gully and it got
lost in a heap of garbage. While
looking for it I chanced to cut the
main artery of my right foot on a
piece of broken glass and my
foot began to bleed profusely.
Without losing his nerve, Mohan
put me on the back of his bicycle
and took me to the nearest doctor,
who stitched up my foot and
stopped the bleeding. Thus, what
could have led to a major tragedy,
was avoided due to his presence
of mind and his sound
knowledge of science.
Sometime after his father’s
death Mohan shifted to Lyallpur
(now Faislabad in Pakistan)
where his uncle Prof. S.M.
Dattatreya was teaching in a
college.
Our own family shifted to
Bombay in 1944 after my father
died in September 1943 in London,
where he was then working
in the BBC Hindustani Section
with Balraj Sahni and others.
Mohan had to support his mother
and his younger brother who was
still studying. After graduation in
science, he also came to Bombay
and joined the ground engineers’
course of Air India, which was a
private company owned by the
Tatas in those days. During the
Partition he flew several sorties
to the Indo-Pak frontier at
Amritsar to search for his uncle,
whose whereabouts were not
known. In Bombay, as a trainee,
Mohan shared accommodation
with two or three other bachelor
friends in Dadar. Once, my
mother and others in the family
went to see Kaifi Saheb and
Mohan when we learnt that Kaifi
Saheb was with him, heart-broken
because his only surviving
son had disappeared during the
Partition turmoil and could not
be found. Fortunately, the same
day, while we were visiting
them, a telegram arrived saying
that Mohan’s uncle, a teacher of
philosophy, had been found and
was in Dehra Dun, where he had
started teaching in a college.
Kaifi Saheb’s joy knew no
bounds as he had almost given
up all hope, and he said it was
we who had brought him the
good luck that day.
Mohan soon qualified as a
ground engineer and got employed
with Air India. He was
doing very well at his job and
when I was to go to Russia in
1953 for treatment of tuberculosis,
from which I had suffered
for many years, Mohan stood
financial guarantee for me. I
returned next year, completely
cured and having learnt some
Russian, which gave me my future
profession. Russian was not
taught anywhere in India then
except in Delhi University
which had opened part-time certificate
and diploma courses during
the Second World War,
when Russia became an ally of
Britain and the US in the war
against Hitler. It was almost
thought to be a ‘subversive language’
and those few Indians
who had picked up some knowledge
of it were suspected of being
disloyal to Britain. I taught
Russian in an honorary capacity
under the Indo-Soviet Cultural
Society for five years and English
to staff members of the
Soviet Trade Representation and
‘Sovexportfilm’ to earn a living.
When in 1960 IIT Bombay advertised
the post of a lecturer in
Russian, I was selected, and
taught there for seven and a half
years before moving to the Institute
of Russian Studies in
Delhi (which later, as the Centre
of Russian Studies, School of
Foreign Languages, became part
of the Jawaharlal University).
On my return from Russia in
1954, I learnt that Mohan had
got engaged to a non-Kashmiri
girl. But he gave us all a great
surprise. His family responsibilities
were now over, his younger
brother Hari had completed his
education and now joined the
Army. Mohan told his friends
and family members that he had
always wanted to be a doctor but
could not study medicine because
of his family responsibilities.
So he now wanted to leave
Air India and join a medical college.
Most people thought it was
a crazy idea; his fiancée broke
off the engagement. No one
could understand why he should
give up a very good and promising
job when he was past thirty,
and spend another five or six
years studying medicine. Moreover,
it was impossible to get
admission in a medical college
in India due to the prevailing
domicile and age regulations.
But Mohan had made up his
mind. He started probing his airline
contacts and finally was able
to get admission to a medical
college in Holland.
Mohan not only completed
his medical course and qualified
as a surgeon but also did so well
that he began to be invited to India
as a guest lecturer. He married
a Dutch fellow student, Riet
Statema, a paediatrician . They
had three sons-Hari, Robi and
Anil. Unfortunately, last year
they lost their youngest son Anil,
who died of cancer at the young
age of 37. Hari and Robi are
both married and have two
daughters each. Mohan and Riet
are now retired. For many years
they have been coming to India
and they never miss coming to
meet us when they visit Delhi.
Their last visit to us was in February
this year, when they were
crushed with the sorrow of having
lost their beloved young son.
