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12. India 
QUESTION: What you think the future of India is? Looking ahead for South Asia in general?
ATTIA HOSAIN (AH): I am very sad. I am these days frightened and sad for what is happening there. Q: Do you think it might disintegrate as a state? AH: I doubt that. I doubt they will do that. This is what people have been saying for a long time. One of my Pakistani friends, who is High Commissioner here, was talking to and said that any day now it is going to fall apart. It didn't. It will not in that sense but I think what might happen is that it will have a looser structure. More power in the states, more like perhaps in the United States, I don't know. What I am at the moment frightened is, the right-wing and its appeal to the lowest, basest instincts, which are historically not true, which is even for the Hindu religion not true but appeals to a people who can say who the hell are these Muslims? Right. Why are they here to be given most favoured minority status. They have got Pakistan Let them get out and go there. Q: I think that seems to be the ultimate goal right-wing aim, to send the Muslims to Pakistan? AH: Of course, they can't kill a hundred and ten million. Q: But Pakistan can't accept them either. AH: Pakistan, excuse me, I was told by somebody very important in 1948, end of 47 or 48, that there was - well, I will be told I am a liar, but I didn't say it. I was told by somebody who was there - that if more people come [emigrate from India to Pakistan], they have to be kept out even if they have to be shot. My friends, my dear Pathan friends would sometimes say to me, why did they all come? Didn't they have a place of their own? Right. Those Tiliars said the Punjabis. Those "Kerra Makoras," [fleas] they said in my presence in a Minister's house just before those vital elections [of 1970 that led to the break-up of Pakistan and Bangladesh], those Kerra Makoras and why do they talk? I mean if they would only think of telling of doing on certain points to us. Mujib-ur -Rehman [the founder of Bangladesh] would go on about something and I, the stranger from outside, with my darling friends around me said, but listen who are they and who are us? I thought you are all Pakistanis. No, the despair in my heart is this. That for me when you say, what do I feel about being called a Muslim, I am proud, I am a Muslim. But to me Islam has always meant that. A very sensible, logical way of making a human being, an individual with justice behind and peace is the word. Will any one contradict me on that point, it is Islam. Assalamo Allaiqum what on earth is this Assalamao Allaiqum? I don't say it because I am not a Punjabi, so I still say Tasleem and Adaab and all that [typical polite U.P. Muslim greetings], but it is the same thing. I can not understand it so. I am no use, I am a dinosaur, as I told you I belong to a world that's gone. Q: Did people of your type find a secure place in India after independence or not? AH: They have lived there. Some of my nephews have never been to Pakistan. Q: And they found a home, which is satisfying? AH: In the sense that that is their home. People do not leave their home and their little two feet of land or six feet to be buried in unless they have to. Nobody does. Q: Very difficult thing to do. AH: They have remained. They have not gone. My brother-in-law, my sister's husband was in the Civil Service, ICS. They were all given a choice whether to go or to come, I mean to go there [to Pakistan] or to stay [in India]. My brother-in-law was Collector in Benaras in 1947, think of that, of what it meant? Right. And yet when my sister, now when she was remembering those days - my brother-in-law, the stress on him, and he died of a heart attack. My sister was relating something. In those days she had to work amongst the refugees who came from across the border and were there and you can imagine the hate filled atmosphere. There was a Muslim woman walking around amongst them. By the time that she was about to leave and her husband had died, they were the ones who said that their whole life had been changed in their attitude because of her, because she was the one who was constantly there and constantly helping. Yes, I have any number - most of my closest relations are still there. Of course, they don't feel totally secure now for their lives, but then [who is safe?]. > Image © The Literary Estate of Attia Hosain (LEAH) |
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