The O'Briens of India and Pakistan
Author: Derek O'Brien
Publication: Quizderek.blogspot.in
Date: August 14, 2012Thoughts on Independence Day
Each year, on August
15, I find myself thinking of my great-grandmother – my father’s paternal
grand-mother. Nellie Bella Biswas, as she was named when born to a
Bengali-Christian family with homes in Jalpaiguri and Manicktala, formed part
of my earliest memories. She died in 1969, when I was a small schoolboy. Yet
even by then she had come to represent an influential figure for me – the
familiar matriarch, caring but firm, who taught the three of us, my brothers
and me, to speak Bengali.
To my young mind,
Nellie Bella O’Brien, as she became on marrying an Irish settler in India –
symbolised history. She was a walking, talking monument of history. To my
innocent eyes, she seemed to stand for Mother India: a venerable and iconic
figure who shed a silent tear in August 1947 as one country became two nations,
and a composite society was split forever.
Nellie Bella cried in
August 1947, she cried every day from 1947 to 1969. She cried for the line in
the sand that Partition drew. She cried for Patrick, her first-born, her
beloved son, who stayed on in Lahore.
The narrative of
Partition has been written in terms of the subcontinent’s Hindus and Muslims.
Christians have had only a small role. Anglo-Indians – the community I belong
to and which makes up a minuscule section of India’s Christians – have had just
a walk-on part.
Yet Partition had a
dramatic impact on my extended family. My paternal grandfather – Nellie’s son –
was one of three brothers. The eldest of them, Patrick, was a civil servant who
worked in Lahore and Peshawar, and served as private secretary to Sir Olaf
Caroe, governor of the Northwest Frontier Province. Much of the rest of the
family was in Kolkata.
One day, without
quite realising its implications, these wings of the O’Brien family became
citizens of separate countries. Within months India and Pakistan were at war.
Patrick, the son who had stayed on in Pakistan, had two daughters. Their
husbands were fighter pilots. As it happened, one of these men ended up in the
Indian Air Force and the other in the Pakistan Air Force.
II
Imagine Nellie’s
plight, and that of her granddaughter – my father’s cousin. Night after night
she stayed up, I’ve been told, wondering if her husband would come home or if
her brother in-law, her sister’s husband, was safe – or if these two men,
comrades and brothers in the same air force till only a few weeks earlier,
would aim for each other in the eerie anonymity of the skies.
Thankfully neither
died in that war, but a distance emerged. Father and daughter, sister and
sister, cousin and cousin, my Indian grandfather and his Pakistani brother,
Nellie and Patrick – they lost touch.
My brothers and I
grew up in a very different environment. We were the only Christian family in a
middle-class, predominantly Bengali-Hindu neighbourhood in Kolkata, living, in
one of those ironies that make India just so captivating, in a lane named after
a Muslim. We lived in the house Nellie had built in 1938. She was widowed
early, left with three sons to bring up. Her training as a doctor – she was
among the earliest women to enter medical college in Bengal – came in useful
and she established a fulfilling practice.
In the mid-1940s,
during the Great Calcutta Killings and the pre-Partition riots, she would walk
down by the railway lines, from Sealdah to Ballygunge, tending to the injured.
She was never harmed, not by Hindus and not by Muslims. The stethoscope around
her neck established her credentials; the determined walk established her
purpose. She would not be stopped, she would not be moved.
Nellie Bella O’Brien
died at the ripe old age of 78 in 1969. She was surrounded and mourned by her
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. All of Jamir Lane, it seemed,
turned up for her funeral. She wasn’t just my father’s grandmother, she was
everybody’s. The only one missing was Patrick, the son the mother had not seen
for 23 years.
III
Time passed. In 1984,
my brother Andy, then a sports journalist, travelled to Karachi for hockey’s
Champions Trophy. He was determined to trace the lost O’Briens of Pakistan.
Eventually he found them and renewed contact. My father’s uncle Patrick was
dead, but the rest of the family was still there and greeted their Indian
cousin very warmly. They continued to refer to the Jamir Lane residence in Kolkata
as “home”. Nellie was a legend for her grandchildren there as well.
Nevertheless there
were sobering realities. Most of my father’s generation and all of the next
generation – my second cousins – had converted to Islam. The pressure had been
too much. Being a minority in Pakistan was tough business.
Andy came home and
told us the strange and sombre story of the Muslim Anglo-Indian clan – or maybe
it should be the Muslim Irish-Bengali clan – of Lahore and Karachi. We sat in
silence, still digesting it. I thought of our life in India, the freedom to go
to church, the freedom to practise my faith, the freedom to be myself, the
freedom that my country gave its minorities. I’ve never felt prouder of being
an Indian.
I think about my
cousins in Pakistan now and then. Would they be able to join a mainstream
political movement, as I was so willingly accepted as part of Mamata Banerjee’s
struggle? Would they find opportunity to go to parliament as regular
politicians?
I was fortunate, I
guess. I was fortunate Nellie encouraged me to learn Bengali and participate in
the para Saraswati Puja – “It’s a celebration of wisdom and learning” – and
integrate with my larger community. I was fortunate India, and Bengal, allowed
me to do this without making unfair demands from me. I was fortunate to have
been nurtured by India’s Nellie – and Nellie’s India.
Happy Independence
Day!
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