The areas that later became part of Pakistan produced three Prime Ministers of India: Mr. Gulzari Lal Nanda (Sialkot), Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral (Jhelum), and Mr. Manmohan Singh (Chakwal). The subject of this post is Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral.
Inder Kumar Gujral was born on 4 December 1919 in Jhelum. His family originally belonged to a small village, Pari Darweza, near Sohawa in the same district, located at 33° 1'53.19"N, 73°12'56.44"E. His father, Avtar Narain, was an advocate practicing in Jhelum city. Politically active, he served as the district president of the Congress Party in Jhelum and was jailed several times for his activities against the British Raj. His wife, Pushpa Gujral, was a courageous woman who faced the hardships resulting from their political involvement with fortitude and determination. She also played an active role in mobilizing the women of the city for the freedom struggle.
Their home is located at 32°55'54.70"N, 73°44'12.04"E. When I visited the site on 14 August 2019, I believed I had found the house where Inder Kumar spent his childhood. However, while researching for this article, I came across Gujral’s autobiography, Matters of Discretion. In the very first chapter, he recounts visiting his birthplace in 1982. This clarified that there were actually two houses associated with the immediate Gujral family. The house I visited is located about 100 meters from the original childhood home of Inder Kumar Gujral. Unaware of this at the time, I was unable to visit the actual birthplace during my trip.
The childhood home of Gujral was a hub of political activity. Inder Kumar developed an interest in politics at a young age and was even jailed during the Quit India Movement in 1942. He received his early education at Government High School, Jhelum, and later studied at DAV College (now Islamia College Civil Lines), Hailey College of Commerce, and Forman Christian College, Lahore. In 1945, he married Shila Gujral, a resident of Lahore.
I learned that the extended Gujral family once owned several adjacent houses. Today, Mr. Waqqas Ullah Jarral and his family live in one of them. His grandfather, retired headmaster Mr. Wali Ullah Khan, met Inder Kumar Gujral during his 1982 visit to Jhelum. The house they now occupy once belonged to the sister of Avtar Narain. The family purchased it in 1970, having migrated from Rajouri in 1948. Gujral even helped Wali Ullah Khan obtain a visa to India, enabling him to visit Rajouri. Waqqas sahib later confirmed that the original Gujral home stood a short distance from the newer house. The old building was demolished, and a new one was constructed there by Malik Zia-ud-Din. The Gujrals moved into the newer house in the early 1940s.
At the time of Independence, the Gujral family was living in Karachi, where Inder Kumar had established a foreign trade business. In Matters of Discretion, he describes the circumstances that forced them to leave their home in the following words:
In early 1947, when the end of the British rule became imminent, my father was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in Karachi, as a result of which my parents and rest of the family, except my younger brother Satish, moved to that city. Sadly, our hopes of India - Pakistan friendship did not last for more than a few days after 15 August 1947. In the four days after the celebrations of azadi (independence) in both countries, Punjab (on both sides of the border) was reduced to open anarchy. Seventy thousand Muslims from India arrived in Lahore. The media reported that the Pakistan Government had opened camps to shelter nearly 40,000 people, and the rest were forced to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, droves of Hindus and Sikhs fled the city. In April 1947, the Hindu and Sikh population had been estimated at 300,000. By August 1947, it was barely 10,000. It was futile to expect that the fire of revenge would not spread to the other side.
As soon as horrifying news of massacres in India reached Karachi, the prime minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan called a midnight meeting of the non-Muslim MPs to give them his assessment of the situation on both sides of the border. His presentation was partisan but his anxieties were realistic. He was worried that the strong desire for revenge on both sides might end in a series of holocausts. He asked the four Hindus and Sikh members to urgently leave for Delhi to ensure the safety of the Muslims there and to end the cycle of revenge. In a way, it was a relief when my father told us that he had accepted Liaqat Ali Khan's advice to go to Delhi.
