Scars of 1947: Real Partition Stories throws light on Gauri Khan’s pre-partition heritage

It is widely known that Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s ancestral home is in Peshawar’s Qissa Khwani Bazaar, and that his father Meer Taj Mohammed Khan moved to Delhi after the Partition of 1947. However, Fatima Bhutto’s book New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop (2019), will also fill you in on other details. SRK’s father “was an anti-colonial activist, courting arrest under Mahatma Gandhi’s 1942 Quit India Movement against British imperialists and demonstrating alongside the Congress Party and Khudai Khidmatgar, the nonviolent Pashtun movement led by Abdul Ghaffar Khan.”

Did you know that film producer and interior designer Gauri Khan, who is SRK’s wife, also comes from a family with pre-Partition roots in a city that is now in Pakistan? Rajeev Shukla’s new book, Scars of 1947: Real Partition Stories, has a beautiful chapter titled “Gauri Khan’s Grandmother from Lyallpur”. The protagonist of this chapter is the late Champa Tiwari, the mother of SRK’s mother-in-law Savita Chhibber. She was born in Lyallpur, which is located in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It was named after a British official in colonial India – Sir James Lyall, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab.

Shukla, who serves as vice president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), writes, “Often, when I used to visit Shah Rukh Khan’s in-laws with him, I would meet Champa Tiwari, who was Gauri Khan’s maternal grandmother.” She used to tell him stories about life in Lyallpur as he used to visit Pakistan frequently. He adds, “What I could sense was that though she was based in Delhi, her heart still resided in Lyallpur…she was happiest when narrating stories related to Lyallpur. She even requested me to take her to Lyallpur.”

It is no surprise that she wanted to visit. After all, she was 27 when the Partition happened. Leaving a place that had been home for almost three decades would not have been easy.

Shukla writes, “Champa used to live in the village adjacent to the city, and her house in the city was in the Vakilaa di Gali (Lawyer’s Lane) locality, which was close to the Lyallpur clock tower, situated in the middle of the city.” She told Shukla that she wanted to see her house, school, village and the nearby city but her children were not enthusiastic about the idea. It is understandable that they were worried. They did not want her to travel so far at her age. Shukla notes that SRK’s maternal grandmother-in-law passed away in 2018. She was 98.

Lyallpur lives on in the hearts of many people who grew up there or have heard stories from parents or grandparents who migrated from there but you will not find it on a map of Pakistan. In 1977, the Government of Pakistan changed its name to Faisalabad to honour Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia. The man was shot dead in 1975.

Shukla writes, “I thought that since Champa ji herself could not visit Lyallpur, I could at least get her something from there to refresh her memories attached with that place.” On a trip to Lahore, he paid a visit to Faisalabad, and also met with the deputy commissioner there.

In this book, published by Penguin Random House, Shukla recalls, “When I reached Faisalabad, I got in touch with Champa Tiwari over the phone.” He visited her school, college, and house, and he clicked many photographs to bring back and share with her. He was fascinated by the architecture and design of the house, and was surprised that the new resident had left it unaltered. Even more surprising for him was the fact that the clock tower had Sanskrit verses inscribed on it. He writes, “There were Vedic mantras engraved on it along with the prayer songs for Lord Shiva, Lord Rama and Lord Krishna. Neither the government nor the people of Faisalabad demanded that the carvings be removed.”

He also came across temples to Lord Shiva and Lord Rama in the vicinity. While there were no worshippers at any of these holy places, Shukla was thrilled to find that the “sacred structures” had not been demolished. He also noticed that, unlike the city itself, the roads and localities that took their names from Hindu gods and goddesses had not been renamed.

While enabling this trip down memory lane, Shukla was asked to check if there was a kulfi vendor in a corner of the clock tower that she (Champa ji) used to visit frequently. Would you believe that he actually found the man? Yes, he did. Shukla went to the shop owned by “an aged Muslim man”, ordered a kulfi, and asked him, “How long have you been running this shop?” He had been selling kulfi-faluda there for more than 80 years. He was a young man at when the Partition happened. The shop was run by his father, and he was an assistant. When Shukla mentioned the name of the father of the lady who was on a phone call with him, the shopkeeper was able to remember the family instantly. He used to send them kulfi every day.

Shukla ends the story on a sweet and somber note. He writes, “He (the kulfi seller) was very happy to learn that Thakar Singh’s daughter was still alive. He insisted on not charging me for the kulfi, saying that I was his guest. While I was leaving, he said that though the name of this city has been changed to Faisalabad, the faisla (decision) of Partition was not good.”

Lyallpur’s Bollywood connection goes beyond Gauri Khan and SRK. Actor Prithviraj Kapoor spent much of his childhood in Lyallpur, and also went to college there. Lyricist Jaswant Rai Sharma, better known as Naqsh Lyallpuri, was born in Lyallpur. So were Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, who have sung for many Hindi films. Actor Amitabh Bachchan’s mother, Teji Bachchan, was also born in Lyallpur.

Chintan Girish Modi is a Mumbai-based journalist and book reviewer.

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