Free Land of Five Rivers by Khushwant Singh Page A

somewhat scared of them.
    My hatred for the Sikhs began on the day when I first set my eyes on one. I could not have been more than six years old when I saw a Sikh sitting out in the sun combing his long hair. ‘Look!’ I yelled with revulsion, ‘a woman with a long beard!’ As I got older this dislike developed into hatred for the entire race.
    It was a custom amongst old women of our household to heap all afflictions on our enemies. Thus, for example, if a child got pneumonia or broke its leg, they would say ‘a long time ago a Sikh, (or an Englishman), got pneumonia: or a long time ago a Sikh, (or an Englishman), broke his leg’. When I was older I discovered that this referred to the year 1857 when the Sikh princes helped the
ferringee
foreigner — to defeat the Hindus and Muslims in the War of Independence. I do not wish to propound a historical thesis but to explain the obsession, the suspicion and hatred which I bore towards the English and the Sikhs. I was more frightened of the English than of the Sikhs.
    When I was ten years old, I happened to be travelling from Delhi to Aligarh. I used to travel third class, or at the most in the intermediate class. That day I said to myself, ‘Let me for once travel second class and see what it feels like.’ I bought my ticket and I found an empty second class compartment. I jumped on the well-sprung seats; I went into the bathroom and leapt up to see my face in the mirror; I switched on all the fans. I played with the light switches. There were only a couple of minutes for the train to leave when four red-faced ‘tommies’ burst into the compartment, mouthing obscenities: everything was either ‘bloody’ or ‘damn.’ I had one look at them and my desire to travel second class vanished.
    I picked up my suitcase and ran out. I only stopped for breath when I got into a third class compartment crammed with natives. But as luck would have it it was full of Sikhs — their beards hanging down to their navels and dressed in nothing more than their underpants. I could not escape from them: but I kept my distance.
    Although I feared the white man more than the Sikhs, I felt that he was more civilised: he wore the same kind of clothes as I. I also wanted to be able to say ‘damn’, ‘bloody fool’ — the way he did. And like him I wanted to belong to the ruling class. The Englishman ate his food with forks and knives, I also wanted to learn to eat with forks and knives so that natives would look upon me as advanced and as civilised as the whiteman.
    My Sikh-phobia was of different kind. I had contempt for the Sikh. I was amazed at the stupidity of men who imitated women and grew their hair long. I must confess I did not like my hair cut too short; despite my father’s instructions to the contrary, I did not allow the barber to clip off more than a little when I went to him on Fridays. I grew a mop of hair so that when I played hockey or football it would blow about in the breeze like those of English sportsmen. My father often asked me, ‘Why do you let your hair grow like a woman’s?’ My father had primitive ideas and I took no notice of his views. If he had had his way he would have had all heads razored bald and stuck artificial beards on people’s chins...That reminds me that the second reason for hating the Sikhs was their beards which made them look like savages.
    There are beards and beards. There was my father’s beard, neatly trimmed in the French style; or my uncle’s which went into a sharp point under his chin. But what could you do with a beard to which no scissor was ever applied and which was allowed to grow like a wild bush — fed with a compost of oil, curd and goodness knows what! And, after it had grown a few feet, combed like hair on a head: My grandfather also had a very long beard which he combed... but then my grandfather was my grandfather and a Sikh is