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Punjabi Renaissance
Ishtiaq Ahmed
My essay last week "Punjabis
without Punjabi" (May 24) evoked very strong emotions – mostly full of
enthusiasm to do something to ascribe respectability to the Punjabi
language. Before I present some ideas on that theme, a few corrections are
in place with regard to basic data
An Arain freedom
fighter Ishtiaq Ahmed
Punjab's reputation as a loyalist province, which provided the British
Indian Army with soldiers and a solid socio-political support base in the
form of a dependent landed class, has eclipsed its rather variegated
history, which includes heroic tales of resistance to occupation and
foreign rule throughout the ages.
Restoring Punjabi
identity Ishtiaq Ahmed
The BBC announced on October 1 that a truck
carrying goods from East Punjab crossed the Wagah-Attari border between
India and Pakistan and entered West Punjab for the first time in 60 years.
This was once an ancient trade route, dating back to 600 years. It linked
India to Afghanistan and Central Asia, but when partition took place that
route was closed. Consequently, for a long time there was no trade between
the two Punjabs or when the trade was agreed a few years ago trucks would
unload their goods at the border on both sides and then labourers would
carry them to the other side. Mind you, the trade consisted of vegetables
going from East Punjab to West Punjab and fruits coming from West Punjab
to the other side.
Pakistan's garrison
state legacy Ishtiaq Ahmed
In his seminal work, The
Garrison State: The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab,
1849-1947 (New Delhi and London: Sage Publications, 2005) Tan Tai Yong, a
prominent historian of the colonial Punjab era, at the Institute of South
Asian Studies, National University of Singapore advances the thesis that
Pakistan, not India, is the heir to the garrison state legacy of British
colonial rule. A garrison state is one which relies heavily on its
fortification and military prowess to ward off internal and external
threats.
The Moorish Mosque
Ishtiaq Ahmed
"The Moorish Mosque was constructed on the order of his Highness Maharaja
Jagajit Singh Bahadur. The building operations were in progress between
October 1926 to March 1930. The total cost amounted to 4 lakh (400,000)
rupees. The inauguration ceremony took place on the 14th March 1930 in the
presence of His Highness the Maharaja who was accompanied by His Highness
the Nawab Sadiq Mohd. Khan Bahadur, Ruler of Bahawalpur State. The
congregation numbered over a lakh. The existence of this mosque will bear
an enduring testimony to His Highness' broadminded tolerance and
solicitude for the welfare of his subjects."
Peace memorials and
peace parks Ishtiaq Ahmed
On October 27, 1999 I was
returning from Delhi to Stockholm after doing my first round of interviews
on the partition of Punjab. When the SAS plane crossed the border into
Pakistan the pilot told us to look to the left side below as we were
flying over the city of Lahore. Somewhere down there was Temple Road
Lahore where I was born a few months before the partition.
Krishan Chander and
Lahore Ishtiaq Ahmed
My article 'Street theatre in Delhi'
dated Saturday, March 31, 2007, evoked strong emotions in India and
Pakistan because the veteran writer Krishan Chander's name had been
mentioned in connection with the play I saw performed. Many of us are
hugely in debt to him for inspiring in us a humanism, which has survived
all the traumas of the late twentieth century. At the beginning of the
twenty-first century we are still convinced with quixotic zeal that the
pen is superior to the sword, and therefore it should be wielded in behalf
of those who have no means to defend themselves against armed bullies and
their patrons.
The 1857 Uprising
Ishtiaq Ahmed
The month of May 2007 marks the 150th
anniversary of a popular uprising in the Indian subcontinent against the
English East India Company. It has been described as the Sepoy Mutiny by
British writers because it originated among the native soldiers employed
and trained by the Company. The sipahis (Urdu-Hindi word for soldiers)
were dissatisfied with the way the British officers treated them, and were
particularly enraged over the introduction of a cartridge, allegedly laced
with cow and pig fat, to be used in the new Enfield rifles. It had to be
chewed open and the gunpowder was poured into the rifle.
Delhi and Lahore Twins?
Ishtiaq Ahmed
I
spent a week recently in the Indian capital, Delhi, in connection with the
very last interviews for my book on the partition of the Punjab in 1947.
Coming to Delhi has always been like coming back almost home. Since my
childhood has been spent entirely in Lahore, my sensibilities to look for
Lahore wherever I go is a primordial weakness.
Three Distinguished
Punjabis Gone
By Ishtiaq Ahmed
The last
few weeks have brought bad and sad news about the Punjab as three of its
very distinguished sons -- Munir Niazi, Sharif Kunjahi and O P Nayyar (Omkar
Prashad Nayyar) -- left this world, one after the other. I call it a
Punjabi loss for many reasons. The first and foremost is that all three
belonged to a bygone era when the old Punjab was one and Punjabiyat had
not been fractioned, bloodied and severed. The second main reason is that
all three remained steadfast in their loyalty to Punjabi.
