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Photo:
Workers painting cricket stumps in Mr Kohli's factory take a chai break. (ABC News: James Bennett)
There are only a handful of people still alive
who remember a time before India and Pakistan became bitter rivals.
James Bennett found one of them while doing a story about cricket bats
in northern Punjab.
Relations between India and Pakistan are
never warm, and recently they have taken a turn for the worse, with
escalating violence in contested Kashmir.The area has been fought over since 1947, when Partition split what was then the British Indian Empire into India and Pakistan.
Photo:
Ramesh Kohli in his factory holding an English willow bat (right
hand) and a sample made from Australian-grown willow in his left. (ABC News: James Bennett)
I had gone to meet 85-year-old Ramesh Kohli in his factory in Jalandhar Punjab to speak to him about his struggle to import Australian willow.
As we spoke workers shaped cricket bats by hand in the background.
"I belong to the Kohli family," Mr Kohli tells me.
"My father and uncle started the company, called Beat All Sports, in the year 1935, in Sialkot, which is now west Pakistan."
In 1948, following Partition, he and his family moved to India and restarted their business.
"Since then we have been manufacturing cricket bats, hockey sticks, footballs, and exporting all these items all over the world," he says.
But what happened when the British left India in 1947 is one of history's grisliest passages.
Grossly abbreviated, political rivalries between the Hindu and Muslim leaders, with whom the British were negotiating with for independence, convinced them to split their empire.
India was assigned to Hindus and Sikhs, and the area carved out from it for the Muslims was East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now just Pakistan).
And with that decision, the Kohlis found themselves part of the largest mass migration in human history.
"When the Partition took place that was 1947, so we left for Jammu, which was half an hour from Sialkot," he says.
Ten million people who had lived side-by-side scrambled in the giant shift, and like many others, the Kohlis abandoned their possessions in Sialkot.
"We left our house and our belongings and everything," he says."Everything we could carry was the clothes and the suitcases, maybe a little bit of cash, but most everything was left over there."
The haste was driven by fear, and amid panic and anger at such upheaval, violence gripped Punjab, fuelled by animosity and thirst for reprisal.
Stories abound of horrific violence and refugee-laden trains being ambushed by mobs.
Estimates vary wildly, but anywhere between several hundred thousand to 2 million people are thought to have been killed.
"I was 12 years, I had full memory what happened, and I've seen a lot of bloodshed during Sialkot to Amritsar, in the trains," Mr Kohli says."And then we saw what's happening in Amritsar, all the bloodshed, I had the memories of that."
But Mr Kohli's family was lucky and managed to survive the violence.
"After 21 days in a military camp, we were brought to Amritsar, then from Amritsar we went to Agra where we had the contacts," he says.
"And we stayed there for two years, but then we came back to Jalandhar because Jalandhar was the place where we had the labour."
Photo:
A man carries his wife as they flee following the Partition. (Wikipedia: Margaret Bourke-White. 1947)
Tensions continue between neighbours
In Jalandhar Mr Kohli's father and uncle rebuilt their business from scratch.Since then it has supplied bats to India's most revered cricketer, Sachin Tendulkar.
Mr Kohli was working his way up through the firm when an opportunity arose for him to return to Pakistan after two decades away.
"I still remember where my house was," he says.
"The lady living over there was a very nice lady, she had also come from Jalandhar, she was also one of the sufferers of the Partition.
"She went the other way. And when I went to see [the house] she said 'why have you come?', I said 'I have just come to have a look at my house'.
"She was such a nice lady, she said, 'this is your house, you can come and stay over'.
"So there are good people as Hindus, there are good people as Muslims."Cross-border respect is in short supply at the moment.
Rising military tensions over Kashmir have flowed into society, India and Pakistan have banned each other's films and actors — even cricket is not immune.
Indian cricket player Gautham Gambir has said that he "couldn't think" about playing Pakistan in such a climate.
That news saddened Mr Kohli.
"I keep telling everybody, there are very good people in that community also," he says.
"You have to be a good human being, whether you are a Hindu or a Muslim."
Mr Kohli is still sharp and spritely for his 85, but as the 70th anniversary of Partition looms, his generation of Punjabis are not getting any younger.
When they go, a human link, a thin strand still connecting people so similar, yet now so divided by politics and history, will sadly be severed.
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