Amritsari Memories
A translation from A. Hameed's eye-witness account of Amritsar during the Partition, Amritsar Ki Yaadein.
The time is 2 o’clock, 17th March 1947. A twenty-four hour curfew is to be placed on Amritsar for the next two days. For the following five days, there will be a curfew of twenty hours, with a break of four hours, between 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock in the afternoon. This will be enforced within the municipal border, south towards the Lahore-Jalandhar main railway line.
Whoever is found in possession of a weapon, or anything that could be used as a weapon, except for a kirpan that is kept in a scabbard, or whoever is caught lighting a fire or in the act of looting, will be shot on sight. In order to enforce these new orders, squadrons of soldiers will patrol the city from two o’clock onwards.
During the curfew, the English forces patrolled the city. The next few mornings, the streets would be filled with so many bodies, in whose lifeless hands would still lie the cursed curfew passes. As soon as the curfew was lifted, the stabbings would start again. At night you could hear the roars of ‘Sat Sri Akal’ and ‘Har Har Mahadev’ from Hindu and Sikh areas, while Muslims would roar the takbir war cry, ‘Allahu Akbar.’
The curfew had just been lifted one morning when I was walking from Hall Bazar towards Company Bagh with my younger brother, Maqsud. We had just reached Doctor Abdullah’s apothecary when a young lad plunged a knife into an elderly Sikh. With an empty basket in hand, on the way to buy goods from Mewa Mandi, he froze in place in front of us, staring at us through his copper frames, with eyes filled with fear. The boy had come up from behind us as we were walking and had run straight up to the old man and then suddenly disappeared down a side street. All we then heard the old man say was:
‘He’s killed me, he’s killed me!’
He collapsed in the adjoining street, and as he lay there, blood began to pool, pouring from the wound in his back. As soon as he fell, the market was emptied of its customers, and we too ran away down one of the adjoining alleyways, because whenever someone was attacked by a Muslim, Hindus and Sikhs would kill any Muslim trying to escape their neighbourhood and cast their still warm bodies down filthy wells.
Around this time, we started to receive news of Muslims in Jalandhar, Patiala, Nabha and other Sikh states being massacred. This is true and India’s fleeing Hindus and Sikhs will provide testimonies, that the Muslims they knew were going about their business as usual, in good manner; that they didn’t lay a single finger on non-Muslim women and children. Furthermore, there have even been reports of Muslims extracting Hindu and Sikh women & children from their neighbourhoods and delivering them safely to Sikh areas, while Sikhs and Hindus themselves had no such ethics and morals. They were mercilessly murdering Muslim women and children one after another. If at all you find any mention of Hindus or Sikhs saving the honour of Muslim women, I wouldn’t bet on its veracity.
If you stood outside the gates to Katra Mian Singh, a few furlongs distance away to the West stood a gurdwara owned by Akali and Nihang Sikhs, which they had turned into a fort from the cracks and windows of the building. From this fort, called Burj Akali Phula Singh, the Sikhs would hold a steady fire on the Muslim neighbourhoods of Katra Mian Singh, Chai Dand, Ghee Mandi. These were hot days smothered in the summer haze, and now shaken by the tumult of this violence.
My neighbour, Khwaja Faiz, and his friend kept watch with a gun on the rooftop of a red haveli in our neighbourhood. He was a tall, slender Kashmiri lad, known for only ever wearing a dhoti. One day, while watching from the roof, God only knows why, Khwaja Sahib decided to get up and when he had fully stretched out his large frame, a .303 bullet came flying from Burj Akali Phula Singh and landed deep in his chest. He collapsed on the roof, his body streaming with his blood, and died there and then a martyr. His body had been brought inside when his father was shown his body. I too stood there next to his father as he kept saying, ‘I told you, Faiz, I told you to wear your qamiz, wear a qamiz, I told you.’
