Harking back: Lahore, Nehru, Abdullah and the freedom movement

Mind you this has nothing to do with the central issue. The struggle for freedom, unfinished as it remains because of Kashmir, was primarily a ‘non-violent’ process, with short spasms of extreme violence. In 1947 when the Partition came it was the most violent conclusion possible. In this piece what is of interest is that Lahore also played a central role in the anti-colonial movement, and that Kashmiri leaders on every side of the spectrum lived, or worked in Lahore. The anti-colonial movement was essentially centred in Lahore and Calcutta. The Punjab and Bengal led the movement. In the Punjab no other place was as important to the freedom movement as Lahore’s Bradlaugh Hall on Rattigan Road.

The idea of Pakistan had yet to surface when the foundation stone of Bradlaugh Hall was laid by Surandra Nath Banerjee on the 30th of October, 1900. It was only when the Congress Party refused to accept Muslim representation based on its population that the idea of Pakistan took shape. The fear was that the Muslims with up to 24.3 per cent (as per 1941 Census) of the sub-continent’s population, and given the ‘first-past-the-post’ principle of Westminster-style democracy, could technically end up virtually unrepresented. This was the central problem. In Kashmir this remains the problem for the extremist India of today.

It was at Bradlaugh Hall on Rattigan Road where in 1918 all the great leaders and freedom fighters of every communal shade of the sub-continent got together to demand an end to colonial rule. That date was 26th of January, 1929. That very night Pandit Nehru went to the River Ravi to plant the new flag of the sub-continent in the river. He said: “On the banks of this sacred river we pledge, as did our ancestors thousands of years earlier, to remain free, for this sacred city of Lahore will be India’s centre of culture and learning as it has been over the eons”.

These were the words that would come to haunt Nehru, the Kashmiri, after 1947, for the land to which he belonged still remains in chains. Freedom came in an unexpected shape for all the different peoples of the sub-continent, except for the Kashmiris. The communal card had yet to be played by the British in 1929 to divide the people, an evil that continues to grow even today on both sides of the divide.

Few people know that though Nehru was born in Allahabad, his mother was from a well-known Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore. Her name was Swarup Rani Thussu and her father’s house was at 3 Waris Road just next to the cricket ground. When in Lahore Nehru always stayed there. Swarup was the second wife of Motilal Nehru after his first wife died in child birth. She was from a Kaul Kashmiri Pandit family. In an interview just before he died, Nehru spoke lovingly of Lahore and why to him Partition’s greatest loss, besides the hundreds of thousands who had perished, was India losing his favourite city. He called it in his book “the moving spirit of India”.

The next Kashmiri leader of note with a house in Lahore was Sheikh Abdullah, known as ‘Sher-e-Kashmir’, whose son Farooq Abdullah and grandson Omar Abdullah both remain the leading political leaders of Indian-occupied Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah after doing his Matriculation at Jammu did his BA from Islamia College, Lahore. It was Sheikh Abdullah who forced Maharajah Hari Singh of Kashmir to offer the Instrument of Accession to the Viceroy, who accepted it. The basis of that Accession remains even today the peg on which the Kashmir problem hangs.

Sheikh Abdullah lived in a huge house on Masson Road, just behind the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital nearer the Lawrence Garden end. For quite some time after 1947, the Sheikh and his son used to come here to stay. What is well known is that Jinnah and Nehru both used to visit this house. It was a pre-Partition ‘important’ political residence of the emerging post-colonial sub-continent.

The next Kashmiri leader of importance was Sardar Ibrahim Khan, the first president of Azad Kashmir. He lived on 25-A Racecourse Road, Lahore, and was a major factor in radicalising the Kashmiris to fight for their freedom. His contribution to the freedom movement remains unparalleled. Sardar Sahib’s law practice was Lahore-based and though he had a house in Rawalpindi and belonged to Rawalakot, he spent most of his political and professional life in Lahore. Much later he moved to another huge house on Gulberg’s main boulevard.

Another revolutionary Kashmiri leader, who also became president of Azad Kashmir, was K.H. Khurshid, who also lived on Racecourse Road, Lahore. He was the elder brother of the famous journalist Khalid Hasan of ‘The Pakistan Times’ Lahore and later press secretary of Z A Bhutto. His contribution to Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir at the United Nations is without parallel.

Probably the most famous Kashmiri of Lahore was the poet Allama Iqbal, who wrote a famous line after visiting his ancestral land:

In the bitter chill of winter shivers his body;

Whose skill wraps the rich in royal shawls.

The history of Kashmir is one of constant oppression, starting from invading Mughals to the oppressive Dogra rulers who starved the poor to no end. The extent of their poverty can be gauged from the fact that the entire Muslim population was declared ‘serfs’, second only to animals. A British official’s manuscript tells us that when in the 1920s the Maharajah went to Pehalgam in a new Cadillac car, the peasants threw grass in front of it, hoping that the car would eat it. It was such poverty and cruelty that led Kashmiris to migrate to cities like Lahore, Delhi and Sialkot. The Dogra ruler immediately imposed an annual ‘Migration Tax’ on their families.

In Lahore the migrating Kashmiris mostly settled in the Gowalmandi area, and from there through sheer hard work prospered. But no matter where they live today, be it in Pakistan, or India, or in faraway countries, their loyalty is to their motherland and their craving for freedom is unquestionable. They merely wish for a settled status as a free people in a free united country within the new configuration after 1947.

At Bradlaugh Hall the movement for freedom saw its ‘formal’ beginning in 1900, and it would be in the fitness of things that the ‘divided’ freedom achieved is recorded and conserved at this very place. This will be a vivid reminder that our country came about because of the greatest exodus in human history, which resulted in unprecedented bloodshed. Pakistan emerged after the immense sacrifices of those who got displaced and settled in their new homeland. Surely they deserve to be remembered.

The place where the movement for freedom started is today a sad crumbling monument, a reflection of our refusal to study our own history. It is in the fitness of our times that we should wish that Bradlaugh Hall should see its finest day.

The beginning and the end must be recorded and conserved at this historic place. Luckily, the present rulers are considering a proposal to turn it into a Partition Museum.

Though Pakistan has provided a ‘legally free’ status to Azad Kashmir very much in line with the UN resolution on Kashmir, the Indian move might yet face the Indian Supreme Court verdict of being illegal and contrary to international and Indian law and accepted dictum. The first ‘legal’ indication do not look good. One only hopes that peace and freedom return to the beautiful land of Iqbal, Nehru, Abdullah, Ibrahim and Khurshid, as of all the other great minds and martyrs of Kashmir.