In jail with Badshah Khan

In 1930, two Pathan youths of Peshawar were illegally arrested and tortured by the British. In May that year, Kartar Singh Anand led a procession in Kissa Khani Bazar in Peshawar city to protest against the action. The processionists raised nationalist slogans. The British ordered the Garhwal Rifles to open fire on the rally, but one Sikh in the unit refused to carry out the order. Thereupon British officials themselves opened fire so indiscriminately that veterinarian Ganga Singh of the Khem Karan military farm, who was passing that way with his wife and two sons, could not save his children from instant death or his wife from serious injury. Many of the processionists were arrested, but released when they signed on paper containing printed apologies. Those who refused to sign on the dotted line were Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Anand, "two Hindus whose names I cannot recollect", and the staff of the National High School at Usman Zai, run by Badshah Khan. All of them were sent first to Peshawar Jail and then to Bannu Jail in Peshawar province. "I kept Badshah Khan constant company for the entire period we were in jail because he seemed to have cast a spell on me," said Anand. What was the nature of the spell? "In Bannu Jail the detainees belonged to different communities, though under one leader. Therefore, the Frontier Gandhi ordered all of us to eat only vegetarian food so that nobody's religious sentiments might be hurt. But if someone thought he could not live without non-vegetarian food, he could go into a corner and eat it. Where do you find such respect for the religious sentiments of others today?" Anand asked. This fascinating vignette on the life of Badshah Khan had already got me interested in the person offering it. Anand's memory, given his age (he was in his 90s), was understandably scrappy. Yet he remembered some high spots, if indeed there could be any in a life the best part of which was spent in abject poverty. "I received a tamra patra in 1972. Of course, I fought the British until they packed off. But what have I got in return for it?" From his tone it was clear that he thought the period of the freedom struggle was different from any since because it somehow seemed to be incredibly secure and even self-satisfied, with its strength lying in its steadiness of nerve. Anand was born in Mangwal village in Chakwal tehsil of Jhelum district, now in Pakistan. His father, though the recipient of many British awards, was a daffedar in the Army and had sired four sons and a daughter. "But my birth was marked by two tragedies: My father's retirement from service and the death of two of my brothers." Is it the human heart struggling against its own weaknesses, conscious of the overpowering force of Fate? Anyway, it was poverty into which Anand was born, partly because the pension that his father received was too small to keep the household afloat. "So my mother and sister worked on primitive looms at home to augment the pension. I had to walk, first, for five miles and then for 12 a day to my school. After covering as many miles on the way back, I would find my mother and sister eating chapattis with green chilies ground into paste. Finally, I matriculated from SS Khalsa High School at Chakwal, getting a first division and standing first in Punjabi in the whole of Punjab." As I suddenly looked up from my notebook, I noticed that it was his heavy-lidded eyes that really stood out. There was infinitude of sadness in them, as though they had seen more sorrow than the heart could bear and had, therefore, become repositories of the surplus. "My paternal uncle was employed in the Railways at Lahore, but his best efforts could not get me a job." Then Anand went to Delhi and wrote the Central Revenue Service examination but was not selected because of his nationalist background. As a student, he used to work as a pathi (one who recited from the Akhand Path) in gurdwaras and earned money for his studies and to augment the family income. Therefore, in retrospect, it looked inevitable that from Delhi he should have gone to Panja Sahib to become the Editor of the monthly magazine of that title which was being published by the Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee. He was offered a small salary and accommodation in the gurdwara but he had to eat from the langar. An uncle, who was a shopkeeper, resented his partaking, day after day, of the langar which he described as "charity". So Anand left the job after three months. From that moment up to his release from prison with Badshah Khan he had felt he was living in a vacuum. For him time looked arrested. "Convicted for treason, we were released as a result of the general amnesty that had followed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact." Anand braked his depressing train of thought, and smiled. A neighbor had got him a job with a contractor just before he went to jail. But when he went back to the same contractor after release, he would not be taken back! Then a potato contractor employed him. He had to look after the business in Ferozepore Cantonment on a monthly salary of Rs. 27. Ferozepore Cantonment was known in those days as kaala paani because of its isolation and crime rate. Yet he accepted the challenge but committed the mistake of being honest. The munshis of other contractors would under weigh the vegetables, sell them on their own the saved merchandise, and pocket the money. But Anand scrupulously returned to his employer the unsold and saved potatoes and, instead of appreciation, received abuses from him! "So I left the job," Anand said without a trace of self-pity. He returned to Ferozepore and opened a dhaba, Khalsa Hotel, in the name of his father, out of the fear that if the authorities got wind of his nationalist activities he might be harassed. "Yet when nationalist leaders like Pratap Singh Kairon and Gurmukh Singh Musafir visited Ferozepore, they would invariably be my guests, although on the sly." Soon thereafter he got enlisted with the Army authorities. Then came World War II and his business prospered, but he did not close down the hotel. "Ferozepore was a predominantly Muslim district. For quite some time after Partition Muslims here felt safe enough to stay put. Such were the relations members of every community had developed with those of every other. But refugees who poured in from Pakistan looted the houses of these Muslims. Yet I have the satisfaction that, as a member of the Peace Committee, I ensured that not a single Muslim was even injured and that they were all safely herded across the border. What is more, we kept live contacts with them for months thereafter because it was then an open border and people could cross it easily." At the same time, he started the Khalsa School in Ferozepore and helped rehabilitation of refugees from Pakistan. So far so good. But whatever could have been the basis for his belief that in spite of the traumatic developments on either side of the border, "the hearts of Punjabis beat in tandem"? Anand remained quiet for a while and then said: "When I got enlisted as a meat contractor with the Army in Ferozepore Cantonment in 1931, my partner in the firm was Meherdin, a close friend from Amritsar district. We had lived like brothers rather than like business partners or even friends. When Partition came, he crossed over to Pakistan and continued to look after our joint business there and unfailingly remitted my share of the earnings honestly. After all, there were no currency restrictions those days. "When his son met me later, he told me that when a Muslim was on deathbed he had the name of Allah on his lips, but that Meherdin had died with the name of Kartar (that was me) on his lips. What further proof do you want of Punjabi brotherhood which transcends barriers of geography and religion and community?" -MV