Post-Partition India: Putting Down Roots Again! Part II

Continued from Part I which MUST be read to get the complete story of the Bhandari family which now was in safe territory, but the saga continued...

Interestingly, while the common theme was one of loss, displacement, rebuilding and ultimate transformation, the partition experiences were felt differently by different sections of society based on a number of factors including their social standing and prior economic backgrounds. Generally, following the mass commonality of the near death experience in their flight through hell, the subsequent experiences of the upper middle-class were often different from the less-privileged masses in that due to their connections and education, the middle-class were able to land on their feet more easily than their less privileged brethren...

Against this backdrop of extraordinary socio-political upheaval, transition and transformation - all at once- my dear father, relieved that his young family was now safe and well looked after, began serious job-hunting from morning till the end of the day. He met with many members of new government including the new Prime Minister, Nehru, and many members of his Cabinet, capitalizing on his connections from his days in the British administration. Ultimately, he was appointed to a couple of senior positions in the government which led to the family relocating to different parts of the country. But father, headstrong, highly egoistic not one to suffer fools lightly, an extremely independent spirit with one of the kindest hearts around, almost never politically correct due to his pronounced predisposition to easily speak his mind, often bluntly, a prolific writer and a true lover of books, was not one who was going to enjoy for long the structured confines of a work environment dominated by stuffy protocol, an absolute necessity for a bureaucrat.
My brilliant, hot-headed and fearless father had a chequered career despite so many opportunities, till he settled as an attorney practicing criminal law in Delhi High Court.

Picture of St. John's college, Cambridge University, founded in the sixteenth century under the Tudors (Henry VIII), that I really want to visit due to my father's student days there. If I sound extremely proud of my father, who for all his other arrogance, never actually talked much about his academic prowess, I am not going to apologize as it was almost next to impossible for an Indian to study at Cambridge during the days of the British when you were a mere Indian "native". Father topped the British Indian Civil Service Examination in Delhi beating all the candidates in 1932. It was the British who sent him on a Scholarship to Cambridge.

Predictably, father soon quit the prestigious government service, his last position being Deputy Commissioner of Textiles in Bombay (now Mumbai). His days of bureaucracy were over. Forever!!! He returned to Delhi to restart his career as an attorney in private practice in late 1950, never to look back. Armed with his many formidable academic credentials including his Masters degree (M.A. Cantab) from St John's College in Cambridge University in England, along with his larger than life persona, booming voice and his erudite mind, he had finally found his niche and the family settled down completely in New Delhi. (And yes those who know me - believe I am my father's daughter in terms of feeling stifled by unreasonable conventions, though I like to believe my spontaneous candor has been tempered to some extent through my mother's gentle genes- at least I optimistically hope so.)
. The three oldest brothers, so tired and so bewildered by all the sudden life changes, next to the family car-father drove all the way about 1000 miles away to his new position and mother, a novice driver, tried her hand at driving, but family folklore has it she bumped a cow in a backstreet or something to that effect-gently I might add - and that unnerved her enough never ever to try again. That she tried at all was indicative of her innate feminism as women DID NOT drive in that world. Mother always denied the whole incident as another humorous figment of father's machoism.

In an effort to rehabilitate the refugees, the Indian government had set up many residential areas in Delhi that were ear-marked for the migrant families. Homes abandoned by the fleeing Muslim families were redistributed or taken over by the local Hindus. Of course, the vice versa occurred in Pakistan. Anyway these residential areas termed as "colonies" consisted of solid, very vanilla, aesthetically very boring homes built by the government and sold at extremely subsidized prices to help the displaced families. Very easy Government loans were provided and payment often waived due to the penurious circumstances of the borrowers. Father bought one of those cookie-cutter homes for a song, which became the family home and was continually customized to meet the needs of his growing family.

Hurriedly built to accommodate the huge influx of refugees, the houses were very basic, almost primitive without proper water supply or electricity, all of which was installed a year later. Folks used kerosene lamps and waited in lines to get water from hand-pumps. Soon markets, schools and other vital aspects sprouted nearby and community life started in full-swing. My paternal grandmother here with my late oldest brother, Arvindji, was the proverbial matriarch of the family, someone with whom one did not mess with. She had squelched effectively and colorfully even the hint of a suggestion by my dad to stay behind in Lahore when he was in denial about the partition. Grandparents play or used to play a very critical part in Indian families as they traditionally lived with their adult son's families in their old age which was not always a picnic for the daughter-in-laws, but that is where the culture indoctrination comes in....

