\n From Narnaul to Hyderabad: Pakistani recounts perilous journey from India in 1947\n <\/p>\n
\n\tHYDERABAD, Pakistan: On a rain-soaked September night in 1947, ten-year-old Muhammad Saleem Pirzada was woken by his father and told to gather whatever valuables the family could carry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOutside, the streets of Narnaul \u2014 then part of the princely state of Patiala in present-day India \u2014 were dark, slick, and dangerous.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe order was clear: leave, or risk certain death at the hands of armed Hindu and Sikh mobs that had already begun attacking Muslim neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWalk barefoot and put a cloth in the children\u2019s mouths so they may not talk,\u201d Pirzada recalls his father telling his mother as the family prepared to slip away in silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThat night, Sept. 8, Pirzada, his father, grandfather, four siblings and three other relatives walked more than two kilometers to the railway station. His mother would join them in Pakistan months later.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s natural, when a person is ill, near death, and then Allah grants them health, that moment of near-death comes back to mind. It was just like that, only Allah saved us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tBritain\u2019s hurried partition of the Subcontinent into India and Pakistan had triggered one of the largest migrations in human history. Around 15 million people were displaced along religious lines, and more than a million were killed in massacres and reprisals, according to independent estimates.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn Narnaul, the violence began on Sept. 6, when mobs attacked Muslim homes. The next day brought more killings and looting. By the third day, the Pirzada family decided to leave, joining a crowd of terrified Muslims at the railway station. Sikh state police initially tried to stop them, but relented after the intervention of the British Railways\u2019 Watch and Ward force.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe boarded from there and set off,\u201d Pirzada says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAlong the journey, the train stopped at stations where bodies lay scattered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe saw bodies, wounded people, some without limbs,\u201d he remembers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe family eventually reached Hyderabad, in Pakistan\u2019s Sindh province, traveling via Munabao in the Indian state of Rajasthan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMay Allah never let anyone see such a time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tPirzada estimates that at least 80 members of his extended family were killed in those weeks.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt was not always this way.<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore 1947, he says, Narnaul was a place of deep communal trust. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims attended each other\u2019s weddings, and summer nights saw neighbors gathered together on charpoys.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Hindus would come and sit there [in the Muslim neighborhoods] at night in the summer\u2026 That\u2019s how relations were with the Hindus. They would attend our weddings,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSometimes Hindu fathers would even entrust Muslim traders to escort their daughters to their in-laws\u2019 homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Hindus would say, \u2018Mian ji, you are going there, take my daughter along.\u2019 I have seen those days of affection.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHe still remembers the names of his Hindu schoolteachers, even as he acknowledges that the violence in Eastern Punjab was part of a larger cycle of retaliations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIn Eastern Punjab, the atrocities were greater\u2026 the Muslims there were martyred,\u201d he says, accusing the Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh, of providing arms to Hindu and Sikh mobs.\u00a0
\n\t\u201cThe riots took place at the instigation of the Maharaja of Patiala.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen asked whether his family would have migrated if peace had held, Pirzada is clear: \u201cThere would be no question of coming [to Pakistan]. We had land, the crops were good, and life went on. Had we stayed there, we would have used new technology and increased production.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn Pakistan, Pirzada briefly worked as a clerk before his family received a land allotment in rural Hyderabad. Farming became his life\u2019s work, and today, at 88, he lives surrounded by his two sons, one daughter, and ten grandchildren.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut more than seven decades later, Narnaul remains etched in his memory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOne\u2019s homeland, the place of one\u2019s birth, is always remembered. The desire is still there. May Allah grant the opportunity so I can visit it once,\u201d the said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe even saw some people who died in Pakistan insisting, \u2018No, no, we will go back! We will go back\u2019!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Narnaul to Hyderabad: Pakistani recounts perilous journey from India in 1947
HYDERABAD, Pakistan: On a rain-soaked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[174,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-85526","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}