By Ishtiaq Ahmed

The News, July 14, 2007

There is a marble plaque built into the wall of the main mosque in the centre of Kaputhala town which reads as follows:

"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."

Maharaja Jagajit Singh was indeed an extraordinarily enlightened and progressive ruler of a small princely state near Jullundhar in the undivided Punjab. The reason he chose a Moroccan style mosque was that he used to visit that North African Arab country regularly. The design of the Moorish Mosque was prepared by a Frenchman, M. Manteaux, who patterned it after the Qutbya Mosque in Marrakesh. It has a large compound paved with the purest marble. The artists of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore, decorated the inner dome.

On January 3, 2005 just before sunset I and my assistant Vicky arrived in Kapurthala. It was a journey back in time; a rendezvous with the dead and gone. The 1941 census gives the total population of the state as 378,389. Hindus, including the scheduled castes, were returned as 61,546; Muslims 213,557; and Sikhs 88,350. There were small numbers of Christians and other communities as well.

No local Muslims remained in the state after the partition. How and why that all changed is a puzzle I am still struggling to solve as I now approach the final chapters of my forthcoming book on the partition of the Punjab. The first and foremost reason for coming to Kapurthala was to interview Sardar Ranjit Singh Bhasin, a refugee from the village Thamali (Dhamali) of Rawalpindi district. He was one of those lucky 10-15 survivors while some 400 of his community lost their lives --including many women and children -- between March 7-13 1947 when their village was raided by Muslim marauders. Before visiting him I had been to Thamali and recorded eyewitness accounts of Muslims who still live in that village.

The second reason I came to Kapurthala was a promise I made to Maulana Mujathid Al-Hussaini whom I and Ahmad Salim interviewed on December 18, 2004 in his home in Faisalabad. When he learnt that I was going to visit Kapurthala he urged me to take pictures of the Moorish Mosque and two famous Sikh shrines, Gurdwara Hatth Sahib and Gurdwara Ber Sahib in the nearby town of Sultanpur Lodhi. Maulana Al-Hussaini hailed from Sultanpur Lodhi.

He strongly believed that had Maharaja Jagajit Singh been in Kapurthala the attacks on the Muslims would not have taken place. He was in Morocco or Europe in August 1947. His son, Tikka Sahib, however, was under the influence of the Akalis. He let loose a reign of terror on Muslims after August 17.

I have two other stories from Kapurthala and Sultanpur Lodhi to tell. During the same trip I and Vicky visited Hoshiarpur. We called upon the Congress Party office where we were invited home by the General Secretary District Congress Committee, Mr Rajnish Tandon. His wife told us the following story:

"I am originally from Kapurthala. One day a letter and a money order arrived from Pakistan for my father. It was from an old Muslim friend of his. They were like brothers once upon a time. When partition took place his friend had to leave for Pakistan. He had borrowed some money from my father, which he could not return before he left. In the letter he informed my father that he was lying on his deathbed and would be gone any moment.

He had to face very hard times in Pakistan and could not save money to pay back his debt, but was now returning it. He hoped my father would forgive him for taking so long. My father began to cry and wrote back to him that the loan was not important at all and he did not even remember it. He was very pleased to hear from him after all those years, but his heart was weeping that he could not be by his bedside at that crucial moment."

The fourth story was told to me by Sheikh Muhammad Farooq on December 13, 2004 at Rajgarh, Lahore. He narrated the following incident:

"My mother and sisters and I lived in Sultanpur Lodhi. My father had died, so there was no grown up man in our family. When the rioting started a Sikh friend of my father, Santa Singh, came to our help. He carried me on his shoulders while my mother and sisters walked behind him on the way to a refugee camp. Suddenly we were surrounded by a Sikh mob.

Those armed men wanted to kill me and my mother and take away my sisters. Santa Singh challenged them and said: "First you kill me and then can you touch this woman and children. They are like my family. Is this what the gurus taught you?" An old Sikh who was listening to him came forward and stood next to Santa Singh. He said, "Let this Sikh keep his word. Do not molest this Muslim family". The mob dispersed upon hearing that."

Men like Maharaja Jagajit Singh and Santa Singh, one a royal and the other a common man, are in short supply in East Punjab. Now the controversial spiritual head of Dera Sacha Sauda and fanatics among the orthodox Sikhs call the shots and set the social agenda, which lacks complete commitment to the emancipation of the poor and needy.

Some time back the Indian Zee News showed a doctor refusing point-blank to hand over a newborn baby boy to his father, a Mazhabi Sikh (from so-called untouchable stock), because the latter could not pay the expenses for his delivery in his private clinic. The mother had died during the delivery. The poor family must have been forced to go to a private clinic because building and expanding government hospitals in proportion to the population growth have been grossly neglected ever since India switched over to neo-liberal economic growth. The doctor wanted his money. He said the law was on his side!

The author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore on leave from the University of Stockholm, Sweden as professor of political science. Email: isasia@nus.edu.sg