From Sharifpura all the way up to the Muslim High School, Muslims kept watch day and night along the G.T. Road. When they appeared in the open, the Akalis of Burj Akali Phula Singh would lead an attack and take them back with them as prisoners. Like raging lions, the young men of Sharifpura, armed with hockey sticks and the like, roaring takbir through the streets, clashed with the Akali Sikhs in the middle of the wide road. A furious battle broke out when, during the haze and confusion of the fight, Rafiq Pongi, a fearless Arain lad, was shot. The two parties broke apart and the Muslim women were freed from the grasp of the Sikhs, while Rafiq was carried off to his home in Tehsilpura. Even while blood was gushing from his wound, he ferociously kept chanting the takbir, but he too died a martyr before 10 o’clock that evening. According to Muhammad Akram Butt of Radio Pakistan, Rafiq was Amritsar’s first martyr.
Just outside the entrance to Ram Bagh, horse-drawn carriages kept coming and going from Ramdas, Ajnala, Fatehgarh Churian, Majitha and Chamyari, famous for its delicious melons and as the birthplace of Rani Loona, from the tale of Puran Bhagat. While Majitha had made its name as the most prominent and richest stronghold of the Sikhs in Punjab. Every single Muslim family living in Majitha was mercilessly annihilated by the Sikhs of the town. The famous novelist and professor, Ghulam Ali Chaudhari, lost around twenty relatives in this massacre.
It was one sweltering afternoon in riotous Amritsar when the Sikhs from Burj Akali Phula Singh attacked our neighbourhood. A little, cheeky boy went out into the alleyway and shouted:
‘Come on out, Muslims, the kafirs have arrived!’
And immediately the area was filled with a madness that stirred every man to make for the entrance to Katra Mian Singh. That same naughty kid went into his room, took a sip of Malta, readied his double-barrelled shotgun and dashed outside to fight the Akalis. It is matter of mere coincidence that I too was caught up in the hubbub and ran off with my neighbours, armed with my high-school hockey stick. While running down the alleyways, I was thinking to myself, hoping that by the time I reached the fight that it would all be over. The women watched from above, peeking over the rooves and out of the windows above the alley, and as I caught sight of their fearful gazes, I was stirred on to the fight. I was filled with rage and began to pick up my pace as I raced down the alleyways.
When I arrived, I realised that the Muslims had not only held back the Akali attack with sheer bravery but had also sent them running back to Burj Akali Phula Singh, leaving behind, in their flight, a stout, freshly-chopped leg of one of the Akali Sikhs, still pulsing and throbbing in the middle of the G.T. Road. A couple lads around the same age as me had been injured, and among the more seriously injured was Ghulam Qadir of Qadir Shows.
But the flames of riot and tumult only burned brighter and brighter in Amritsar. The air was constantly filled with the stench of kerosene and burning wood. The flames of Amritsar’s societal harmony and culture had been put out. The city’s gardens were wasted. The wind kicked up clouds of dust in the empty gardens of Company Bagh, Secretary Bagh and Gol Bagh. The flower beds were ruined while the heavens themselves were filled with fear and plunder.
It was around this time, too, that it was announced that Amritsar would not become part of Pakistan. The sightless Radcliffe line had brought the day of judgement much earlier than expected to the many Muslims of Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Jammu and Pathankot.
The market by Comrade Hotel and Sufi Turk Hotel had been completely given over to fire. The people who used to come to these establishments - writers, poets, critics, musicians, intellectuals and politicians - were trapped, imprisoned in their own neighbourhoods. The Muslims of Jalandhar and Punjab’s other major cities were forced into ill-starred migrant convoys, slowly making their way to Pakistan. Although previously, Amritsar’s Muslims had valiantly faced their enemies, they too decided to make their way to Pakistan, but their arms had been confiscated by Muslim police officers.
