CHAKWAL: As India mourned its two-time prime minister Manmohan Singh in a state funeral, villagers in a tiny village of Chakwal held their own vigil to remember ‘Mohna’, a 15-year-old boy who had to flee his hometown Gah to escape the violence that had engulfed the area at the time of Partition.

In the village, located 25km to the west of Chakwal, memories of the partition violence still haunts Mohammad Khan, 91, who once played and went to school with the late Indian prime minister. The nonagenarian fondly remembered Manmohan Singh, and described the partition riots as ‘ghadar’.

Manmohan Singh was born on September 26, 1932, while the ancestral village of his wife Gurshuran Kaur was Dhakku, where her father Sardar Chattar Singh Kohli held sway. Chakwal at that time was a tehsil of Jhelum and was upgraded to the district level in 1985.

Manmohan Singh, called Mohna by his friends, was 15 years old at the time of Partition, in which his grandfather was also killed.

l Haunted by ‘very bitter’ memories of partition, late Indian PM could not visit his birthplace; now, villagers hope for visit of his wife, daughters

As a witness to the gory events of partition, he could never get rid of this trauma. Former Indian Punjab’s finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, in a recent article published in The Indian Express, recalled a conversation he held with the late Indian premier about revisiting Pakistan.

“Yadan bariyaan talkh hun,” (the memories are very bitter), Manmohan Singh had replied.

The Times of India in a recent article stated that when asked about a possible visit to Gah, Manmohan Singh replied: “No, not really. That is where my grandfather was killed.”

During his tenure as the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh was invited by different Pakistani leaders, including military dictator Pervez Musharraf, then-president Asif Ali Zardari and then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, but he could not make it.

But this did not mean he had no love for his hometown. In 2008, Mohammad Ali, his childhood friend, visited him in New Delhi. Emotional scenes were witnessed as Mohammad Ali arrived to meet his friend Mohna with two pairs of khussa (embroidered shoes), a shawl, revari (traditional sweets), water, soil and a photo of village Gah for his friend Mohna. Even his friend could not convince him to visit his birthplace.

And the villagers also loved him as one of their own. When he became the prime minister of India, the village celebrated his meteoric rise. At that time, Musharraf’s regime in a gesture of peace ordered the provincial government to carry out uplift projects in Gah.

A carpeted road leading to the village was built while buildings of a basic health unit, a vocational training institute for women and a veterinary dispensary were also constructed. The primary schools for girls and boys were upgraded to high schools.

The Indian government on the order of Manmohan Singh also announced some development projects for Gah. The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) of India finished its projects within due time by installing streetlights on solar power and also installed geysers for the three mosques of the village.

Ironically, projects initiated by the Punjab government, which were supposed to be completed by 2007, are still not functional. At that time, it was also decided to rename the Government Primary School Gah after Manmohan Singh but it’s yet to be done.

In the office of the headmaster of the school where Manmohan Singh studied till 4th grade a letter written by the principal of Sri Bala Little Flower Model School in Maruthi Nagar, Hyderabad, India still hangs on the wall.

The letter states, “We the staff and students…are very much delighted and pleased by reading the news in the press that Govt of Pakistan…has directed the Punjab Govt to declare the birthplace of our beloved Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, village Gah in the Chakwal district as model village and to rename the school as ‘Manmohan Singh Government Boys Primary School’.

“The renaming of the school and completing the unfinished uplift projects rest with the government. As far as the villagers are concerned, we consider Manmohan Singh a great son of our village,” Altaf Hussain, the headmaster of the school, said.

An unusual gathering

After the demise of Mr Singh, Gah witnessed an unusual gathering. All the village men gathered at the residence of the late Raja Mohammad Ali shortly after Friday prayer to mourn the passing of Manmohan Singh.

Speaking at the gathering, Raja Ashiq Ali, nephew of the late Raja Mohammad Ali, recalled that as many as 12 friends (including his uncle) of Manmohan Singh were alive in Gah in 2004 when the latter was elected as the prime minister.

“All of them yearned for the arrival of Manmohan Singh but unfortunately he could not come to Gah. Now we wait to receive his wife and daughters,” he hoped.

“In 2004, the villagers were jubilant after Manmohan Singh became prime minister. Today in 2024, we are mourning his death,” he maintained.

“Had Dr Sahib not become the prime minister, today we would neither have a carpeted road nor would we have high schools for our girls and boys,” he maintained.

“There was no concept of solar power in 2004 but due to Dr Sahib, our village got solarised street lights,” he recalled.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2024