New Coastie – Dada’s legacy

Regardless of our cultural backgrounds, we all grow up on stories told by our ancestors. These are the stories of hardship, success, heroes, myths, and legends. In my household those stories were told by my grandfather. All the children of the family called him Dada. Growing up in Pakistan, I used to think of him as a superhero. Not the kind that wears a cape and fights crime, but someone who held the key to the past.

The past weighs heavily on people who are born and raised in Pakistan. Our identities are anchored to the partition of India in August 1947. Every family in Pakistan has partition stories, especially the people who migrated from India to the newly created Pakistan. I am sure people who migrated from Pakistan to India also have similar stories. These stories are a peculiar mix of optimism, celebration, grief, and loss. Fifteen million people were displaced, and more than a million people lost their lives in the great migration. The British left in a hurry. The border was created by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer, in only five weeks. This was his first trip to India. A million lives was the cost of colonial haste.

Dada was in his 20s during partition. These are formative years for a person and his memories were vivid. His stories of the times leading up to partition were of excitement and political protest against the British. However, his stories of the actual partition and the early years of independence were filled with sadness and disappointment. He lost his father during the partition to a brutal murder and that weighed heavy on his mind throughout his life. He was cynical about the Muslim and Hindu leaders in 1947. He always criticised the narratives created by the Pakistani government about the political heroes of partition. He taught us to question the binary nature of good and evil that is created in the founding myths. He also taught us colonisation was directly responsible for the hatred and divide that exists between India and Pakistan. He never gave into blind patriotism. He used to say, patriotism creates phantom enemies and is counter intuitive to the concept of empathy.

I feel that he passed away disappointed. The dreamland that was created through partition never fulfilled its promise. It took away his father and divided his family across borders. However, my feelings are different. For me he was a treasure. The stories he told and the lessons he taught shapes the way I think today. His legacy is that of a man who survived one of the most devastating migrations of the 20th century and raised a family of critical thinkers and world travellers. I was lucky to have Dada as my grandfather. I will be somebody’s ancestor someday. Even if I don’t have children, I have nieces and nephews. What stories am I going to tell them? What will be my legacy?