Khushwant Singh - True Believer in Humanity
Of course everyone has to depart from this world, yet the news was nothing short of a shock to me. Something inside me was preventing me to trust the authenticity of news communicated by a friend via SMS.
The fake intellectualism that our local electronic media boasts off was again proved that day when my attempts to confirm the news through news bulletins met with failure. I had forgotten that the person was not a film star, he was too irrelevant to occupy a few minutes on our news channels, too irrelevant to be covered by the so called proponents of Aman Ki Asha even.
The news was however confirmed by Indian news websites and some of our local news papers' websites.
Though I had never met the legend, I had become a fan of his wit and humour after reading a collection of his jokes, later on the classical "Delhi" made his books the most proud (read arrogant) part of my book collection.
Khushwant Singh had a multi-dimensional personality, apart from being a respected author he was a journalist, editor, historian and remained a diplomat for India in Ottawa, London and Paris before returning to Delhi to dedicate his time to writing, though unofficially he remained a diplomat all through his life, as he was one of the biggest supporter of friendlier ties between India and Pakistan and perhaps the most staunch critic of pre-partition violence on both sides of the border.
Born in 1915 to a prosperous business family in Hadali, what is now Sargodha district in Punjab province in Pakistan, Singh's date of birth was not recorded, but according to his autobiography, "Truth, Love & a Little Malice" (2002), his father, Sobha Singh, invented the date Feb. 2 when he enrolled him in school. Mr Singh later changed it to Aug. 15, based on his grandmother's recollection.
Mr Singh was educated in Delhi, Lahore and London, and was practising Law in Lahore when religious violence leading up to partition in 1947 forced him to cross over to India.
Being a passionate person at heart he was deeply touched by the horrors of pre-partition violence. He drove alone and heard disturbing tales. On both sides of the border, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims boasted of slaughtering the opposing side.
The experience resulted in the classical "Train to Pakistan," in 1956, Singh's most widely acclaimed work. The book was reissued in 2006 with some bold never published before pictures. The book was an attempt to make the Indians stare at the horror of their past. For Mr Singh partition was a "poison" injected into the Indian soul.
I still remember how passionately he said in an interview in 2006 "People should know this thing happened. It did happen. It can happen again."
Mr Singh was a true believer in humanity. No bout of violence in India escaped his criticism. Be it the state sponsored barbarism unleashed on minority Sikhs like him in 1984, or the razing of a mosque in 1992 by a resurgent Hindu right, or the attacks on the Muslim minority in the western state of Gujarat in 2002, he was the most vocal critic of all these tragedies.
He returned Padma Bhushan, the third highest Civil Award in India, in protest against the storming of Golden Temple, Sikhism's holiest shrine by Indian forces, which resulted in loss of many lives and damage to the shrine.
The following lines from an essay of his are just a glimpse of the bold and rebellious writer he was "Why am I an Indian? I did not have any choice: I was born one. If the good Lord had consulted me on the subject I might have chosen a country more affluent, less crowded, less censorious in matters of food and drink, unconcerned with personal equations and free of religious bigotry."
The great man is gone, but his work will always remain alive. He will always be remembered for his wity, humorous and bold style of writing. It really does not matter if our local electronic media remains blind to his death, Singh was far bigger a figure than the film stars.Sharing space with corrupt politicians and cheap film stars is not worthy of his stature anyway.
According to recent news reports, his son has agreed to handover a handful of his ashes to a resident of Hadali, who wants to keep them in the ground where he was born. May be now our media will wake up to this news. Khushwant Singh www.pakpositive.com