Although he has now lived in
Holland for several decades,
Mohan never lost his love for
and interest in the land of his
birth. Several years ago he told
me about a book on Jallianwala
Bagh written by his father. An
old tattered copy of the book was
later found in the house of his
younger brother Lt. Col. Hari
Mohan Dattatreya, with nearly
200 pages missing. Mohan
wanted to get at least a few copies
made of the complete book
for close family members. The
missing matter was retrieved after
long and sustained efforts of
several people from some microfilms
ordered at considerable
cost from the National Library
in Calcutta and a copy of the
book in possession of the
Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library
in Delhi, whose scholarly
acting Director, the late Dr. Hari
Dev Sharma, said that the book
was of great historical value as
an excellent contemporary eyewitness
account and efforts must
be made to publish it rather than
trying to get only a few photocopies
of the original. The
Dattatreyas in Holland had a
family conference and agreed to
bear the cost of publication.
Eminent historian Prof. Bipan
Chandra, agreed to write an Introduction
to the new edition,
which was being published almost
eighty years after the
banned edition published in
Lahore in 1920.
The original edition had
many valuable photographs,
which had unfortunately to be
dropped because of the faded
quality of most of them. In view
of the small type used in the
original edition, which put a
strain on the eyes of the reader,
it was decided to recompose the
entire book in bolder easy to read
types. There was nothing about
the author in the original edition.
Mr. B.K. Raina, a close relative
of Dr.Ram Mohan Dattatreya,
contacted Mr. Hari Jaisingh,
then editor of THE TRIBUNE,
now published from Chandigarh,
who very kindly agreed to find
the detailed obituary article published
by the paper in Lahore on
25th December 1936, buried in
old microfilms, and sent us a
photocopy. True to his character,
Pt. Pearay Mohan said almost
nothing about himself.
Apart from the obituary article,
we got other details about his life
and work from his son, Dr. Ram
Mohan Dattatreya. We also got
a photograph of Pt. Pearay
Mohan from the family album of
his son and it was published for
the first time in his book. The
new edition was published in two
volumes running into 1065
pages. The book was released at
the India International Centre by
former Prime Minister Inder
Kumar Gujral in the presence of
a packed hall including Dr. Ram
Mohan Dattatreya, his wife Riet
and son and daughter-in-law
Robi and Malisanda and many
other members and friends of the
family and many distinguished
citizens. Prof. Bipan Chandra
introduced the new edition of
the book (The Punjab “Rebellion”
of 1919 and How It Was
Suppressed) in a very illuminating
lecture. As editor of the new
edition, it fell to my honour to
introduce Dr. Ram Mohan
Dattatreya, his family members
and the Chief guest Shri Inder
Kumar Gujral, whom I had
known since the days of the students’ movement in Lahore.
The new edition of Pt. Pearay
Mohan Dattatreya’s celebrated
book received good reviews in
the press and is a precious account,
now made available in
many libraries to research workers
and other readers.
Dr. Ram Mohan Dattatreya
and his wife Dr. Riet Statema-
Dattatreya are now leading a retired
life. Besides coming to India
almost every year, they have
travelled to many countries of
the world. Some years ago they
specially travelled to Amritsar,
to meet my sister Vimla and her
husband Satya Pal Dang, well
known communist leaders and
social and political workers.
Satya Pal was in Lyallpur a student
of Mohan’s uncle Prof. S.M . Dattatreya. Mohan and Riet
saw the Jallianwala Memorial
which must have rekindled
memories of times long gone by
and the events described so
graphically by Mohan’s father.
They also saw the Golden
Temple and travelled to the
Wagah border, so close to
Lahore, where we all once lived
and studied and with which city
so many of our fond memories
are linked. I remember once
Mohan had asked if I could request
someone visiting Lahore to
bring from there a photograph of
the beautiful house in Model
Town that his father had built. I
asked a journalist friend who
travels to Pakistan often. On return
he told me that Model Town
is now in the very centre of
Lahore and there are multi-storeyed
buildings there. The house
where Mohan grew up perhaps
no longer exists.
Holland provides one of the
best social services in the world
and retired people are well
looked after. But there is one aspect
of Dutch life which causes
some astonishment in many
other countries. No one can work
after the age of sixty-five. Doctors
cannot even have private
practice after they cross this age.
The only people who perhaps
can pursue their professions are
those in independent creative
professions-artists, writers and
so on.
Like me, Ram Mohan
Dattatreya is also an octogenarian
now. Let us hope Ram
Mohan and Riet will have a
peaceful life, which they richly
deserve, and will be able to come to India many times in the future.
