The other Khurshid Anwar
Khalid Hasan
For most people, Khurshid Anwar was the great music director who scored some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies for the movies, before 1947 in Lahore and Bombay, and after 1947 in Lahore. KL Saigal sang for him, as did Surayya and Rajkumari and Shamshad and, of course, the incomparable Madam Nur Jehan.
But there was another Khurshid Anwar whom everyone has forgotten. It is time he was remembered and his contribution recognised, something one can only hope for in a country where half a century after his death, Saadat Hasan Manto is treated by the establishment as if he never existed. What a pity that there should be official advocacy at the highest level of disinterring Chaudhry Rehmat Ali’s bones from England for a grand state-sponsored burial in Lahore, while a hero like Khurshid Anwar should lie unsung in a forgotten grave in Rawalpindi. Is Rehmat Ali to be honoured for having flung more abuse at the Quaid-e-Azam than all his past and present enemies and detractors put together? One wonders.
Major Khurshid Anwar, to give him his correct title, was the man who not only rejuvenated the flagging movement against the collaborationist Khizar Hayat Tiwana government in the Punjab in 1946, but who led the Afridi and Mehsud tribesmen into Kashmir in October 1947. On a recent visit to Toronto, during a conversation with Brig. FB Ali, the man whom we have to thank for forcing Gen. Yahya Khan out after the 1971 breakup of Pakistan (since no good deed goes unpunished, he was removed from service and jailed), Khurshid Anwar’s name came up. Brig. Ali told me a great deal about that remarkable man which I must share. Here, in Brig. Ali’s words are his recollections.
“I met Khurshid Anwar in late 1946 or early 1947. He had been appointed Salar-e-Ala of the Muslim League National Guards (MLNG) for the ‘Pakistan’ provinces, and had arrived in Lahore to set up his headquarters. I was referred to him by Mumtaz Daultana, and he made me responsible for the Student Section of the MLNG. I heard that he had been a Major in the Indian Army during the war, and had left under some kind of a cloud.
“Events were moving very fast, and we did not get much opportunity to do the required organisational work. Quite unexpectedly, a massive civil disobedience movement started in the Punjab against the Unionist government of Khizar Hayat Tiwana (this was precipitated by Mian Iftikharuddin, who literally forced the Punjab Muslim League Working Committee to get themselves arrested by blocking the police contingent trying to execute a search warrant at the PML head office, where the Working Committee happened to be in session). This movement soon started to get disorganised and flag, as the successive layers of leadership of the PML offered themselves for arrest, a daily occurrence. Khurshid Anwar reacted at once: he went ‘underground’ and took charge of the agitation. The faltering movement revived, and began to exert a sustained, powerful pressure on the government, which finally had the desired result, and Tiwana resigned.
“Khurshid Anwar then went to the NWFP, where the Khan brothers, who opposed the creation of Pakistan, were in power. Along with Khan Abdul Qayoom Khan and other Muslim League leaders, he started a civil disobedience movement in that province along the lines of the one in Punjab. He reprised his Punjab role there: with the political leadership in jail, he organised and led the movement while remaining ‘underground.’ Here, too, the agitation succeeded. Because he operated in a clandestine manner, very few people know that the success of these movements in Punjab and NWFP, which smoothed the way for the creation of Pakistan, was largely the work of Khurshid Anwar.
“I think it was in June 1947 - during the NWFP plebiscite - that he talked to me about taking over Kashmir as the next item on his agenda. In the second week of August 1947, in Karachi, he told me that he had got clearance to start his Kashmir operation; I believe this was from Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan. He then proceeded to the NWFP and, with the assistance of Khan Qayoom, raised the tribal lashkar that he led into Kashmir. Later on I learnt from two independent sources that, when the tribesmen tried to cross the Muzaffarabad bridge, they came under heavy fire from state troops on the other bank and fell back in disorder. When Khurshid Anwar could not persuade them to try again, he got into his jeep and charged across the bridge under fire; as he got to the other side the state troops melted away, and the advance was resumed. When the lashkar got to Baramula, the tribesmen started pillaging the town. Khurshid Anwar could not get them to stop and move on to Srinagar. He went forward himself with a few men, and was at the airfield when the Indian troops started landing.
“Khurshid Anwar was a remarkable man. Bold, brave, intelligent, resourceful, he was a born leader. Through his drive and ability, and the sheer force of his personality, he could make people follow him in dangerous and difficult enterprises. However, he was no angel; there have been rumours about his personal ethics, and some of them may well be true. But that does not in any way diminish his significant contribution to the creation of Pakistan, which has, unfortunately, remained largely unknown.”
Another of Khurshid Anwar’s admirers is M Yusuf Buch who met him in Srinagar for the first time in 1946 and met him regularly after 1947 in Pakistan. He told me from New York that Khurshid Anwar was in the civil supplies department of the Government of India during the war but because of the department’s involvement with the army, its officers were given army ranks. “He was a man who was truly in the heroic mould, but he was a disaster when it came to public relations.” He was one of those colourful individuals who follow their own destiny and who are born to lead, not be led. His dying words were, according to Buch, “ Kashmir hum haar gaye (we have lost Kashmir).”
The decision to go into Kashmir was taken at a meeting in Lahore presided over by Liaquat Ali Khan and attended by Sardar Shaukat Hyat, Khurshid Anwar and Akbar Khan (later a general and one of the Pindi “conspiracy” case people).” After the meeting, Khurshid Anwar said, “I am not going to listen to Shaukat.” He was a loner when it came to command. Buch said he had uncanny courage but he had no capacity for political thinking.
Khurshid Anwar also told Buch ,”The old man never gave it the green light,” the “old man” being the Quaid who had not been told by Liaquat of the tribal incursion. Khurshid Anwar was injured in Kashmir and ultimately died of those wounds which had resulted in long-term poisoning. After the Kashmir war was over, Khurshid Anwar found himself persona non grata with the Pakistani government and remained an outsider till he died. He had in the last few years set up an ice factory in Rawalpindi. He had also married the quite lovely Mumtaz Jamal, a Pathan. I asked Buch what would have happened if the tribal incursion into Kashmir had not taken place, “There would have been a massacre of Muslims in Muzaffarabad. Elaborate plans approved by the Maharaja were ready, the idea being to discourage other Muslims in the state from revolting. The Muslims of Jammu had already been by and large liquidated,” he replied.
Khurshid Anwar belonged to Kapurthala. He is buried in the graveyard across the road from Liaquat Garden, Rawalpindi, in case someone who reads this would like to go and place a handful of flowers on the grave of this driven soldier and patriot.