It Happened To Me | Syed Ghulam-us Syedain

Partition

On the night of September 6th, 1947, the whole household – 50 people from four generations – upped and left India. The decision had been taken very suddenly that our family was too prominent to be safe. My great uncle was known as Diwan Sahib and held the position of spiritual head of the Shrine of Gharib Nawas in Ajmer, the most important Muslim shrine in India.

I grew up in his household in a huge haweli, a grand but run-down dwelling, with a front gate big enough for an elephant to pass through.

It was my father who arranged our flight, because he worked on the railways, and although refugee trains were regularly being attacked, they were the only viable escape route. In collusion with his British boss, my father secretly organised a carriage for the family on the 9:17am to Ahmadabad.

We left the house around midnight, so that our departure wouldn’t be noticed and boarded an empty carriage in the sidings, that was due to be coupled on to the train. My father was on duty at the station and went to work in the normal way. At the last minute, he jumped on to the train and joined us. We had to change at Marwar junction about 100 miles away and take another train going to Hyderabad, Sind, in Pakistan. That was considered a much safer route than the one via Amritsar, where massacres were common.

I was both excited and scared. A few of the men, including Diwan Sahib and his brother, had guns to protect us, and the younger men were on guard duty. My great grandmother, Diwan Sahib’s mother, the oldest member of the family, was very against our leaving. I remember overhearing a conversation on the train in which she called her sons cowards and traitors, and accused them of having betrayed the Shrine of Gharib Nawas. But they were adamant it was the right decision and that the saint would protect us all.

We had two big scares on the journey. One was at Luni junction, where we arrived late at night. There were lots of people on the platform and we thought they had come to attack us. But when we stopped, we discovered that they were local Muslims who were there to protect the train.

Then, about an hour later, the train stopped suddenly in the middle of the track. We really thought this was it. We were going to be massacred. We stood there for ages with our gunmen at the ready. The elders agreed that if we were overwhelmed, they would shoot the women and children first to stop them being raped and murdered by the other side. But nothing happened.

When we arrived in Pakistan I can’t explain the feelings of relief and pride. Of course, we thought it was just a temporary move and that we would be returning within six months at the latest. In fact it was 25 years before I returned to Ajmer and by then I was long settled in England.

The Shrine is still active, but another Diwan is now spiritual head, descended from someone who claimed the title when it became clear that our family wasn’t returning.

Looking back on it now, I think that Partition was a great tragedy for the Muslims of India, even though, at the time, we all desperately wanted Pakistan. If we’d stayed as one nation, all the money that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have spent fighting each other and buying weapons could have been used for peaceful development.

We Muslims would have been a third of the population of the biggest country in the world – instead we are a minority with little influence and Pakistan is threatening to implode.