Gah Begal The Village Of PM Manmohan Singh born 1932 Chakwal

[JUGRAJ SINGH]

Prime VIP
Staff member
I want to tell Mohna, the tree is still standing.”
Classmate and friend Ashraf recalls the days spent with Manmohan Singh in their village Gah long before the latter became Indian PM
“If every man was as fortunate as my Mohna, the world would be a better place,” 81-year-old Muhammad Ashraf says, with a toothless grin as he smokes hubble bubble, distantly looking at cars racing on the Motorway, snaking along his ancestral village, Gah Begal, on the outskirts of Chakwal.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was born in Gah in 1932.
Ashraf was his classmate and friend. A farmer, he maintains a small holding in the peripheries of Chakwal. He studied with Manmohan in the mid-1930s at a primary school in Gah.
Ashraf has vague but cherished memories of their time together. He says Singh may have risen to become India’s prime minister but he still considers him a friend.
“To me, he will always be Mohna,” Ashraf says in a definitive tone.
Sixty-five years ago, a country was divided, families separated, leading to the birth of two independent nations — India and Pakistan.
Before the Partition, the village Gah Begal was predominantly inhibited by Hindus and Sikhs, but afterwards their homes, lands and cattle were allocated to the arriving Muslim refugees from the other side of the border.
Gah lies about eighty kilometres south of the federal capital Islamabad.
The village was relatively unknown only until eight years ago when Manmohan Singh became the prime minister of India.
My father came to me saying, “Oye apna Mohna Hindustan da wajeer ho gaya jay” (Our Mohna has been elected India’s premier).”
“We finally arrived on the map” says Muhammad Zaman, Ashraf’s son, a glint of pride visible in his eyes. “There were celebrations and everyone danced to the beats of dhol (a double-headed drum). When I was a kid, my father used to tell me tales about Mohna.”
Ashraf recalls, “We used to walk five miles to school, we were together till the fourth grade; I failed but he continued to study. He was a very hard working student while I was not that intelligent. I couldn’t even write my name. He used to study in candlelight and prepare for exams; sometimes he used to do my homework, too!
“I remember the day of our exam, we had left for school early without having breakfast. After the paper, when we were returning home, we discovered a berry tree. Mohna picked up some stones and threw at the berries and I picked them up from the ground and ate them all. He got so annoyed that he started beating me saying, “Wattay assi sut-dae nay, tay bairey tussi khanday ho” (I throw the stones and you eat all the berries). I want to tell Mohna that the tree is still standing. They were going to cut it down to construct a road, but I told them that this tree belongs to Manmohan Singh.”
Zaman says, “I recently read in the newspaper that our government and India have removed visa restrictions for people over sixty years of age, I’m trying to convince my father to go and meet his friend but he simply says he will only talk to him when he comes here since he is one year older to him. He says he knows Mohna is a big man now and he is still a poor farmer, but he is older and “much stronger than little Mohna.”
Only a couple of Singh’s class fellows, Ghulam Muhammad Khan and Muhammad Ashraf, live there now; the rest have either died or left the village during the Partition.
After moments of silence, in the echo of a distant tractor’s ploughing, Ashraf once again tries to recollect the nerve-wrecking days of the Partitio.
“We frequently heard gunfire, we did not even know what was happening until our village was attacked. But Mohna and his family had to leave. We heard they had shifted to Lahore or maybe Amritsar and then the bloody riots began. We heard that a Sikh family was killed, I cried for many days!”
Raja Muhammad Ali, another friend of Manmohan and the deputy mayor of the village, died two years ago but was fortunate to meet his childhood friend in 2008, after six decades, in Delhi.
Ashraf smiles as he makes the recall.
“He took presents for Mohna, shoes and shawls. I sent him the famous Chakwal “raivri”. He invited Mohna to come to Pakistan and visit Gah, but then we heard about some terrorist attacks in India which were blamed on Pakistan.”
The Mumbai attacks in November 2008 froze Indo-Pak relations, just months after Raja visited India.
Despite sore relations, Singh had not forgotten his schoolmates and school. He arranged funds for the school’s renovation.
The school was to be named after him during General Musharraf’s reign. Renovations notwithstanding the school still retains the original name for inexplicable reasons.
The school record of Manmohan Singh is still well preserved in the headmaster’s cabinet. It shows Singh was a promising student.
Ghulam Mustafa, the Headmaster of the primary school, says,” We tell our children that one of the students at this school became a prominent political personality, so if they work hard they, too, will achieve their objectives. We pray to God that he becomes the Prime Minister of India once again, and we want him to come to Pakistan.”
After being elected as prime minister, Singh funded the construction of a road and also sent teams to install solar-powered lights, and a water geyser for the village mosque.
Mustafa says Singh financed a development project worth Rs100 million for this village. “They constructed a high school for boys and girls, a hospital and a new water supply system. These roads were also built under the same project. “
He laments that the work stopped after the PPP came to power.
“But then, what else can we expect? At least, Mohna has given us solar lights and brought his village out of darkness. You know, when there is load-shedding in Chakwal, our village glows like the moon!”
Even though times have changed, the lanes and the paths, and even the houses of Gah Begal are a reflection of undivided India.
It has been over sixty years since his friends last saw him, but they still have vivid memories of the naughty and studious Mohna.
Singh left his village when he was only ten years old. Ironically, successive governments have not been able to do what he has for his village from across the border.
In Gah, the small community lives in peace, but hopes one day their Mohna would return so they would be able to thank him for his kindness and support.


 
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