Taj Khan was a handsome young man when India was dived on communal lines in 1947. Activist of Congress in his home town in Peshawar, he was deeply hurt when Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan started migrating to India and Muslims to Pakistan.
As a secularist and somebody who shunned the two-nation theory of MA Jinnah, he too decided to shift to secular India rather than staying back in a country carved out for Muslims. Father of certain Shah Rukh Khan of Bollywood, Taj Mohammad came to Delhi once and for all leaving behind his home.
Unlike the general perception that only Hindus and Muslims migrated to India in the wake of partition of the country in 1947, if not in large numbers, many Muslims families too decided to shift to India rather than staying in an Islamic country.
Taj Mohammad too shifted his family India. Taj Mohammad, whose family used to live at Bazar Kissaa Khani in Peshawar city, was a Congress activist and totally opposed to the idea of partition of the country on the basis of religion. He came to Delhi along with his family members.
Taj Mohammad was a lawyer and died of cancer in 1981. According to an ex-IAS officer of Maharashtra cadre and keen student of Modern Indian history, Zafar Iqbal, "many prominent Muslims families with secular and Congress background had decided to migrate to India at that time. They were not at all ready to live in an out and out Islamic country". Prominent Congress leader Mohammad Yunus, a close relative of Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, too came to India. He was one of the founders of Trade Fair Authority of India.
Noted theatre activist and teacher in Satyawati College of DU, Shamshul Islam’s family also rejected the very thought of living in an Islamic Pakistan. “ My grand father and father came to India in 1947 in the height of communal clashes. I really owe to my elders that they shifted to India instead of staying back in Rawalpindi.
Despite some issues, India is a great nation,” he said. Once HC Shourie, who was the Rehabilitation commissioner of refugees, told this reporter in late 80s that some Muslims families from NWFP region of Pakistan came to India as there was not much impact of Jinnah and Muslim League there. The local people were close to Gandhiji and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. That was the major reason for many Muslims to leave Pakistan and settled in secular India.
It may be recalled that Mr Shourie was a very respected Consumer Right activists and father of eminent author and journalist, Arun Shourie and TV personality Nalini Singh.
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