MALERKOTLA, Aug 13: The Muslims residing in this former princely town have no regrets for having decided half-a-century ago to put stay back in India. Though many of them have their relatives in Pakistan who had migrated after the Partition and have been visiting them off and on, they feel more secure and better-off here.

This belief has been strengthened over the decades despite occasional irritants and the fact that majority of the nearly one lakh strong community here is poor, uneducated and is engaged in petty jobs to earn livelihood. However, they do feel concerned about Kashmir and would like the volatile problem to be resolved amicably.

While some members of the minority community disclose that they had opted for staying put in India at the instance of then ruler of Melerkotla state, Nawab Ahmad Ali Khan, who assured them a safe territory here, others say it was on their own choice that they decided against migrating.

Malerkotla, incidentally, did not witness any bloodshed during the Partition and rather provided shelter to lakhs of Muslims who camped here from all over the region before being escorted safe to cross the newly-formed border via Ferozepore.

Mohammad Ishaq, a freedom-fighter who went to jail twice before Independence, was a strapping young man of 28 when India was divided. Instead of falling in line with other members of his community who took the trek to Pakistan, he preferred to take stock of the situation before taking the plunge and went across the border in December 1947 only to return a few weeks later and tell his family that they would be better off where they were.

According to Mufti Fuzail-ur-Rahman, the local religious head and Director General of the Darus Salam Islamic Centre, the 1971 Indo-Pak war proved a watershed in transforming the Muslim attitude since after that they have finally come to realise that there need not be a confrontation between motherland and religion.

However, local residents here are concerned over the alleged false implication of more than 50 muslim youths in cases relating to attacks on temples or violating the curfew after the demolition of Babri Masjid in December 1992.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.