By Parmjit Singh Pammi (USA)

Name of my village is Kot Data which means “The Fort of the Philanthropist” in Punjabi. Name of the man who founded the village about 200 years ago has been forgotten by the local history but his reputation survives. He was a dacoit who settled down to become a respectable family man and raised a generation of  healthy sons and one daughter. He married his only daughter to a Zamindar across the River Sutlej and her dowry consisted of gifts of all kind including a hundred horses and a hundred buffaloes. Nobody had given such lavish dowry in our area and thus he came to be known as Data -the philanthropist. A few months after her wedding, a man came running to tell Data that his darling daughter was seen coming towards the village. He asked him in what state was she and was told that she was on foot and without any servants. He told the man to rush back and tell her on his behalf:“Go back the way you have come. There is no place for you in my house”. The proud daughter of the proud father jumped into the nearest well and ended her life. A tearful and repentant Data had to cremate her with his own hands.

One might get the impression that Data left behind a prosperous and vast estate. Far from it.Kot Data is one of the smallest and poorest among the 22 villages of Sandhu Jatts that originated from their ancestral village named Sarhali. Kot had no more than a hundred houses. When I was a kid growing up in Kot most of the houses were built of mud and there was no electricity or running water. Except for two families, nobody owned more that a few acres of land. Half the land was canal irrigated, and the rest mostly consisted of unproductive sand dunes. Small patches along the periphery of the village were irrigated by the Persian Wheel worked by bullocks. Life was hard and a constant struggle against poverty. Nevertheless, the Kotias were generally known to be a proud and clever lot. They managed to hold their own among the more prosperous neighboring villages.

Bhai Nidhan Singh of Kot was a big man in every way. He bred beautiful Arabian horses and prided himself in growing the healthiest crops. When I grew up and saw the movie Ben Hur, the Arab whose horses won the chariot race looked like our own Nidhan Singh to me. During his lifetime, Nidhan Singh proclaimed a standing prize for anyone who could consume, in one sitting, 5 corn-on-cob and juice of 5 sugarcane harvested from his fields. During his lifetime nobody was able to win the prize. A bluish- gray stallion owned by Nidhan Singh became famous among the surrounding villages as The Dancing Horse. Sometime in 1923, Baba Gurdit Singh, the hero of Kama Gata Maru (who was then a member of Congress Working Committee), asked Moti Lal Nehru to send his young son Jawahar Lal to Sarhali to be introduced to the masses of Majha  region of Punjab. In the midst of a vast admiring crowd of thousands, Jawahar Lal rode The Dancing Horse of Nidhan Singh. He appeared to be a confident rider but found it hard to control the powerful and excited animal. Photographs of young Nehru riding the Dancing Horse can still be found in his biography.

Kot Data  was the last village in Amritsar District. A mile away was a big village called Ratta Gudda that fell in the jurisdiction of Lahore District. Our relations with them were strained because our turn for the canal water followed theirs and they often cheated. The two villages belonged to two different police stations and local authorities showed little interest in settling common disputes. It finally came down to the only option: the dispute will be settled by a free-for-all between the two villages! I remember the war-like preparations that took place in our village. Every fighting man rehearsed tying a huge turban over a brass saucer ( baati, generally used for drinking tea)) as protection against blows to the head. For protection of chest against sharp weapons, tawaa (a steel plate used for cooking chapatis) was stitched onto the vest concealed under the shirt. Most of our young warriors were armed with spears and the older ones, who were the next line of defense, carried swords or any other weapons available. When the two forces stood face to face in the field, strange-looking Kotias with huge turbans, even though outnumbered, attacked first. The enemy were taken by surprise and could not stand their ground against a daring attack. It was an easy victory for Kotias. Then onwards the canal water has flowed into our fields always according to the big clock fixed in our gurdwara.

I started my schooling by going on foot along with the rest of the boys to Ratta Gudda because there was no school at our village. Most of my companions belonged to families of Carpenters and Gold Smiths because very few Jatts were interested in educating their children. No girl from our or any other village went to school those days. On the way to school, we had to pass a cremation ground rendered dark and mysterious with ancient wild trees of Jand and Karir. The place looked spooky to us and an occasional bier burning during cremation added to the effect. We were told to watch out for witches with backward feet who were believed to hover around such places. While passing by this dangerous place we became fearful and huddled together. Expecting to meet some scary ghosts lurking behind the dark green trees, we often made a big detour around the place. When we did come across an odd woman, we looked carefully at her feet just to make sure she was not one of those. Even now if I were to pass that way I will not be able to help giving a furtive glance in the direction of those ancient evergreen Karir trees! 
-.-
The Partition created many opportunities for the Kotias to display their martial traits. Muslim population of  the village consisted of a small minority of the menials like Mochi(Cobbler), Teli(Oil Presser), Mirasi(Ministrel) ,Ghumiar (Mover) and Lohar(Blacksmith) etc. Sikh Jatts owned all the land and the menials served them by their respective trade, getting in return a fixed portion of the produce from each Jatt household. I heard my father say many times that if the Muslims went to Pakistan,life will be hard for the village. Nobody was therefore interested in driving out our own poor Muslims. Other villages around the area had similar demographic composition except for a village named Booh. It was a big and rich village owned mostly by Muslims. They were known to be well-armed. Sikhs living in the surrounding villages, including Kot, made preparations to attack Booh concertedly.
Three young men armed with rifles on horses rode one day into our main street and asked for the Muslims to be turned out whom they wanted to shoot to death. I was among the kids standing on the rooftop and watching the drama taking place right below us in the main street. From the opposite side of the street, a group of our men came and started arguing with the armed horse riders. All of a sudden, a handsome youngster named Mohinder Singh stepped forward, and, tearing open his shirt, exclaimed loudly,”You have to first shoot Mohinder and then talk about our Muslims”. The leading horseman started taking aim at him and told the others to get away. Then, a much-revered old man named Bhai Waryam Singh came forward and stood in front of Mohinder. With trembling hands he lifted up his own turban and placed it on the ground. Folding his hands in supplication, he addressed the man taking aim,” For Guru’s sake, do not kill our boy or our Muslims. We shall ourselves do whatever is necessary”. By now, the male population of the village, armed with whatever weapon they could find, stood on the rooftops ready to pounce upon the riders. They quietly turned around and went away.

