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Title
PARTITION: Tape 78
Writer
255MODEM
Mod Date & Time
255MODEM Apr 29 11:30
TAPE 78
Side A
Farooq ABDULLAH ...
... Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir; son of Sheikh Abdullah;
aged c60, tall, imposing, prsonable, articulate and occasionally
wistful - but a bit of a ham; said in a chat that he remembr bing
held up to sit on the podium when Jinnah cam to Srinagar, 'a lean
man', at a reception organised by the NC; in chat, also said that
his father 'thought it [independence] was the only solution,
between India and Pakistan ... a kind of Switzerland' and also
considered a confederal arrangement; also sd independence 'simply
not possible any more ... wd lead to massacres the like of which
we did not see even in 47'; - interviewed on the lawn of ? J and K
House at 5 Prithviraj Road, 29 April 1997
12 - 'I can remember as a young kid, mother telling me that
we are going to be free of all these shackles, that
India is going to be free, that the British are going to
go; I remember everybody listening to the radio to see
what all this is about ... my father [on ind day] still
in prison; as kids we were happy when father was in
prison, cos we cd do everything that we possibly wanted
to do, and we cd play all pranks with our mother; we
weren't afraid of the mother, but we were afraid of
father; so it wasn't such a bad thing when he was in
jail ... we were v scared when he was out'
33 - [re Skeikh Abd's release] 'yes. I remember when he came
out, there was trem excitement, there was all sorts of
things that were happening, tragedies that were being
inflicted on the co ... I didn't know much of this
killing that was going on ... but it was a day of
excitement ... he was in Srinagar, and my father was in
prison before in Mah's jail which is now the army camp,
Badami Bagh; ... the hospital wing was the centre of
these people who weren in jail; we used to go to see him
there, as kids wd visit their father ..'
60 - 'suddenly we realised that we were being invaded and that
things were going to get v bad, and that the raiders
were from NWFP and they wer ferocious and were killing
right, left and centre; ad we wd hear just these stories
that they've reached Baramulla and they've done all sorts
of things at B'mulla; we were frightened as kids cos of
Hitler ... when our mother had to put us to bed she used
to say Hitler is coming, ... this time we saw real
Hitler'
80 - [as raiders approached] 'oh. there was a trem sense of
fear, we were always frightened, till, I had never seen
Ss in the Ind army, and for me it was a surprising thing
to see these aircraft come; there were a no of aircraft
coming in and going out ... people used to get on to the
housetops and see these spitfires or something like that
go up and down, and I was taekn to the airport one day
and there I saw these ferocious Ss, ovr six feet tall,
... they had rings of copper around their turbans;
ferocious looking people; I wonder whether they wd |
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