A Lifetime of Dissent: A Memoir
By I.A. Rehman
Folio Books
ISBN: 978-9697834-61-7
182pp.

There are many books on Baloch history, which contain records of the second Mughal emperor of India, Humayun, who fled to Balochistan after defeat by Sher Shah Suri in the battle of Kannauj in 1540. Humayun had written about his Balochistan sojourn, too, in his writings briefly.

At the time, according to some accounts, while camping near Nushki, Sher Shah Suri had strictly warned the locals about providing help or refuge to the fleeing Humayun. Anyone who did that would face dire consequences, he had announced. Despite these warnings, Malik Khathi, a notable Baloch of Chagai went to Humayun and helped him flee to Iran.

The story does not end here. The 30-year long war between the notorious warring tribes of the Baloch — Rind and Lashar — in Sibi and its adjoining areas had resulted in displacing both tribes from Balochistan to the Punjab and Sindh forever.

During those days, when Humayun was still on the throne, he had given Mir Chakar Rind, the tribal chief of the Rind, Sargodha, where he had moved along with his people. This is one of the reasons the Rind not only helped him flee from Delhi but also helped him restore the Mughal dynasty, something still not given due space in the history books of the Subcontinent.

After the restoration of the Mughal dynasty, most of the Rinds left Sargodha. However, some of them remained in the surrounding areas of the Mughal palaces. One of these areas or defence posts that the Mughals had established to protect Delhi happened to be Hasanpur, the ancestral village of I.A. Rehman.

Ibne Abdur Rehman, or Rehman Sahib as he was mostly known as, was an iconic journalist and human rights defender, whose posthumously published memoir A Lifetime of Dissent chronicles his early life in India, his Rind Baloch roots, his journalism and his life as a human rights activist, among other things.

Rehman Sahib was often requested by his friends and comrades to write his autobiography, but he would be reluctant. In the words of activist and journalist Zohra Yusuf, who writes in the postscript of the book, “I will forever regret that I.A. Rehman did not take up Asma Jahangir’s offer of assisting him to write his memoirs. For years, both of us tried to persuade him to record his own life and times, with Asma offering to take down his dictation and type up the script. However, Rehman Sahib chose to do it at his own pace, with little dependency on others.”

After his passing, at the age of 90 in 2021, I was curious to read about him. I was gratified to find out last year from Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) staffer Maheen Pracha that the publication of his memoirs was in the works and that they were in the process of being edited.

Rehman Sahib begins his book with his early life in Hasanpur. Unlike his Rind forefathers, who had picked up swords and guns, he picked up a pen. He was a journalist before reaching the age of 20. And that is what his life was all about since then — he was a journalist for over 70 years.

Unfortunately, the village Rehman Sahib hailed from was engulfed by Muslim-Hindu conflict at the time of Partition. Rehman Sahib then was a student at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) which he had joined in 1945. He recalls that, following the tragic dropping of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he encountered a physics professor, Rafi Muhammad Chawdhry at AMU, who belonged from an area near his own, and who happened to be a teacher of five great scientists, one of whom was an American physicist named Oppenheimer. Prof Chawdhry first informed Rehman Sahib about how an atomic bomb causes destruction to the environment and everything else within miles by raising the temperature to many thousand degrees Celsius.

At the time of Partition in 1947, the massacre of both Muslims and Hindus enforced massive displacements of both communities to the newborn countries. “A large force of Hindu militants, called Dharr in the vernacular, comprising lathi-wielding zealots from many villages (some of them from as far away as Aligarh), numbering more than 10,000 by one estimate, attacked my grandfather’s modest haveli, where the entire population on our side of the village had taken shelter,” Rehman Sahib writes in his book’s sub-section, titled ‘Riots, Independence and the Hassanpur Massacre’.

“Within a couple of hours, the attackers were able to storm into the crowded haveli and begin a general massacre, killing men and dragging away women for abduction, plundering whatever they could lay their hands on. The house was then set on fire.”

Anxious, Rehman Sahib arrived in his village, but before reaching, he asked at the bus stand about his loved ones. “Gone,” he writes, was the reply to all his queries. This tragic incident became his reason, too, to leave India, despite the fact that, in Rehman Sahib’s own words, “Gandhiji had sent a two-member team — Pandit Sunder Lal and Maulana Hifzur Rehman — to dissuade us from migrating to Pakistan.”

Like many other Muslims and Hindus, Rehman Sahib’s family, too, had assumed that it would be a temporary migration, and they would return back to their homes after a little while. Along with the tragedy of his own family, Rehman Sahib also mentions the predicament of Hindus at the hands of Muslims.

In Pakistan, Rehman Sahib became a name who now needs no introduction in journalism and human rights activism. He continued to struggle selflessly for the people, especially the downtrodden, through his pen and from the platform of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. He continued to raise a voice for them, as well as to stand by their side during their worst times.

Before his passing, I had the privilege of sharing an Eos cover story credits with him, about the Hazara coal miners who had been slaughtered by Islamist militants in the mountains of Mach, Balochistan.

A person like Rehman Sahib is born once in a century in a society such as ours. He shows people the light of reason and how to live for greater causes. He became that wise guide even before he was 20, despite going through the pain of Partition and displacement himself.

But for me, he is still Rehman Sahib of Hasanpur, who picked up the pen to live for others, and became their voice. He may no longer be here in person, but he is still alive through any struggle that is being carried out for the people, especially the oppressed, suppressed and repressed. And his book, indeed, is a must read for everyone.

The writer is a member of staff.

X: Akbar_notezai

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 28th, 2024

Correction: This article has been slightly amended online to correct the fact that I.A. Rehman did not help found the HRCP. In fact, he joined it soon after its founding.