Chakwal: No one died in Gah, a sleepy village roughly 100km southwest of Islamabad. Yet, after offering their Friday prayers, the residents of Gah gathered at the house of late Pakistani politician Raja Muhammad Ali to mourn the death of Dr Manmohan Singh.
Those assembled described the former Prime Minister of India as “a notable of the village”. “Today, we have lost a village head,” said Raja Ashiq Ali, a resident of Gah.
Dr Manmohan Singh was born in Gah, now in Chakwal district of Punjab, Pakistan, on 26 September 1932. Dhakku, the ancestral village of his wife Gursharan Kaur Kohli, is also in Chakwal district.
Once, Gursharan Kaur mentioned her village as Dhakkam, but Dhakku, just 8km from Chakwal city, is where her father, Sardar Chattar Singh Kohli, was an engineer.
In Dhakku village, no one remembers Gursharan Kaur. She was only ten years old during the Partition in 1947. However, Khursheed Begum, the oldest woman in the village, remembered Chattar Singh as “an employee of some institution”.
The oldest man in Dhakku village, Chaudhry Feroz Khan, recalled: “I knew Chattar Singh personally and often used to spend my time at his house, where I used to play with my Sikh friends.”
When Manmohan Singh became PM in 2004, the spotlight fell on the Gah and Dhakku villages. The villagers even thought that Manmohan Singh and Gursharan Kaur would visit Chakwal soon. In Dhakku village, the women started making chhakores, trays made of leaves of dates and reeds, to present to the special guests as gifts. Officials surveyed both villages, strengthening their belief. However, it did not happen.
In 2008, Raja Muhammad Ali, one of Manmohan Singh’s classmates, reached Delhi, where he met his friend and Kaur. Ali had the money for the trip, but the other six surviving classmates from Gah could not visit Delhi due to financial constraints.
During an emotional reunion, time-torn friends, Ali and Singh, exchanged gifts. Later, Ali passed away, but his nephew, Raja Ashiq Ali, continued to yearn for Singh to visit their village.
In 2004, Manmohan Singh had seven surviving classmates in Gah. However, as diplomatic hurdles delayed his much-awaited visit to Pakistan, the meeting of all the friends never happened.
Addressing the gathering Friday, Raja Ashiq Ali recalled that Manmohan Singh’s twelve friends, including his uncle, were alive in Gah in 2004.
“In 2004, we, the villagers, got happy after Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister. Today, in 2024, we are mourning his death,” he said.
“All of the villagers yearned for the arrival of Manmohan Singh, but unfortunately, he could not come to Gah. Now, we ardently wait to receive his wife and daughters in Gah,” he said, adding that his uncle, Raja Muhammad Ali, was lucky to have met Singh in New Delhi.
The demise of Manmohan Singh has saddened every villager, he further said. “We wanted to participate in his last rituals, but we know that it is not possible for us.”
Recalling how Manmohan Singh is significant to the story of Gah, Raja Ashiq Ali said, “Had Dr Sahib not become prime minister, today, we would neither have a carpeted road nor high schools for our girls and boys. There was no concept of solar power in 2004, but due to Dr Sahib, our village got street lights run on solar power.”
“I feel immense pleasure to share that Manmohan Singh was such a man of the word that in 2004, he told me through his principal secretary that [village] upliftment projects would soon be underway, and then, we witnessed unprecedented development,” he added.
Thanking the villagers gathered for the mourning, he prayed, “Every one of us has to embark on the final voyage. May the soul of Dr Sahib rest in eternal peace.”
Progress & unfulfilled promises
Fate smiled on Gah, a forsaken and backward hamlet, some 25km west of Chakwal city, in 2004 when Pakistan learned that the newly elected Prime Minister of India belonged to Gah village.
As a gesture of peace to improve the ever-strained relations with India, the then-dispensation of Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan announced the launch of several development projects for Gah.
The Pakistani government directed the Punjab government to initiate the village upliftment projects immediately. The then Punjab government, led by Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi, announced projects worth Rs 900 million for Gah by declaring it a model village.
The projects announced included the construction of a carpeted road leading to Gah, a basic health unit, a vocational training institute for women, a veterinary dispensary, an artificial insemination centre, a high school for boys, the up-gradation of two primary schools—for girls and boys, respectively—to the middle level, along with the construction of a 1km road to the girls’ school, a boundary wall around with the village graveyard, and a funeral ground.
All these projects were supposed to be completed by the end of 2007.
However, only a carpeted road leading to Gah village, a high school for boys, and the up-gradation of primary schools were completed while the work on the basic health unit, veterinary dispensary, artificial insemination centre, and vocational training centre was half-done. The work on the boundary wall around the graveyard, funeral ground and 1km road to the girls’ school was never started despite the issue of tenders. The projects remain abandoned.
The Indian government also announced some development packages for the Gah village when Manmohan Singh first became PM in 2004. India’s Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) finished its projects of installing solar energy-powered street lights and a geyser at the village mosque within due time.
“We are thankful to the Indian government, which installed street lights in the village and a geyser in the mosque. Due to that geyser, the people of the village get hot water in winter while offering prayers and bathing,” said Raja Ashiq Ali.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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