Women of rural Punjab
by
Ishtiaq Ahmed
As someone who hails from a rural area
herself, does not pretend to be of elite background but is an academic, Dr
Tahmina Rashid enjoys the advantage of being both an insider and an
outsider.......
COMMENT: Prithviraj Kapoor: A centenary tribute
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
The irony could not be ignored that we had
gone past Samundri, a small hamlet, for the first time in our life without
even having a good look at that rustic community while Prithviraj could
not visit it after 1947 although he longed for it until his last moments.
It captured the tragedy of partition
Women in the two Punjabs
Ishtiaq Ahmed
I have had the privilege of freely visiting
both sides of the Punjab. The two Punjabs are similar, but also different
in many ways, one being the situation of women. The differences are easily
noticeable. East Punjab has been a progressive state within the Indian
Union and has done well economically and educationally. Girls and women
enjoy much greater freedom of movement in that part and have higher
visibility in the social and cultural life of towns and cities.
The Punjab: ancient and medieval roots
Ishtiaq Ahmed
There is no doubt that the idea of
theological equality of human beings came to the subcontinent through
Islam; that it helped create an egalitarian social order is however a
myth...
Punjabi identities before the Punjab’s partition
Ishtiaq Ahmed
Much has been written on the question of
Punjabi identity but as yet the scholars are not agreed on whether such an
identity was important in the lives of the Punjabi-speaking people or that
religion....
Amrita Pritam – a symbol of courage
Ishtiaq Ahmed
On October 31, 2005 the well-known Punjabi
female fiction writer and poet, Amrita Pritam, died in New Delhi. She had
been ill for several months.
From Lahore in 1955 to Mohali in 2005
Ishtiaq Ahmed
Fifty year ago an India-Pakistan cricket
Test match was played at the Lahore Gymkhana ground in the Lawrence
Gardens...
Lahore: once upon a time
Ishtiaq Ahmed
Hindus would shower flowers on the Muharram
procession while Muslims flocked to the great Ram Leela festival held in
the Minto Park behind the Badshahi Masjid, and took part in the Diwali and
Dusehra celebrations
Sunil Dutt: a humanist, a Punjabi, a world citizen
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
According to their family belief and legend
their ancestor Rahab Dutt was settled in Arabia and had met Imam Hussain
and became his admirer and supporter. He and his seven sons died fighting
on the side of the Imam at the battle of Karbala
Voices from inside Lahore's Walled City
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
There are many hyperboles
Lahoris invoke when proudly talking about their great metropolis. Some of
these are world famous or at least subcontinent-famous such as, 'Lahore is
Lahore' or 'One who has never seen Lahore has
not been born'. People in many parts of Pakistan and also Amritsar,
Chandigarh, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and the
rest of India and in faraway places such as London, New York, Vancouver
and wherever else I go connect with me because they happen to belong to
that city.
The 1947 Partition of India -
Research Paper -
Ishtiaq Ahmed
This article seeks to
shed light on the role a particular historical event can play in
conferring legitimacy to the politics of communal and national animosities
and hostilities. The Partition of India in 1947 was, on the one hand, a
gory consummation of a long process of mutual demonising and dehumanising
by Hindu and Muslim extremists. On the other, in the post-independence
era, it became a model of violent conflict resolution invoked and emulated
by ethnic and religious extremists and the hawkish establishments of India
and Pakistan. The paper argues that the Partition of India epitomises the
politics of identity in its most negative form: when trust and
understanding have been undermined and instead fear and insecurity reign
supreme, generating angst at various levels of state and society. In the
process, a pathological socio-political system comes into being. I try to
show how such a system functions within the domestic sphere as well as in
India-Pakistan political interaction.
In Delhi’s Lahore
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
If there is any place that reminds me of
Lahore, it is Delhi. One can hear Lahori Punjabi wherever one goes. I
arrived in Delhi on March 6th this year from Stockholm, a day before the
festival of Holi. A Pakistani trade delegation was in town. The actor Raj
Babbar (his family hails from Jalalpur Jattan in the Pakistani Punjab) and
other Indian celebrities were seen playing the perfect host to the
Pakistanis. Lt-General (retd) Ali Quli Khan was heading the trade
delegation. He spoke very persuasively in favour of India-Pakistan peace.
Partition of Punjab
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
Scholarly works on the
partition of India are legion, but those focusing on the partition of the
Punjab are very few. Ian Talbot and Kirpal Singh indeed have pioneering
works on the Punjab partition to their credit, but much more research
needs to be done to shed light on the dynamics of that cataclysmal event.
After all the greatest forced migration in history with its gory tales of
massacres, looting, arson, rape, abduction of women and children and other
acts of savagery were essentially facets of a Punjabi tragedy.
A
Bloody March in 1947
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
The
Great Calcutta Killings of August 1946 in which both Hindus and Muslims
lost lives in the thousands transformed forever the nature of the
Congress-Muslim League standoff from a constitutional imbroglio to a
violent communal conflagration that culminated in the subcontinent
bleeding, burning and partitioned in mid-August 1947.