As a part of the scheme of partition, the East Bengal Assembly had elected twenty-one non-Muslim members, with Kiran Shankar Ray as its leader, while four Hindus and Sikhs were elected from the West Punjab. Their first meeting was held at our Karachi residence on 13 August 1947 to constitute the 'Congress Party in Pakistan Parliament' with Ray as its leader and Bhim Sen Sachar as its deputy leader. My father was elected as the chief whip-cum-secretary of the party.
We were deeply worried about Satish, who had stayed back in Lahore to take care of his newly established studio on McLeod Road. He was living in a "Hindu/Sikh" area Nishat Cinema. His physical disability compounded his difficulties and our anxieties. In those days of obsolete means of communication, we were not able to get him on the phone. But, fortunately, he somehow managed to survive despite the horrific killings in his locality.
We heard Mohammad Ali Jinnah's historic speech in Parliament promising that the new Pakistan would be 'a secular, democratic and modern state'. Unfortunately, that was a short-lived illusion. The atrocious riots on both sides of the border ended all hopes and visions of 'two friendly nations'. My father along with his colleagues first went to Delhi to meet Mahatma Gandhi and then rushed to Lahore to take Satish back to Jhelum. His telephone call to us (in Karachi) from Jhelum was full of pain and agony. In no uncertain terms, he asked me to pack up and send the women in the family out of Pakistan immediately even if I could not leave in a hurry. My mother and the rest of the extended family left for Bombay on a Scindia Steam Navigation ship. I stayed back in the hope that the 'tornado of violence' might be short-lived. It was not to be. My cousin and I quickly wound up our business after the Karachi riots and left for Delhi in 1948 without any idea what the future held for us.The extended Gujral family had several houses in this locality. One of them or perhaps a part, still survives in its original shape but somewhat in bad condition.
In late 1982, both Sheil (my wife) and I went to Pakistan. Driving on the familiar highway filled us with nostalgia. I observed that neither had the width of the Grand Trunk (GT) Road increased nor had its surface improved even though the traffic had substantially gone up over the decades. The terrain was still arid without any visible land-reclamation activity for agricultural purposes or for developmental activities. The rural houses did not show any improvement.
As we approached my old school on the GT road, I recalled that, during my childhood, the land was barren and arid. It was the only government high school in the district. In the early 1920s, electricity and the modern sanitation system had not yet touched Jhelum, nor was any public transport available from my house to the school. Consequently, my cousin and I used to ride double on my old bicycle. In the harsh summers, I once fell victim to a heat stroke. We were then provided the services of a tonga (a light horse-drawn vehicle). Electricity reached Jhelum in 1927 when discarded diesel-powered generators of the Lahore Electricity Supply were shifted there. Till then, very few towns of the Punjab had seen an electric bulb or a fan.
It was almost dusk by the time we reached our own house at 1, River Road. Two new houses had been added, which obstructed the view of the majestic river. The river brought back to me the tragic memory of the drowning of my younger brother Raj. Ours was a large, double storey house whose hallmark was simplicity.
Sheil and I went upstairs to look at our bedroom and the adjoining open-air terrace where we spent quite a bit of time after our marriage. The first floor of the house had been allotted to two migrant families from Kashmir, whereas the ground floor occupants were from Ludhiana (now in Punjab, India). An old lady told Sheil with a great deal of affection: 'We had an equally good home in Ludhiana but the rioters ravaged it forcing us to leave. We then drove to our previous house in Jhelum, which was ready for demolition. The new owners were planning to build a shopping arcade there.
It was in this house that my parents had initiated themselves into the Gandhian struggle for the liberation of the country. As a young boy my mind was politically shaped here. I pointed out to Sheil a nearby small police post where an angry policeman had once severely thrashed me for leading a small procession of young boys shouting anti-British slogans. My mother had seen everything from the window of her upstairs bedroom but she neither showed her anguish nor lamented. She took me in her arms without a word of remorse. Later, she narrated the incident to my father when we went for our weekly meeting with him in Gujrat Jail.
