qatre daryāst agar bā daryāst 
varna, qatre qatre.. daryā daryāst

    If a drop is in the ocean, 
    it is the ocean
    Otherwise, a drop is just a drop, 
    and the ocean is the ocean

..so goes a Persian proverb.  In 1947, when the departing British rulers started to carve out a large part of India into a separate state for Muslims, even the architects of that division had failed to fully foresee the massive rioting and uprooting of populations that were to follow.  

The northern part of the subcontinent soon recoiled in turmoil, much like a human body not taking too kindly to surgery without anesthesia. For its part most of South India remained undisturbed, as though creating a very different imagery- that of calmer waters of the ocean floor remaining disconnected from the storm raging in the layers above.   

For most victims on either side of the dividing line in Punjab, the agony was swift and brutal, delivered either as death at the hands of bloodthirsty mobs or as the prospect of having to hurriedly flee to the other side of the border for sanctuary. 

There were others who bore the scars of it for longer and in myriad ways, one of which was to be stranded as a minority so extremely minuscule that it could only be likened to the proverbial solitary drop when the tide of ethnic cleansing had swept away practically every one else of your tribe to the other side.

With partition, the assets and personnel of the armed forces were divided up as well. The British Indian Army had a significant number of Sikh and Hindu officers, whose hometowns were going to become part of Pakistan. Yet, almost all of them opted for India, barring about 60 who chose to swim against the tide. They applied to stay on and serve in Pakistan. In this tiny set, some had perceived the new nation as merely a Muslim-majority state, and not the theocratic one that would discriminate against its religious minorities. It was said that assurances by Pakistan's founding father Mohammed Ali Jinnah and one of his deputies named Raja Ghaznafar Ali Khan about treating minorities as equals had lent some hope to these applicants, who were mostly seeking a way to cling on to home and hearth.  

There were not enough Muslim officers available to staff the newly constituted Pakistani armed forces. The shortage was so severe that to alleviate it, around 700 Britishers continued to stay on and serve under the Pakistani flag until the mid 1950s. If the statistics of deficiency had given the 60-odd Sikh and Hindu applicants cause for optimism about their own chances, they were in for a surprise. All of them were rejected by Pakistan- that is, everyone except for one gentleman by the name Col. Rewati Raman Bakshi who happened to be in the medical corps.

It was not until my college days in Delhi in the late 1980s, that I first heard about him, through relatives who were in turn related to him. (He happened to be a cousin of Raizada Jagannath Bali, whose amazing feats in sustainable agriculture form the subject of an earlier blog that can be read at this link.) 

Like all sub-cultures, the ethnic stock that Col. Bakshi had descended from had its own traits and traditions associated with it. One of it was of serving in uniform, attested to by a long list of famous and decorated soldiers. It reflected in his close relatives too, including Mrs. Bakshi's brother who went on to become an officer in the Royal Air Force and fought in World War-II. 

The title Bakshi, acquired as a result of military services under Mughal or Sikh rule, spoke of a paymaster's status held by an ancestor in the army. At some point it had become his family surname, replacing their original clan name of Vaid. 

Even before the exodus to India dispersed the numbers, ours was a small community, adding up to a few tens of thousands in a country of nearly 400 million. It was nestled mostly between the Western fringes of Kashmir to pockets in the North West Frontier Province, traversing in between the districts of Rawalpindi and Jhelum in the Punjab where the concentration was relatively the highest, enough to make up the majority in a few villages. The tribe’s association and attachment to its traditional homeland was quite strong, enough for a saying to be coined around matrimonial alliances staying confined to the west of the River Ravi: 

Jā nā dheeye Rāvi, 
Na koi āvi, na koi jāvi 

    O daughter, don't marry beyond the River Ravi
    for no one comes from there, or sets foot there

While many of Col. Bakshi's close relatives were anchored in Nowshera in the North West Frontier Province and in the city of Rawalpindi not too far away in the Punjab, his family traced its roots to Uri, a town in Kashmir's Baramulla district. Ironically, after a tug of war and skirmishes between the two nations, Uri eventually went on to become part of India- almost right on the dividing line, somewhat akin to Bishan Singh's final resting place in Saadat Hassan Manto's tale of tragedy and torment titled Toba Tek Singh. 

Col. Bakshi's career in the army had taken off with flying colors about 20 years earlier, after medical education at Edinburgh, that culminated in the M.B, Ch.B. degree (Medicinae Baccalaureus, Baccalaureus Chirurgiae, now more commonly abbreviated as M.B.B.S). He was absorbed into the army in November of 1927, into a British-era military institution named the Indian Medical Service. 

The choice of career seemed to combine two family legacies. His father Bakshi Jeewan Rai Vaid had held a desk job in the army, and his father's brother Bakshi Thakur Das was a doctor at Nowshera. By all accounts Rewati Raman Bakshi was a hardworking and a well-liked doctor, and by 1934, successive promotions had elevated the Temporary Lieutenant into a Captain. By the time India was set to be independent, he was already a Colonel. 

