AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 224 of 332 soon thereafter and told me as we walked away that this was their way of showing appreciation. Sure enough, nothing untoward happened and the POW all seemed happy. The sequel was even more interesting. Next morning, Col Mansoor called me, and asked, “Remember the blankety- blank maulvi? What was his name?” I remembered the Gulzar part. Mansoor was apoplectic. So and so, he said, told him that AM Zutshi Gulzar was a Kashmiri Pandit and to think, Mansoor had shown him respect by not smoking in front of him. I laughed which sent Mansoor into a further torrent of cuss words. Moral of the story - buyer beware. It can happen only in India, I thought. We had other such visitors - a distinguished one was Mohd Yunus, who came as an emissary of the prime minister. A Pathan, he was in some manner related to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi. He, too, had participated in the freedom struggle and spent time in jail. After Independence, he had joined the foreign service and had been an ambassador to Algeria among other things. He addressed only the Pakistani officers who were openly hostile to him. He was totally unfazed. He related many incidents of his experiences as a Muslim in India and one still remains in my memory. As ambassador, he had asked if annual confidential reports were written on him. In reply he was told who all had done so, which included Pandit Nehru initially and so on. The letter added that adverse remarks are communicated to the officer concerned and that he might draw his own conclusions and in any case his loyalty was not in doubt. Mr Yunus narrated that he saw red and complained that he had been in jail while the man giving him a certificate of loyalty had been bootlicking the British. The allusion being to the fact that the concerned person was an ICS officer. He also asked that his letter be shown to Pandit Nehru, who in his reply agreed with him. Despite such examples, the Pakistani officers were unconvinced. Older readers would remember that our press openly criticised the government of that time and its Pakistan policy and Khushwant Singh as the editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, led the charge writing particularly in favour of the POW. Alas! as was to be expected the Pakistani officers were unyielding, but beyond a point it really did not matter. The above narration makes it clear that Pakistani soldiers, even in captivity, were prone to good discipline and amenable to reasonable restrictions, while the officers remained sceptical and hostile. This was to be expected. However, be clear that there were other tensions within the Camp among the POW themselves. After all, it is unnatural to be cooped up in a confined area for extended periods of time. What were these tensions like? The divide between Punjabis and Pathans was palpable, as was between Shias and Sunnis. From time to time, I would get complaints ranging from frivolous to serious. One common one was related to the supply of khaini, which I discovered was a tobacco- based chewing cud that many soldiers were addicted to. Since this was available in the