A visit to the Hassan Abdal Railway station in Pakistan was very important for me to relive the inspiring story of Dayal Singh, my maternal grandfather.
In Gorakhpur, as the body of Dayal Singh was being lifted for cremation, there appeared a twitch in the face and he AROSE FROM THE DEAD! Visibly shaken, he said, “I have been allotted 30 minutes.”
I remember a painting in my parents’ bedroom of a train crushing a group of Sikhs. Dayal Singh was in this train as a prisoner of the British Government. The Sikh community of Hassan Abdal had decided to sit on the track to force stop the train so they could feed the freedom fighters. The engine finally halted, but only after crushing five on the track.
At the Hassan Abdal Railway station, over-whelmed by emotions, I walked on the track and touched the soil as a mark of respect to these brave souls.
Such are the glorious legacies of the Sikh community across the lands of Pakistan but ironically after the partition of 1947, we are deprived to walk freely on our own ancestral lands!
A legacy completely forgotten by the actions of the politicians who destroyed and uprooted entire communities of innocents.
Photographed in Oct 2014, during the research for the book “LOST HERITAGE The Sikh Legacy in Pakistan”