It proved to be the last promotion he would ever have. The rank at which he joined the Pakistani army, was the rank he retired from it. To his shock, rules that blatantly discriminated on the basis of religion were arbitrarily cited as the reason he could not be promoted any further. Apparently, being a Brigadier meant leading a large body of Muslim men, a "burden" that was to be kept away from certain religious minorities in supposed exchange for their “protected” status as Dhimmi. The explanation was a fig leaf of sorts, the best that could be offered to a person whose quality of work provided no justification for holding him back.

Throughout his career, and for long afterwards as well, he ended up being the only Hindu officer in the army of the Islamic republic. The experience made for a strange mix. On the one hand, individuals he worked with and helped groom almost invariably had admiration to spare for his character and sincerity. They were often most apologetic in private about his being stranded on the career path, yet seemingly powerless to make any difference to the situation. Wonderful as colleagues at an individual level, yet also members of an institution that had undercurrents of an unrelenting mob mentality of its own, an organ of the the state apparatus that was unwilling to spare anything more than lip-service in form of empathy while keeping a firm lid on his professional career.  

One by one, many junior to Col. Bakshi in rank went to become his seniors. In what may have been an oddity in an institution as highly hierarchical as the army, some of them continued addressing him as "Sir" even after outranking him. Among those who had known him well was Ayub Khan, who had joined the British Indian Army two years later. Despite having been briefly suspended without pay in Burma for showing 'visible cowardice under fire' in WW-II, Ayub's own career trajectory could not be more different- superseding seniors to become commander-in-chief in 1951, and later wresting the reins of the government besides the pompous title of Field Marshal.  

As though the stagnation was not enough, the career post-1947 was peppered by another challenge. His patriotism was befitting of a person in uniform, yet doubts about it would surface unannounced, sometimes via oblique references. One instance happened to be at the site of a music function organized to pep up soldiers’ morale. Shortly after a Qawwali had sung "Hindustan kal liya, aaj liya", implying that India could be conquered any day at will, he was gently asked if the lyrics had offended him. "Why would they, it would give me an opportunity to meet my family members there!” was said to be his disarming response.

Just as Col. Bakshi dutifully served his army and nation, he was likewise dutifully attended to by a couple of retainers. One of them was a Pathan named Bairam Khan and the other happened to be a Hindu from Kangra, an old family faithful who ended up separated from his own clansmen much like the gentleman he stayed on to serve- because his hometown now lay well beyond the Indian border. As in the case of the Colonel, mere labels of identity made a world of difference, when in a more ideal world they ought to have been of no consequence.

[This house in Rawalpindi's Chittian Hattian/Mohalla Qutbuddin had belonged to Col. Bakshi, and had other illustrious neighbours. The adjacent house (partly visible) belonged to Dr. Khan Sahib, the elder brother of Bacha Khan and the first Chief Minister of Pakistan. Across the street lived another Bakshi family that was distantly of the same stock. From the latter family, a young man named Anand Bakshi served in the Navy, then the Army, before switching career to become one of the most famous lyricists in the Indian film industry. The photo was taken from the rooftop of Anand Bakshi's former house. Photo/info courtesy: Mr. Waseem Altaf] 

If there was one defining characteristic of the Colonel's career post-1947, it was his having to handle successive blows of increasing loneliness. Unlike Sindh and Baluchistan where pockets of Hindu concentrations had managed to outlast the partition mayhem, the extermination of people of Indic faiths in Western Punjab had been near-total. The depleted numbers of his own Mohyal tribe aptly symbolized the extent of the transformation. Out of the tens of thousands living there at the start of 1947, only 3 families were known to have remained. Memories from earlier years of familiar streets and places that were once teeming with many more of his ilk, made for a sharp contrast with what he subsequently had to witness; scenes that were said to have been evocative of desolation. 

He was one of 3 brothers, and neither of his siblings had managed or chosen to stay back in Pakistan like him. The Bakshi couple's only child, a girl, also settled in Lucknow, India after marriage. The loneliness of being away from practically everyone in his immediate and extended clan was presumably compounded by the death of his wife. Retirement from active service evidently aggravated it still further, and by then it made little sense for the Colonel Sahib to stay on in Pakistan. He considered moving to India. However, there was an unforeseen problem. 

Even when the Governments of India and Pakistan agreed to his relocation, there was no provision for his pension to be transferred. His was such a one-off case that no one had thought of enacting rules around it. One of his brothers, Shanti Nandan Bakshi who worked with the Life Insurance Corporation in Hyderabad, Deccan left no stone unturned to facilitate the move, and helped arrange for a solution. He became aware of a Muslim Colonel who had retired from the Indian army  and likewise wanted to relocate to Pakistan. The governments of India and Pakistan were persuaded to sign an agreement that would let both the gentlemen draw each others' pensions upon relocating across the border. If I recall right, he went on to settle in Hyderabad, and passed on some time in the 1970s or 1980s.  

I never saw the gentleman, and heard about him only in elders' accounts, many of which are now somewhat faded recollections from over three decades ago. However, people who manage to hold their honour and dignity intact even when struck by a torrent of bitter experiences and tragedies, tend to create a special place of respect in our hearts, and their stories thus become etched in memory. In his lifetime, that dignity along with the respect of his peers and juniors had earned him the sobriquet of "Sahebji". The appellation, combining the double honorifics of Saheb and Ji, was indeed duly deserved in his case.