The above paragraphs from his autobiography suggest that the family lived in two houses. At the time of my visit, I was unaware of this fact and therefore did not enquire about any second home. To clarify the matter, I contacted Mr Waqqas again, and he confirmed that the Gujrals indeed lived about 100 meters away in another house during Inder Kumar Gujral’s childhood.
Now, the question is not just about the two houses, but also about two visits that need to be examined. The first was in 1982, and the second, most likely, in 1992. An article in Rediff provides details of his 1992 visit to Jhelum.
Jhelum proud of PMPrime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral is the pride and talk of the town in Jhelum, his birthplace in Pakistan. His elevation to the premier's post has stimulated hopes in Pakistan for better relations between the two countries. Press reports on Wednesday said that Jhelum expects their native boy to resolve the Kashmir problem which Islamabad says lies at the core of 50 years of hostile relations. Some Jhelum natives hope that Gujral would allow them to travel to India without visa, reported the mass-circulated Urdu newspaper Jang.
Gujral was born in Jhelum in December 1919. His family migrated to India in the mass exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations that accompanied the Partititon of British India into the independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947.
In 1992 he visited the city while taking part in the so-called 'Track Two' unofficial efforts by the intellectuals of India and Pakistan to normalise relations between their two countries which have so much in common. ''Inder Kumar hugged me for long when people introduced me to him as the same Younus Shah he used to play hockey with, and we relived the memories of childhood,'' the old friend told Jang.
Shah, 87, said Gujral's father Avtar Narain Gujral was a kind man. He was the president of the city Congress party at Partition and turned his mansion into a transit camp for the Hindus migrating from Pakistan to India. ''Inder Kumar was a dear friend. He became Gujral only later and grew that weird beard,'' another childhood friend Ziauddin Malik told Jang.
*Mirza Abdul Ghafoor Baig, a family friend and a former president of the district bar association of Jhelum, said, ''Gujral addressed the bar during his visit to the city. I found him a balanced person, a man without airs.'' Baig said Gujral was presented a rare photograph of his father on the occasion by the former governor of Punjab, Chaudhry Altaf Hussain.
http://www.rediff.com/news/apr/23jhelum.htmSubh Sadiq Bhutta, another Jhelum lawyer, told the newspaper that he vividly remembered how Gujral pater was arrested during the Quit India movement and how he refused to enter the jail through a small gate because he was holding the party flag and would not lower it to enter. Eventually, the jail authorities had to open the main gate to let him carry the flag aloft.
Jhelum has many more such old houses, waiting to explored and told their history. I found these two houses nearby.
LAHORE, PAKISTAN: Former Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral (R) addresses a gathering of lawyers during his visit to the Lahore High Court in Lahore, 15 October 2004. Gujral, the 12th Prime Minister of India from April 1997-March 1998, who was born in the town of Jhelum which is now in Pakistan, visited the Punjab University old campus and saw the hostel room where he had lived during his student life. AFP PHOTO/Arif ALI (Photo credit should read ARIF ALI/AFP/Getty Images)
During his long political career, Inder Kumar Gujral served in various high posts in the government, as a member of parliament, ambassador, minister, and ultimately as the prime minister of India. It is no small matter that he was born in Jhelum, and for me, as well as for the people of this district, it is a source of pride that he belonged to our region. I sincerely wish we could preserve his house, which is an important part of our historical heritage.
I have read that even leaders like Gandhi ji and Nehru visited the Gujral home and stayed there. Considering that Jhelum lies on the important Lahore–Rawalpindi road, this seems quite probable. Mr. Avtar Narain, Gujral’s father, was himself a leader of considerable importance and an elected member of the Punjab Assembly. This house is therefore an important historical landmark and should be preserved before it is too late.
In conclusion, I would like to thank Mr. Waqqas Ullah Jarral, who lives in the house of Avtar Narain’s sister, the aunt of Inder Kumar Gujral. He was present when his grandfather, Wali Ullah Khan, met Gujral, and now works as a regional manager in a private company. He not only showed us the house from the inside but later helped me clarify many points that had been on my mind.
015. Birthplace Of Indian Prime Minister Mr Manmohan Singh
