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Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew's son is a
homeless man in Amritsar
WSN Network
 AMRITSAR/NEW
DELHI: Toufique Kitchlew, son of one of Punjab's most famous freedom
fighters, Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, is a frustrated man at 78. He had
come visiting Amritsar, hoping that will help him reconnect to his
legacy and he will be able to pen down his memoirs but all he has
written so far is a page. In his eight months of stay, he failed to
find a home for himself.
More than half a
cenury ago when much blood flowed across both sides of the Radcliffe
Line, the Kitchlew's house was burnt down and communal tensions
raged. The family left Amritsar for Delhi, and that is a parting
that still aches in the son's mind.
“That’s my city
— I have memories there,” he said. “I don’t want to live here.” But
what is shocking is that he was unable to get an accomodation
because of his Muslim religion. He has written to the
Punjab
government now which was quick to revert to him offering to find him
a suitable accomodation and a lifetime pension.
He only has a
domestic help, can't walk, never married and with his brothers dead
and two surviving sisters in Pakistan, Amritsar is one place where
he thinks he will find peace for his soul.
“At the
university, they often asked me whether I was going to become great
like my father,” Kitchew said. “Now I say I am the struggling son of
a great father.”
His father was
born in 1888 in Amritsar, studied at Cambridge and got Bar at Law
from London, and a PhD from Germany. He was later a successful
lawyer and became Municipal Commissioner of Amritsar. Then, after
the Parition, the family fell on hard times while his children were
still young. While there was enough to pay the school fees, there
wasn’t enough to replace the old, worn school shoes. “That’s the
price we paid for freedom: father would donate all he received to
the (freedom) movement.
Today, it is
outside the realm of one's imagination that someone in his position
would not have made enough moolah to take care of his even one
generation, but one supposes that those were different times, and
men of a different mettle used to join public life.
5
August 2009
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