The city’s Gurkha, Jat and Sikh forces arrived when the whole of Sharifpura had been declared a refugee camp for Muslims, outside of which the Baloch Regiment’s forces had been placed in Kucha Rangrezan. But the Hindus and Sikhs of Bagh Ramanand, who had joined forces with the army, suddenly attacked and made martyrs of many Muslims. Those who barely survived came to our neighbourhood, Gali Dabgaran. With the exception of our neighbourhood and Sharifpura, the rest of Amritsar was in the barbaric hands of the Hindu and Sikh militia, who had now tired from looting and burning house after house of Amritsar’s once Muslim neighbourhoods. And now, they were entering our neighbourhood.
News arrived that the Muslim League was sending trucks from Lahore to fetch Muslims from the city. I saw two military trucks stood parked outside our street, into which a wealthy fellow was loading all his possessions, taken from his haveli, leaving behind the poor, helpless Muslims, who lived right next to him, to fend for themselves, as he made his way to Pakistan. The fool had finished every single bottle of liquor he owned, sitting with his head in his hands, completely forlorn, on the floor of his once prosperous shop.
A few days later, Gurkhas threw a grenade at the gates to our alley. The horrible din caused a stampede of civilians who left behind their possessions and ran to Sharifpura through Gujar Street. But while they ran along the G.T. Road, a Sikh military truck rained fire on them, leaving even more Muslims martyrs sprawled on the road.
Musa, the son of Ghulam Muhammad, the pashmina seller, was picking up his little child outside and was just about to cross the road when bullets came flying and martyred both father and son, there and then. Around this time, a convoy of Pathan nomads were leaving the railway station for Lahore on foot. But just outside Cheharta, Sikhs came and murdered every single member of the convoy. Peeking out of a slit in the window in my train carriage, I myself saw their bloodied bodies scattered around the trees and bushes on the outskirts of the town.
Amritsar’s Muslims were leaving behind their prosperous forefathers’ houses, streets, neighbourhoods, gardens, and mosques. Their faces displayed the same ruin as their crumbling neighbourhoods. With hair full of dirt and feet caked in dried blood, they left behind an Amritsar choking in thick smoke, the same smoke billowing from their houses, streets, neighbourhoods, and mosques.
Cordoba’s places of worship were once again being deserted. Grenada’s gardens were once again being wasted. Spain’s streets and squares were once again being dyed with the blood of Muslims. The valleys of Andalusia were once again darkened with the gloomy shade of clouds and were being covered in grapevines, thirsty for the blood of Muslim folk.
Amritsar, as you crushed us, it was our fragrance that poured out. It was our sweet fragrance that flew out of your millstones. It was during your mornings that our mothers’ sweet tilawat of the Qur’an spread through your golden skies. On the cool carpets of your mosques did we kneel in prayer. From your grand, lofty minarets did we sing the call to prayer, singing the greatness and glory of God. We nurtured you with our own blood. And yet you stone-heartedly turned against us, became our foe, and flooded our streets and squares with our own blood. We’ll have our revenge against you. We won’t forget those sisters of ours, whose wedding night was lost in the filth of your streets. We will not condemn those mothers to obscurity whose crimson blood stained your bazars and markets.
Spain now holds a peace forged with the blood of Muslims,
But it stands just like the Holy Haram in my own eyes.
Hidden in your city’s dust lies the mark of our prostration,
Silent calls-to-prayer still fly in your dawn breezes.
Amritsar, we were made into ruined refugees by you and dragged through the burning gates of your city. One day we will return to your city as glorious victors. Behold the shining majesty of our victory in the golden rays of the rising sun! Listen to the galloping march of our victorious warhorses, booming through your silent city, mute now, bereft of the holy azan.
Glossary
Azan – Arabic term for the call to prayer
Dhoti – a lower garment worn by South Asian men
Haveli - a private mansion
Kafir – Arabic term for infidel or misbeliever
Qamiz - a long, traditional tunic worn across South Asia
Takbir – Arabic term for the phrase ‘Allahu Akbar’
Tilawat – Arabic term for the recitation of the Holy Qur’an