Born in Hyderabad Deccan , in pre-partition India , I was aware of my religion from earliest childhood . Hyderabad was a Muslim-ruled state, though the population was largely Hindu . Hyderabad’s nobility was Muslim and lived an elegant and lavish life based on old traditions. Hyderabad was a wealthy state where the ruler, called the Nizam , wanted reasonable education and health access for all his subjects, an uncommon practice in the day. The gold and precious stone mines of the state allowed for spending on public well-being.
My maternal grandfather was the “peshi” (first) minister to the Nizam . He was an important man in the state’s government. My paternal grandfather had lands in Aurangabad in central Hyderabad. When my parents married, my father, Dr. Raziuddin Siddiqi , returned to India after completing his education in the UK and Europe . He did his Tripos in mathematics at Cambridge University in England . He then went on to do a master’s in Paris and a Ph.D. in physics in Germany . He had studied in the 1930s with the stars of the day: Heisenberg, Dirac and Einstein. His entire education, from first grade to the Ph.D., had been paid for by the Nizam ’s government. Merit was universally rewarded, he used to say, whenever I marveled at the “socialist” bent of the state!
These were neither the best of times nor the worst of times, to quote a cliché. Born just prior to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, I was lucky to be in the south, Hyderabad. We were spared the turmoil of partition but the partition of the Indian subcontinent by Great Britain into India and Pakistan left no one untouched.
My mother was my best friend.
Her name was Khurshid, which means the sun in Persian. She was a favorite daughter of a nobleman. She lost her mother when the youngest of her siblings, her brother, was born. She was very close to her sister and brother all of whom were brought up by their paternal grandmother. There were many cousins, and all of them enjoyed vacations together in wonderful hill stations of India . They swam, went boating and hiked. Family became an important component, and these ties sustained our family even after many moved to Pakistan while others remained Indian.
The family was liberal by subcontinental standards. Girls were education, with most of them completing high school and on rare occasion receiving a graduate degree. Girls in the family married young, in keeping with the tradition of the time. My mother followed in the tradition, marrying when she was not yet fifteen. It was an arranged marriage. My father was a dozen years older, already a rising star in the Indian scientific community. They were devoted to each other for the nearly seventy years they remained married.
I called her Mama, which was somewhat unusual in Hyderabad. She wanted me to call her that since my older siblings called her Apa. She was a stylish and elegant woman. She was 5 feet 4 inches with soft brown eyes. In her circle of friends and relatives in Hyderabad, India , clothes and jewels were designed for wear but nothing was worn frequently. My mother and aunt were leaders in fashion. I loved flopping around the house in her lovely high-heeled evening shoes, some bought in Europe . She never scolded me.
One of my first impressions of my mother was of her “ittar ,” perfume. Specially created for her, she wore it all the time. As a young child, I would climb on to her bed and lie next to Mama. I would sniff and tell her I like her smell. She would laugh and say it was the ittar . However, not realizing that the perfume gave her the wonderful aroma, I just thought this was how a mother smelled.
My father would recount the many trunks and cases of clothes and jewels my mother travelled with when he took her for her first European tour in April 1936. They set sail from Colombo, Ceylon, on “Victoria” for Marseilles, France . Travel took them to France , Germany , Norway, England, and Austria. Seeing the great cities of Europe and visiting old colleagues in Europe ’s major universities my father attended, he recalled that my mother was most fashionable. In Paris, she “caused a sensation” he remembered, in a yellow Sari with matching accessories. She would tell tales of the fashionable ladies of the era and compare it to the general sloppiness of attire on much later visits to Paris or London . “Where did the sense of style go?” she would lament.
She was a devoted daughter. When my grandfather suffered a stroke which left him partially paralyzed, she was always at his side. She told us that he was both her father and her mother and his loss would be difficult to bear. When he did pass away, she was already living in Pakistan , making frequent trips to India to be with him. Unfortunately, she was not with him when he died. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to the deep sorrowful crying of my mother for months.
Although we each had our respective nanny, we were disciplined as children by our mother. The nannies sometimes would fight with the cook to make sure that “their” child was served first at meals. This was often in the evenings if our parents were dining out.
Mama was a wonderful hostess, enjoying extensive entertaining. She would tell us that her cook, a Goan, would get upset if there were not at least a dozen additional people at dinner each night. She had a great sense of family and kept us close despite the continents that separated us as we grew up.
My mother was a firm believer in education for all her children, including her three daughters. She made sure that we were focused early on toward that goal. She said that especially with her husband being an education leader in the country, their children would serve as models for others. She regretted that she had not been formally educated beyond high school as she was married young. She felt educating us all was a sacred duty. When the best schooling meant boarding school, she agreed to send us away.
By the time of my birth, the academic bent of family existence was set. My brother, Toufiq , the first born, was the first grandson and was feted as such. My older sister was a tomboy. It fell on me to carry the fussy dressing traditions. I was delighted and happily indulged my mother’s desire to supply me with a steady stream of outfits befitting a little princess. When I entered school at age four, I thought this was the school uniform and recall painful conversations with my parents stressing that gold lame outfits and pearl necklaces belonged in parlors, not at school.
