Pakistan village mourns ‘Mohna’, boy who became PM

A local at former Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s ancestral Gah village, in Chakwal district, Pakistan. Singh, the architect of India’s economic reforms, died in New Delhi. He was 92.
| Photo Credit: PTI

“The entire village is in mourning. We feel that someone from our family has died today,” Altaf Hussain said as a group of local residents held a meeting to condole the death of village boy Manmohan who became Prime Minister next door.

Mr. Hussain is a teacher at the same school in Gah village where Dr. Manmohan Singh studied up to Class 4. His father Gurmukh Singh was a cloth merchant and his mother Amrat Kaur a homemaker. His friends called him ‘Mohna’.

The village lies about 100 km southwest of capital Islamabad and was part of Jhelum district when Dr. Singh was born. It was included in Chakwal when it was made a district in 1986.

Surrounded by lush green fields, the place can be reached from M-2 motorway linking Islamabad to Lahore, as well as from Chakwal city.

The former Prime Minister of India died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi on Thursday night. He was 92.

Raja Ashiq Ali, nephew of Raja Muhammad Ali, a schoolmate who travelled to Delhi in 2008 to meet him, addressed the meeting. “All these villagers are deeply moved… They were eager to attend his last rites in India, but it is not possible. So, they are here to mourn,” he said.

Dr. Singh’s rise brought to spotlight his forgotten ancestral village. Some classmates who were around when he became Prime Minister in 2004 are dead now. But their families still live in Gah and cherish the old link.

“We are still overwhelmed by the memory of the days when everyone in the village felt proud that a boy from our village had become the Prime Minister of India,” Mr. Ashiq Ali said.

The most iconic place in the village is perhaps the school where Singh got his early education. His admission number in the register is 187, and the date of admission April 17, 1937. His date of birth is entered as February 4, 1932, his caste as ‘Kohli’.

Local people credit the Singh connection for the renovation of the school and say there was some talk about naming it after the Indian politician. His rise in India prompted local authorities to concentrate on the development of the village, they believe.

Dr. Singh shifted to Chakwal after Class 4. Shortly before Partition, the family moved to Amritsar, according to the villagers.

Dr. Singh invited one of his friends, Raja Muhammad Ali, to visit him in Delhi in 2008. Ali died in 2010, and so did a couple of other friends in the years that followed.

‘Mohna’ never came back to Gah and finally the news of his passing arrived, severing the bond with the village.

“Dr. Manmohan Singh could not come to Gah in his lifetime. But now when he is no more, we want that someone from his family should come and pay a visit to this village,” the schoolteacher said.