “It would be a reunion of our family once again. Though my mother and maternal uncle are no more, we are glad that we have taken that legacy ahead,” he shared.
Jaswant Kaur died in 1987 while her brother Parduman Singh, who too worked as a stringer with the Press Trust of India, Indian Express and other Punjabi dailies, was killed by Sikh extremists during militancy in Hoshiarpur in June 1988. Harbhajan Kaur died in June 2018.
Kusum Arora is an independent journalist.