Delhi during this period was transformed due to staggering number of people trying to find a safe haven there. It especially became the Mecca of the migrant Punjabis displaced from their homes in Pakistan. The arrival of the Punjabis actually changed the tenor and culture of the city which has been capital of so many Indian empires and the British since 1911.

Punjabis is the name given to the residents of Punjab which was the meeting place for the Indo-Aryans who came through the Himalayan mountain passes and pushed the indigenous people to the southern part of the sub-continent settling and intermingling with each subsequent race that arrived over the centuries and settled in the rich and fertile region of Punjab. Punjab or the land of five rivers became the "grainary" of the British and is still India's bread-basket. Before the arrival of the Punjabis, most hindus living in Delhi were low-key, living conservative lifestyles clinging extra hard to their customs in juxtaposition to their Muslim neighbors with whom they co-existed peacefully for the most part. With the exodus of most of the Muslim population to Pakistan and the arrival of the punjabis, it all changed!!! Characteristically, relatively light-complexioned, tall, well built and full of life, the vibrant Punjabis live life to the fullest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_IpWv70rys
A U-Tube video showing a Bhangra performance. Bhangra,the very lively traditional folk dance of Punjab, performed originally to celebrate the harvest is now very popular all over the world and has penetrated Western music where the beat of the large drums is combined with Western intruments to produce a new genre of dancing music. Indian and non-Indian Students all over the US universities are very much involved in the Bhangra music which is very popular in nightclubs also. Here the students of a Punjab University in India are performing. ...

Many of the Punjabis, traders by profession, arriving penniless and distraught, immediately rose to the challenge, and vigorously adapted themselves to their new land. With their ingenuity and hard work, they soon established thriving businesses in Delhi. In fact, some of the largest and busiest bazaars in Delhi today were started by these businessmen. They worked hard and played hard and certainly were proponents of conspicuous consumerism. Lusty, loud with an exaggerated tendency for ostentatious display and often a vulgar sense of humor, they often irked the other low-key Indians. Yes the Punjabis are a breed apart and yes I am a true Punjabi!

The youngest four of the Bhandari kids (I am the second youngest-the sixth), the products of free India, were born in New Delhi some years later, after our parents were reasonably well-settled and partition seemed like an alien concept or something that was exciting to talk about at the dinner table. It didn't really touch us. I think we were blessed to have been brought up by parents who did not give a fig for the Hindu-Muslim issues and we had Muslim folks as friends and domestic help all through the years.
My two older brothers born in Delhi some years later-one is settled here in US (left) and the other is in New Zealand (right).
Yours truly was the proverbial ugly duckling as a child...

My youngest brother who we lost to leukemia last year in the prime of his life- he and I grew up together.

Clearly, today India as a sovereign nation is relatively young (only 61 years old!) and has progressed a lot by leaps and bounds. (Check my earlier articles on India travels.) Its relationship with US today is so different to what it was when we were growing up. At that time, the US was viewed with suspicion and dislike because of its close ties to Pakistan in the Cold War era. The thawing and subsequent warming of relations between US and India has truly been a historic development because at one time India and Moscow were close . I recall growing up and reading how the same world event was described differently in the two publications representing the US and USSR government respectively. There is a lot to share and one could continue writing copiously, but I will spare you and write on discrete issues as I go along. In the interim, if you want to get a flavor of life in free India, you can check my earliest posts.

Today the wounds of the partition have somewhat healed, but I believe only superficially, sadly the mutual suspicion between the two religious communities continues to simmer underneath, only to be easily aroused by the fundamentalists leading to hateful instances of violence in the post-partition era. Interestingly the survivors don't talk about those harrowing days - it is almost a cultivated and calculated amnesia to block out the trauma of the unimaginable atrocities. While infinite books and many movies have been produced on this sorrowful chapter, currently there is no commemorative Partition memorial in India, though in the recent years there has been a lot of discussion about the same.

While the memory of brutality doesn't have to be relived again and again, the lessons about injecting religion into politics should never ever be forgotten. Having been affected, albeit indirectly, by the role of religion in India's partition politics, it is almost stomach-churning and fascinating to me as to how in US the most powerful nation in the world, my new home, where Church and State are supposed to be separate, so much of religion is infused into politics and how the otherwise clear thinking and pragmatic people are so easily blinded to rationale in the name of religion...