Sixty Years of Freedom -- and Animosity
By Chiade O'Shea Der Spiegel
Both Pakistan and India are celebrating six decades of independence from the British this week. But the reality of today is a far cry from the dreams of 1947.
Back then, all the way back in 1947, she was an incurable rebel, admits Fatima Sughra today. The 14-year-old was full of passion -- for an independent Pakistan and a separate state for the Muslims.
"We wanted to be free from the English and the Indians," the now 74-year-old grandmother recalls. "We'd had enough of living by their rules. Six decades ago, she climbed onto the roof of the British government's building in Lahore in 1947, tore down the British flag and hoisted the Muslim League's colors in its place -- immediately becoming an icon of the movement for independence.
PHOTO GALLERY: INDIA CELEBRATES 60 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE
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But 60 years later, much of her passion is gone. "When I think of what happened to the dream of Pakistan, what we fought for and the sacrifices people made with their lives, I could cry," says Sughra. "People sacrificed their lives for a nation of hoodlums who will just celebrate this anniversary with firecrackers and blaring car horns," she reflects. "Nobody will be thinking how to make a better Pakistan."
In 1947, the young Fatima was herself forced to consider the question when her own street in Lahore's old city became one of the many front lines where Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus turned on each other after years of living together in harmony. The peaceful protests which Sughra joined were followed by clashes which escalated until mobs rampaged from all sides, torturing and killing their new-found enemies.
Lucky to Escape with their Lives
The violence sparked one of the largest migrations in history. Those who found themselves living in the wrong neighborhood or state were lucky to escape with their lives as they fled. Estimates of the deaths across the country range from 200,000 to a million.
"The worst were the trains," remembers Sughra. "They arrived full of bodies, of women and children as well as men, dead and mutilated. My husband, who was a station master, saw a train arrive with decapitated heads of Muslims hanging on the outside. Someone had written 'this is Pakistan' on the side in their blood." Trains of Sikh and Hindu refugees traveling in the opposite direction suffered the same fates.
Children light candles to mark 60 years of independence for Pakistan.
Two days before, seven carriages full of refugees making the same trip were attacked. Not a single person survived. "The bodies were everywhere, hundreds of them. Even if I could find a way to describe that scene, I would never want to say those words aloud," he says, shaking his head.
He credits the survival of his entire village of Zafarwal -- 5,000 people who fled together -- with the protection of one young British officer. "The lieutenant swore to protect us with his life," Mahajan says now. "He came on the train and rode with the driver and kept telling him not to stop for anything."
His fellow officers rode on the links between the carriages, ready to give their lives to protect the people of a country which they were due to leave weeks later. "The train before was attacked and everyone died, with this lieutenant and his men beside us, nobody attacked," Mahajan says. "And to think that officer, whose name I didn't dare ask, must have only have been 19 or 20 years old," said the elderly man.
While many neighbors turned on each other, others stood by their friends, touched by their plight.
'Like Goats to Be Herded'
Jaswant Singh, a Sikh farmer, supported independence from the British "who treated us like goats to be herded" but abhorred the idea of the partition cleaving the Indian people and the luscious green Punjabi plains in two. "The Muslims were our friends, we went to their weddings and they came to ours," he explains, sitting on the traditional wooden charpoi bed outside the same house near Amritsar he lived in then.
But he, like many, is haunted by the enduring memories of the bloodshed. He was once stopped by a Sikh gang who were holding some terrified Muslim men. They made him prove he was a Sikh by letting down his uncut long hair from his turban.
"They let me go, but as I ran away, I could hear the screams of those Muslims as they were murdered," he recalls. He sent his wife and baby to stay with relatives and with other Sikh friends escorted small groups of their Muslim neighbors over the border by night.
The resemblance between the two sides of the Punjab, like much of Pakistan and India, is startling. Much of the language, industry, farming and culture is indistinguishable to an outsider. In recent years, trains between Pakistan and India have pulled out once again from the stations which saw so much carnage in 1947. Once so vividly associated with the slaughter of partition, the trains are now a prominent symbol of the peace process.
Buses also link the two sides of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, temporarily reuniting families divided by a line on the new maps of 1947. A train now takes the same route from New Delhi to Karachi that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf himself journeyed as a four year-old boy.
Original Dream?
In six decades the new nations of Pakistan and independent India, have struggled to convert their kinship into good neighborly relations. In the next 60 years, the subcontinent will retain the world's attention with India's population set to become the largest on the planet and Pakistan holding the dubious title as the world's only Muslim nuclear nation.
"In coming years, I pray for Pakistan to achieve to the original dream of a free, progressive society," says Sughra.
Mahajan isn't quite so optimistic. "I won't be around to see it," he says, "but I'll keel over from the stress right now if I even stop to think what crazy things could happen around here in another 60 years."
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