Many years passed before I met Mohinder Singh again. I had become a Major in the army and Mohinder Singh, who was an enlisted soldier in Assam Rifles, came to see me. I told him that he was my childhood hero and we sat down chatting about the army life. He was of the opinion that the army no longer appreciated the bravery of a man. That is why, even when he got promoted, he kept falling back to the lowest rank of a sepoy. My aunt, in whose house we were sitting, came up and pointing at him, said in low tones ,” This wretched fellow sold his whole family for Rs 2500/-.Shame on him”. Mohinder started laughing. He said when he was posted to field area, his wife was not faithful to him and he was not sure if he was the father of his two kids. He therefore met her lover, who was another Kotia, and they made a deal that was fair to both parties. “Could a man do any better?”, said he.

A year before the Partition, my father had become a member of SGPC, an elected body of Sikhs that manages all historic shrines of the Sikhs. When the Partition riots started, he was generally away busy with matters concerning the defense of Amritsar city. During the ensuing expedition against village Booh, leadership of Kot passed to my Uncle. The only firearm available in the village was a revolver owned by him. In spite of this handicap, the Kotias wanted a lion’s share of the loot at Booh. Before the attackers from other villages came, a grayed veteran of Kot named Bhola Singh set up a ‘machine gun’ post on top of a house at Booh and the word was passed around that anyone except the Kotias coming to loot that street will get roasted in the fire of his “automatic“.As a result, the enterprising Kotias came home with a large bounty of loot consisting of animals and food grains. Bhola Singh's ‘machine gun’ emplacement consisted of nothing more than a pipe commonly used for sowing seed manned by a ferocious-looking man sitting behind a low wall of bricks.

Operations at Booh were hardly over when we learnt that the Muslims at Amritsar city had been terrorizing the Bhaapa shopkeepers so badly that the latter were unable to go out and open their shops. The then leader of Sikhs, Master Tara Singh, a Bhaapa Sikh, lost elections of SGPC to a burly giant named Jathedar Udham Singh from our area. Udham Singh came to our village and told the people to get ready for a fight against the Muslims at Amritsar. A council of war was held in our house. One whole room at got stocked with weapons like swords, scimitars, spears and daggers. The weapons were then distributed among the young men from our village. For the first time in its history a truck drove down to Kot to transport our warriors to Amritsar. They came back after a week and were in high morale. We were told that they patrolled the streets of the holy city day after day and put the fear of God in the minds of Muslim goondas responsible for terrorism in the city.
A year before Partition , when the united Punjab was a big province, student Tara Singh of Kot stood first in M.Sc.(Chemistry) exam of Punjab University scoring very high marks. It was a sensational achievement for the whole Sarhali area. My father encouraged Tara to go to America for higher studies. His own father, a very poor farmer, wanted him to take a job being offered for Rs 100/- pm, which, to him was a princely sum. To ensure the success of his plan, his father got young Tara married to a girl from a nearby village. Finally when Tara was to go to Lahore for interview with a very sympathetic Muslim Chief Minister of Punjab, his father could not afford to pay for his new clothes. Later Dr Tara Singh told me in USA that it was my grandfather who most generously paid for his new clothes and a pair of Bata shoes. He got the Scholarship and on arrival in America,  was admitted to the famous Cambridge University. Earning his PhD degree with 97% marks, he broke all previous records of the University. On return to India at age 34, he was appointed the youngest Principal of a Government College. The temptations of the high life beginning now for Tara Singh were so great that he decided to get rid of his first wife and marry an educated beauty from a rich family. While pursuing this course of action, he made some terrible mistakes which changed his entire course of life. He finally resigned the government job and migrated back to America with his new family. Fifty years later when I went to meet him with my wife, two sons and daughters -in -law, he had grown old and was in frail health. His wife cooked a sumptuous Indian meal for us and I spent many hours talking to him about Kot and its people. He regretted that he was not able to do much for his brother’s family at Kot. He was also sad that he lost his spiritual moorings and drifted away from Sikh faith. Now he wished to grow a long flowing beard like mine before meeting his Maker.
When the first general elections were due to take place, Partap Singh Kairon, who became the most famous Chief Minister of Punjab later, came to Kot asking for votes. My father told him that, except for the Harijans, the whole village was ready to vote for him. In one of his public speeches, Kairon had said that the country had a bright future in exporting leather goods and the Harijans should learn modern techniques connected with this trade. They were sore on this account because the demeaning profession had been imposed upon them by caste Hindus since ancient times. They wanted nothing to do with such any leather industry in free India. Sitting in the humble dwelling of the man who worked for us, Kairon patiently listened to them. Then everybody fell silent. There was a little girl standing next to me .Kairon gently asked her to fetch a glass of drinking water for him. As soon as he finished the drink, the spokesman of the Untouchables gave a broad smile and announced that they were now willing to vote for him! All because a high caste Jatt had drunk water from one of their houses !