Last Train From Pakistan
I
left the ashram and made my way to Lahore. The atmosphere there was
every bit as bad as I had been led to expect. Angry Muslims were running
around shouting, ‘Kill the Hindus! Kill the Hindus!’ Others were
shouting, ‘We got Pakistan so easily, let us now invade India and
conquer it! Let us take it by the sword!’
I went to the station and bought a ticket for my home town. I found a
seat in a nearly-empty carriage, put my bags there and went outside to
have a drink at the platform tea stall. Surprised at finding the train
so empty, I asked one of the passers-by, ‘What’s going on? Why is
the train so empty?’
He gave me the reason. ‘The Hindus are not traveling any more. They
are afraid to go anywhere by train because they are in the minority
here. So many train passengers are being murdered, no one wants to
travel that way any more.’
In those violent days, Hindus and Muslims were traveling in separate
carriages so they could protect each other in case there was any
trouble. The nearly empty carriages I was looking at were those occupied
by the Hindus.
And then an inner voice, the voice of my Master, said to me, ‘Go and
sit with the Muslims in their compartment. Nothing will happen to you
there.’ Superficially it seemed like a good idea, but I had doubts
about my ability to fool my Muslim fellow-passengers into believing that
I was one of them. I dressed very differently and I had a highly visible
‘Om’ tattooed on the back of one of my hands. I came from a
community of brahmin Hindus which thought that all Muslims were polluted
and impure because they ate beef. Anyone who wanted to come into our
house had to show the back of his hand first. All the local Hindus had
an ‘Om’ tattooed there; the Muslims did not. The Hindus were
allowed in, the Muslims were excluded.
I listened to the voice and took my seat with the Muslims. No one
objected or questioned my right to be there. Somewhere in the
countryside the train was stopped by Muslims and all the passengers in
the Hindu carriages were gunned down. No one paid any attention to me,
even though, to my own eyes at least, I was clearly a Hindu.
I disembarked from the train when it reached my destination and made my
way to my family home. When I got there it, was locked and barred.
Nobody answered my knock. Eventually my father appeared on the roof, demanding
to know who I was.
‘It’s your son,’ I called back. ‘Can’t you see? Don’t you recognize
my voice?'
He recognized me and showed his astonishment at my return.
He knew that my family obligations had never rated highly in my
priorities before.
What have you come back for?’ he asked, somewhat incredulously. ‘The
Punjab is burning. Hindus are being murdered everywhere. Anyway, how did
you get here? Are the trains still running?’
‘Yes,’ I called back, ‘the trains are still running. That’s how
I got here.’
My father thought for a while before coming to a major decision. ‘In that case,' he said, ‘you must take the family out of the Punjab and get them settled somewhere in India. If the trains are still running, I can get railway passes for you all.'
The following day, equipped with the relevant passes, I took thirty-four members of my family, virtually all of them women, out of Western Punjab into India. The train we took from Lahore was the last one to leave that city for India. After partition, the trains never crossed the border again.
The Maharshi had sent me to the Punjab to do my duty. That was typical of him because he never permitted his devotees to abandon their family responsibilities. Telling me, ‘I am with you wherever you are,' he sent me off to fulfil my obligations. When I first heard this remark, I only appreciated its philosophical significance. It did not occur to me that physically I would also be under his care and protection. Yet this was manifestly the case. He had told me where to sit on the train. For more than twenty hours after the massacre I had sat unrecognised in a Muslim carriage, despite having pierced ears and an ‘Om' on my hand, both of them classic Hindu identification marks. In an environment of utter anarchy I had secured seats for a vast contingent of my family and got them out of danger on the last train that ever left Lahore for India. After independence the cross-border railway lines were pulled up and the border itself was closed.