Page 20 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

Sethi mohalla
Kashiram Sethi
The troubles begin
Somewhere in the month of March 1947, the
first riots were seen all over the country. Hindus
and Muslims were fighting each other and
there were rumours that the country would
be bifurcated into two. And Hindus would
leave this part of the country and move to
Delhi. No one knew how the country was going
to be partitioned. The Sethi brothers made
arrangements to move from Rawalpindi to
Delhi. Hari Ram already had moved to Delhi.
Govind Ram was a film producer and he lived in
Mumbai. Jagat Ram was also working in India.
The riot situation had become worse. There
was a mass exodus from the North to Delhi and
Punjab. Saif advised Piare that he should shift
his family to Delhi. One afternoon Saif came
to Sethi home in a Muslim league truck with
teo of his brothers shouting “Muslim League
Zindabad”. He told the family that he had ten
tickets for them Sethi on a chartered flight to
Delhi and they would have to leave in the next
fifteen minutes. He loaded all of them into his
truck and escorted them to the airport, ensured
that they had boarded the aircraft. Piare’s elder
brother Sri Ram, his wife, eight of their children
20
I had heard of the Sethi Haveli for a long
time and my guide took me to Sethi mo-
halla, just next to the bazaar. We entered
narrow but clean alleys, where there are
apparently six or seven smaller residences
of the Sethi family apart from the jewel in
the crown – the 1884 haveli built by Karim
Baksh Sethi.
The main haveli does not have a grand entrance
– and can be rather disappointing – but once
you enter, you find yourself in a central court-
yard with a centuries-old fountain in the middle
and the colourful windows of bedrooms and
lounges opening into the yard from all sides.
The Sethis were traders who migrated to Pe-
shawar from Bhera in Punjab, during Sikh rule.
Soon, they were masters of trade routes from
central Asia to the subcontinent, and their opu-
lence reflects in the grandeur of this haveli.
- Omar Mukhtar Khan (Courtesy: Scroll.in)
and Piare’s wife left Pindi. Piare stayed back
to gather property papers of the numerous
properties that they owned and could only fly
back to India in the first week of August.
Amolakh Ram who was the richest of the
Sethi brothers planned to drive from Pindi to
Amritsar in his Chevrolet car, where his wife
and children were staying. He made a false
compartment in the seat of his car, where he
hid Rs 6 lakh. Between them on the front seat
they had kept two revolvers for safety. It was
decided that Bhushan, who was their driver,
would drive and Amolakh Ram would sit with
him and they would travel through the night.
Bhushan was the son of one of the family
retainers and lived with Amolakh Ram’s
family since his childhood. He grew up and
they made him their driver. But Amolakh Ram
disappeared and the family presumed they
were killed in transit. The fact is that Bhushan
shot him in the back when he got down to
relieve himself. This is the story of my family,
how a Muslim (Saif) escorted a Hindu family
to safety and how a Hindu (Bhushan) killed his
fatherly Hindu employer, all for money. What
then is the religion of good and evil?