When Fazl Karim became Chunni Lal
This is a story that’s worth remembering. It’s a powerful illustration of how times have changed. Seventy-five years later, I also hope it might speak to our conscience.
Were she alive today, mummy would be 106. She died in 2015 at the age of 98. However, it’s not because it’s her birthday that I’m writing about her. No, it’s for a very different reason. There is a story in her life that’s worth remembering. It’s a powerful illustration of how times have changed. Seventy-five years later, I also hope it might speak to our conscience.
It happened in the hot summer of 1947. My father, an army brigadier at the time, was the director of military operations and intelligence. In those days, the job brought with it a Lutyens bungalow. But the beauty of this home, set in acres of manicured lawns surrounded by gulmohar trees, contrasted with the murderous emotions whipped into a frenzy by the killings that accompanied Partition. Sikh jathas, as they were called, were scouring the streets of Delhi, wreaking retribution upon Muslims. Those were not good days.
My parents had a Muslim bearer who had been with them for years. His name was Fazl Karim. Understandably, he was scared. Mummy had arranged for him to stay in the house rather than the quarters at the far end of the compound. She also swore everyone to secrecy about his religion. No one was to be told he was Muslim.
One afternoon, when everyone was resting after lunch, there was a knock on the door. Mummy opened it herself to discover a posse of men, with weapons in their hands and anger in their eyes, standing on the verandah.
“Bibiji, we believe you are hiding a Muslim in this home. Give him to us,” they demanded. They sounded as if they knew what they were talking about. They also seemed determined to get their man.
This is what Fazl Karim had always feared might happen. Now it had.
Mummy was just 30. It was not a situation she was prepared for. Yet her instinctive response saved the day.
“Yes, we did have a Muslim bearer, but he left a long while ago,” she lied. Then, sensing this would not convince the jatha, she added: “Why don’t you take a look in the quarters at the back yourself? I’ll get one of my people to take you.”
All this while Fazl Karim was quivering with fear, hiding in the hall behind the front door. Though he was standing out of sight, you can imagine what was going through his mind.
Suddenly mummy turned to him but addressed him as Chunni Lal. She made up the name on the spot. “These people don’t believe that Fazl Karim has gone home. Why don’t you take them to the quarters so they can see for themselves?”
He must have been scared out of his wits. I was never told what he said or how he reacted, but that’s what Chunni Lal did. The wild and furious men who accompanied him had no inkling of the deception being played on them. They inspected the quarters one by one. Then they returned to the house, salaamed mummy and left. It was a very close call for Chunni Lal. But he remained safe.
The twist in the tale is that, thereafter, Chunni Lal became his name. He stayed with my parents till the early 1960s. When daddy was appointed ambassador to Afghanistan, Fazl Karim returned to his village.
However, my sisters and I always knew him as Chunni Lal. Indeed, that was also how he referred to himself. Then he would laugh and repeat the story of how his name was changed. Once his fears had eased, it was a favourite tale to tell.
I don’t want to draw a moral from this story. That would be both presumptuous and pompous. Let me, instead, end by recalling the opening sentence of LP Hartley’s The Go-Between. “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” Could that be why some of us prefer to live in the past?
Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold StoryThe views expressed are personal
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