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Purnea (Bihar): Days
after the execution of Pakistani national Ajmal Amir Kasab for the
2008 Mumbai terror attack, the people of Pakistan are in a
celebratory mode.
There is a village in Bihar that bears the same name as India's
neighbour, Pakistan, and in that little village, with about 35
households and a total population of about 250, residents are
happy that justice has finally been done to a man responsible for
so many deaths four years ago.
Pakistan is the name of a village in Singhiya panchayat, Srinagar
block, Purnea district, Bihar. It is about 30 km from Purnea town,
the district headquarters.
"People in Pakistan not only distributed sweets and burst crackers
but also plan to organise a feast soon to celebrate the hanging of
the terrorist," said a police officer in Purnea, about 350 km from
the state capital.
Surya Murmu, an upbeat Pakistan villager, said: "We were in a
festive mood after hearing of the hanging and we celebrated the
event with singing, dancing and distribution of sweets."
Another villager, Banjua Hembram, said: "We have to get together
and have a feast. This is an event that calls for celebration."
Murmu recalled that after 26/11, when 166 people were killed by
Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai, the villagers had even considered
changing the name of their village.
That terrorist strike had been one that had shaken up the village
community, Hembram agreed.
"We were so terribly affected by the events of November 26, 2008
that we had decided that it would be best to change the name of
the village. The matter was discussed, but we later dropped the
idea," Murmu recalls.
District officials say that government documents record the name
of the village as Pakistan.
So how did the village get its name? What is interesting is that
there is not one Muslim family in the village, which comprises
mostly Santhal tribal households. There is not one mosque in this
Pakistan.
Elders in the village recall that the village was named soon after
India's partition in 1947.
"Many Muslims who earlier lived here chose to leave for East
Pakistan (now Bangladesh), when the country was partitioned. We
decided then that the village could be named in their memory," one
elderly villager said.
An official in the chief minister's office told this correspondent
that when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar informed a visiting
21-member Pakistani delegation in August that there was a village
named after their country in the state, the delegation expressed
surprise.
In that visiting Pakistani delegation there were 13 members of the
Pakistan parliament, who had never heard of the village.
The official told IANS: "The chief minister showed the map of
Pakistan village to the Pakistani delegates and explained that
when all the Muslims of the village, then in Islampur district of
Bengal, had migrated to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the
villagers left behind decided to name a village in memory of those
who left.
Prior to the the States Reorganisation Act of 1956, Purnea too was
part of Islampur, which now lies in the state of West Bengal.
The Muslims who left the village for East Pakistan had handed over
their property to Hindus in neighbouring areas.
The Santhal tribe, to which the villagers belong, is the largest
tribal group in India.
Pakistan village is poor and illiterate; the literacy rate in
Purnea district as a whole is just 31.51 percent. There is hardly
a literate person in Pakistan village, where proper roads, a
school or a hospital is hard to come by.
(Imran Khan can be contacted at imran.k@ians.in)
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