JPR
This might interest some.
timesofindia.com
Delhi-born Musharraf has roots
in Walled City
By Suhail Haleem
NEW DELHI: The man who has set out to
change the course of history in Pakistan was
born in a sprawling haveli at Kucha Saadullah
Khan, now a congested and dirty locality behind
Golcha cinema in the walled city. General
Pervez Musharraf, who deposed prime minister
Nawaz Sharif in a sensational bloodless coup,
spent his early childhood in the ''Nehar wali
haveli'', parts of which have long since given
way to a commercial and residential complex.
However, a small dilapidated portion of the
original structure still stands. Two small rooms
on the first floor were occupied by a driver who
packed up and left a couple of months back.
The haveli, like most evacuee properties on
either side of the divide, was occupied by the
locals when riots broke out in 1947 and people
fled to save their lives. However, none of the
neighbours has any inkling of who lived there at
the time of partition or who owns the rundown
property now.
The high roofs and arches of the haveli are
believed to have earlier witnessed history in the
middle of the eighteenth century when it was
occupied by a ''wazir'' (minister) in the court of
Bahadur Shah Zafar - the last Mughal
emperor.
The dingy four-storeyed Gola market behind
Golcha cinema occupies part of the haveli
which was bought by Gen Musharraf's
grandfather, Qazi Mohtashimuddin, when he
retired as a commissioner in undivided Punjab.
General Musharraf is the second of three sons of
Syed Musharrafuddin, a cashier with the
directorate-general of civil supplies in Delhi
who was absorbed into the foreign service when
he migrated to Pakistan at the time of partition.
He rose to be joint secretary in the foreign
office.
The information was provided to UNI on
condition of anonymity by a first cousin of Syed
Musharrafuddin. The general's uncle, now aged
past 80, runs a small business from a dilapidated
shop in a narrow bylane near the Jama Masjid.
Age has withered his frame but his mental
faculties are astonishingly sharp. It is with a
lump in the throat that he reminisces about his
nephew, hamara khoon (our blood), who made
it big, and how the family migrated.
''Those were terrible times. Riots had broken out
and there was blood and mayhem everywhere.
Syed Musharrafuddin managed to reach
Gul-i-Rana, the mansion of Nawab Liaqat Ali
Khan which later became the official residence
of the Pakistan high commissioner. What
happened after that, I do not know.'' (Nawab
Liaqat Ali Khan, who served as finance minister
in the interim government, later became the
first prime minister of Pakistan.)
Pervez was the first to join the army from a
family of bureaucrats, he said. ''I have not seen
him (Musharraf) since my cousin migrated to
Pakistan. I was there when he was born in the
August of 1943. I also was born in the same
haveli. The partition shattered my life and
divided the family. I saw my daughter-in-law
(the general's wife) for the first time when the
newspapers carried her photograph after the
change of guard in Pakistan. But
Musharrafuddin, a graduate from Aligarh
Muslim University, visited India thrice in the
last decade - twice to attend marriages of close
relatives,'' he said.
On his first visit, Syed Musharrafuddin was
joined by his elder brother Ashraf who is settled
in London.
''I myself visited Pakistan a few years back but
did not meet Pervez who was then stationed in
Islamabad. Musharrafuddin came to meet me in
Karachi where I was staying with some
relatives.''
Gen Musharraf's elder brother, Javed, who was
educated at the Anglo-Arabic school at Ajmeri
Gate, was a top officer with the Pakistan foreign
service while the youngest, Naved, practices
medicine in the U.S. Gen Musharraf's paternal
grandfather, Qazi Fazle Ilahi, was a tehsildar,
also in undivided Punjab.
The family had another ancestral haveli at
Tiraha Bairam Khan, about a hundred yards
down the road from Kucha Saadullah Khan.
Incidentally, the house where Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan lived is almost mid-way between the two
havelis.
Gen Musharraf's uncle claims to be one of only
three surviving relatives who lived with
Pakistan's new first family in the pre-partition
days. One cousin is settled in Meerut and the
other in Lucknow.
Ashraf had government accommodation at
Paharganj and when the haveli at Kucha
Saadullah became a little cramped,
Musharrafuddin moved in with him.
Musharrafuddin, he said, was a very good singer
with a literary bent of mind. Every Sunday there
would be an adabi nashist (literary gathering)
where the poetry of top poets would be recited
and discussed threadbare.
Husna Begum, another first cousin now dead,
ran for the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly
from meerut city in the early seventies. Another
cousin, Qazi Humayun, is settled in Lucknow.
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