The Battle for Lahore and Amritsar
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
Large-scale rioting in
the undivided Punjab subsided from March 14, 1947, onwards, but enough
blood had been spilled not to let the Punjab return to normality. Lahore,
Amritsar, Multan and Rawalpindi witnessed harrowing scenes of inhumanity
hitherto unknown to the Punjab. However, in Multan and Rawalpindi the
non-Muslims were not only greatly outnumbered, but these towns were
located deep in the overwhelmingly Muslim-majority western Punjab.
Therefore the Hindus and Sikhs began to migrate, often times sending their
womenfolk and children away to safer havens eastwards, and decided not to
confront the Muslim majority in a militant manner.
Negotiations on Punjab 1947
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
The Punjab
governors, Sir Bertrand Glancy (from April 7, 1940 to April 7, 1946) and
Sir Evan Jenkins (April 8, 1946 to August 14, 1947) had been warning
repeatedly that if India was partitioned, the partition of Punjab would
become impossible to prevent. But attempts to keep it united continued
almost to the very end. Sir Khizr Hayat Tiwana proposed that the Punjab
could choose to remain undivided and seek direct dominion status within
the British Commonwealth as an independent unit.
Punjab Holocaust 1947
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
Intelligence
about private armies and sale and movement of arms and ammunition had been
collected by the Punjab administration since a long time, and the fact
that a very large population in Punjab had served in the army should have
left no doubt that a bloodbath would occur if proper arrangements were not
made to prevent it. The Sikhs could always use their kirpans as daggers.
They were also better organised for the final showdown.
Ramanad Sagar - When Humanity Nearly Died
Ishtiaq
Ahmed
He
told me that Lahore was always on his mind. In Mumbai he always felt like
a stranger, despite all the success that had come his way. But he did not
want to return to Lahore because he thought it would be very different
from the city he had lived in and loved
The Hindu teacher, the Muslim Pupil Ishtiaq
Ahmed
We constituted
three generations of educationists living outside the city of our birth,
Lahore, in different parts of the world either by choice or by compulsion,
and now I had to carry on the tradition of my seniors of service to
humanity to the best of my abilities
The joy of homecoming Ishtiaq
Ahmed
Each time I step on the soil of Lahore there is a strange, spiritual
feeling of touching holy ground. The long absences, sometimes several
years, lose meaning, as if time simply paused or stopped while I was away
momentarily. But the fact is that it is now more than 31 years when I left
Pakistan and set up home in the northern city of Stockholm. Naturally my
focus of attention is my family — my wife and children — and Stockholm has
been very nice to us and that is where home really is, but Lahore
continues to be my first love.
The Lahore Effect Ishtiaq
Ahmed
I am a long-time resident in Sweden where I
have been living since September 1973. When the initial euphoria of living
in a new place subsided and life assumed some sort of normality, it began
to dawn upon me that I shared the distinction of longing for a very
special place on earth which has a global following: Lahore, the city of
my birth. It does not matter if the decision to leave was economic or
political, voluntary or under duress and threat. For most old residents of
this city, sooner or later, Lahore comes back in their lives as the
centrepiece of a personal pride. The mystique of Lahore is special and
grows on one with every passing year.
The Punjab: Ancient and Medieval Roots Ishtiaq
Ahmed
There
is no doubt that the idea of theological equality of human beings came to
the subcontinent through Islam; that it helped create an egalitarian
social order is however a myth. As elsewhere, Muslims of foreign origin or
who claimed foreign forbears kept a social distance from the local
converts. The high-born ashraf and ordinary Muslims lived virtually
separate lives.
The Story of Gurbachan Singh Tandon Ishtiaq
Ahmed
The story of Gurbachan Singh Tandon stands out as one of the saddest from
the riots of 1947. I learnt about him from Professor Gurnam Singh of the
Political Science Department, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. The
interview was tape-recorded on March 29, 2004, at the Tandon residence in
Noida, outside Delhi.
The Voices from inside Lahore's Walled City Ishtiaq
Ahmed
There are many hyperboles Lahoris invoke when proudly talking about their
great metropolis. Some of these are world famous or at least
subcontinent-famous such as, ‘Lahore is Lahore’ or ‘One who has never seen
Lahore has not been born’. People in many parts of Pakistan and also
Amritsar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and the rest of India and
in faraway places such as London, New York, Vancouver and wherever else I
go connect with me because they happen to belong to that city.
Where the Rafi Saga began Ishtiaq
Ahmed
Kotla Sultan Singh (tehsil and district Amritsar) is the third village on
a metalled road which branches off perpendicularly on the opposite side of
a shadighar (wedding hall), located on the left side of the main road as
one exits from the tiny town of Majitha, some 25 kilometres northeast of
Amritsar.
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