A Muslim Upbringing
Religion was my father’s arena. I called him Baba for father. He had the most amazing gentle eyes. He never scolded me. He was tutored at the famous Darul Uloom in Hyderabad starting at the age of five to learn Persian and Arabic where he studied the Quran along with mathematics, science, history, and geography. He became a learned scholar of religious thought and knew the Quran through detailed study. He was a scientist, a mathematician whose education, life, and work spanned the East and the West.
My mother was a “Syed,” descended from the Prophet Mohammed. She had studied the Quran and learned religion from her grandmother and her aunt, both enlightened women for their time. Her aunt went to England to study the Montessori system of education and started an institution to promote children’s education in that system in the 1920s Hyderabad. But it was Mama who helped me get started with my religious tradition. As customary in Muslim families, my religious education began at the age of four with the reading of the Quran .
Hyderabad was ceremony-prone. Elaborate ceremonies sprang up around all sorts of things, complete with lavish foods. At the age of four years, four months, and four days, I had my Bismillah , my initiation ceremony into Islam . I would recite “Bism illah ir-rahman ir-rahim…” (In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful…).
On the day of my Bismillah, I had a tika on my little forehead, of diamonds and rubies. I had matching earrings. Life was perfect, I thought at the time. But beyond the ceremony, Bismillah meant that henceforth that was the religion you subscribed to.
There are a couple more milestones in religious education of children besides the “Bismillah.” For me, the keeping of my first fast in Ramadan was an important occasion. I was seven years old, and the fast from dawn to dusk was an exciting prospect. I was told by my mother that the fast involved abstaining from water along with any other food. Nothing must pass your mouth, she stressed. Since Ramadan that year fell during the summer, the period of dawn to dusk fasting would be more than 15 hours.
Friday is the Muslim special day for prayers. I was to keep my first fast on a Friday. The Muslim calendar is a lunar one so the start of the month of Ramadan varies each year. The fasts occur in winter months when the days are short. There are months of Ramadan where the fast is eighteen hours. I was awakened at 3 a.m. for my meal before first light appears. When there is sufficient light to see a hair, the time for fasting begins.
The day went relatively quickly. I slept a bit more than was normal. The prospect of a celebratory meal at sunset encompassing the special foods common to Ramadan was something to look forward to. Late in the afternoon, my mother came into my bedroom. She asked how I felt and if I was glad to have embarked on a new experience central to Islam . I remember asking her “what is the purpose of the fast.” She replied, “It is a time for reflection, prayer, simplification of needs.” I then asked could I learn to say the prayer, another tenet of my religion.
My paternal grandfather, my Dada, taught me the “namaz.” Muslims pray five times a day facing Mecca . The prayer is recited in Arabic and the format is set. I learned what to say in what sequence for each prayer. I was taught that religion is a private affair. Public displays of religiosity beyond the celebration days of Eid where Muslims pray in large congregations are not mandatory.
As a child, I accompanied my father when he went to the mosque for Eid prayers occurring two times a year, celebrating the end of Ramadan and the Haj , respectively. As an adolescent, I prayed at home. Much later, whenever I traveled to Islam ’s holy places or to beautiful mosques, I make it a tradition to pray outside my home. I have been fortunate in having prayed in the mosques of Mecca , Jerusalem , Istanbul, and Muscat , besides the exquisite mosques of the subcontinent.
Like much of India , Hyderabad was a multireligious state. While the ruler and the elite were Muslim, non-Muslims were an important part of the culture. Many non-Muslims, Hindus and Christians, served in the government and educational institutions. Many of my childhood friends were the children of these individuals who were family friends. Thus, my first sense of being a Muslim in a Muslim-ruled state with a Hindu majority did not mean the exclusion of others who were different from my circle of religion. The Hindu –Muslim divide which became the basis for the splitting of India and Pakistan did not touch me in my early years. Ours was an inclusive household. I was not taught that being “Muslim” meant cutting out or disrespecting those who were different.
That was the core of beliefs I carried as a child and it stayed with me long after Hyderabad…well into my journey and citizenship in America.
The year 1948 was a critical year in Hyderabad when police action by the newly independent Indian government led to the absorption of Hyderabad state into India . Under the British partition plan of the subcontinent in 1947, Hindu- majority areas became part of India and Muslim-majority areas went to Pakistan . The two notable exceptions were: Kashmir (Hindu ruler and Muslim-majority population, where the ruler opted for India —a decision still not accepted in Pakistan ) and Hyderabad (Muslim ruler and Hindu- majority population whose ruler opted for Pakistan—similarly, a decision not accepted by India). The Indian Army occupied Hyderabad in September 1948, known locally as a “police action.”
My life was eventually changed dramatically due to these developments.
I was about 6 years old when I recall my father (who traveled internationally a great deal along with extensive Indian travel) went on an annual journey to Lahore to lecture on mathematics and on poetry; he was a scholar of both. But in 1949, his normal travel to Lahore meant a journey to the newly established Pakistan . While he was there, the founders of Pakistan asked him to stay and help establish science and education in the new country. He agreed, which meant that in terms of Indian law, he surrendered his Indian citizenship and all of his property, including the house we lived in Hyderabad, and bank accounts and items stored in bank safety deposit boxes were then confiscated by the government of India .
This was in 1949 and my first memory of Muslim–Hindu International Relations. It is embedded in the shadow of the aftermath of my father’s sudden move to Pakistan and the arrival of “custodian” officials in our house to remove all things that belonged to him, including his research papers. Even at the age of six, I felt the vindicti...