Terrorism8217;s orphans

Is it necessary for the child of a dead militant to be treated like a pariah, cast off by the state rather than nurtured by it? The Punjab...

Is it necessary for the child of a dead militant to be treated like a pariah, cast off by the state rather than nurtured by it? The Punjab government appears to believe so, for it has not tried to administer the healing touch, if only to transform the natural resentment of such children into gratitude. On purely humanitarian grounds, should the child be forced to pay for the sins of the father? As I walked into the Mata Gujri Home near Patiala, run by a private organisation headquartered in Canada which employs widows of militants to care for their kin, these questions swirled around in my head.

Wandering through the dusty, hopelessly untidy dormitories of the home, at first I wondered how children could be happy here. But there were no shades of Oliver Twist, no wicked Fagin to torture them or refuse them a second helping. Despite their spartan lives, the children looked happy, revelling in being alive, in whatever circumstances. The fact that their diet is a subsistence one dalia for breakfast, namkeen roti for lunch and roti-sabzi for dinner hardly matters. At least they can turn to benevolent aunties sensitised by similar experiences. In their decrepit homes in Punjab villages, they got far less, flavoured with the suffering and tears of their widowed mothers or aged grandparents. A generation of poor, marginal farmers battling to survive without a bread-earner.

An adorable little three-year-old dressed in a blue velvet frock skipped around gleefully, her brown tresses tied in an unflattering knot on her head. Nicknamed Billo by the inmates due to her slanting brown-green eyes fringed by thick lashes, it was obvious she was the darling of the Home. No mama8217;s darling though. For I was told that her mother had abandoned her as a six-month-old. Young and newly married, and then soon widowed, the poor woman decided to re-marry. Predictably, her in-laws refused to accept a child from her first marriage. She has never inquired about Billo since.

There were many others like Billo. One of the most recent entrants was eight-year-old Rupinder from Gurdaspur, who has been living with her 80-year-old grandfather. A picture of neglect when she first came, she had lice-infested hair and acute anaemia. Now she looked looked better, but had clammed up. Like others, she too preferred not to talk about her mother. It was almost as though she had died for her, along with her militant father.

I visited another home for such children in Mohali near Chandigarh run by the Gur Asra Foundation. Fifty children were cooped up in a three-storeyed bungalow with a tiny garden. Despite their daily drudgery and monotonous study-toil routine, they were happy. There were many kids here whose parents were killed far away in UP during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. After being maltreated by their own flesh and blood affluent aunts and uncles 8212; these orphans eventually landed up here. And at last they are at peace.

A young adult related his pathos-filled story. His parents had been killed in Kanpur in the 1984 riots. For 10 years he, his younger sister and brother lived in a joint family with their three immediate uncles, one with each. After his board examinations, they pressurised him to start earning. So the young lad took up a job as a supervisor with a hawai chappal manufacturer, while giving tuitions and studying in his free time. He would leave home a 8 am, and return 12 hours later, after cycling 35 km to and fro. Still he had to listen to complaints all the time about how expensive it was to keep him.

Eventually he was driven to hunt for a new home. At one point he expressed his anger with God by cutting off his hair. Since coming here, he has metamorphosed into a devout Sikh.

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Official apathy notwithstanding, these hapless orphans dream of a glorious tomorrow. Will their tomorrow ever come?