RASHID the early years

 

Abdul Rashid was born on the 15^th January 1927 in the district of Rangpura, the city of Sialkot in Pakistan.

His early childhood was spent in conservative Sialkot in the districts of Rangpura (where he was born) and Heerawalapura.  He grew up in the large family circle under the supervision of Mian Atta Mohammed. It was a fairly hard upbringing with his father Meher Ellahi not only having to support 6 offspring but also his younger brothers, Fazal Ellahi and the charismatic Mohammed Sadiq.

The family were tailors and cloth merchants and had businesses in may cities in India, including Rajpur and Calcutta. In the mid 1920s Mian Mohammed Atta had moved to Calcutta to support the family tailoring business with his relative Haji Ghulam Mohammed. He took his sons Meher Ellahi, Fazal Ellahi and Mohammed Sadiq too. The family business was in the hustling Park Circus area of Calcutta and was called Ghulam Mohammed tailors. They made suits and other clothes for the British Army and for many famous Indian personalities of the time, including the actors such as Raj Kapoor.  It was a very profitable time for the family and the proceeds from the business were put to good use in setting up a future base in Sialkot.

Figure 8 : Park Circus, Calcutta (1930s)

Rashid went to Calcutta around the age of five and stayed there will be was about 12 years old. His mother, Hakim Bibi, spent most of her early childhood in Calcutta too supporting his father.  

In Sialkot Rashid had become good childhood friends with Ghani Minhas, a distant relative who also lived in Rangura, and also Abdul Hamid Minhas (son of Mohammed Shifa, grandson of Mian Rahim Bakshi a first cousin of Atta Mohammed) . They spent most of their childhood playing in the narrow streets of Rangpura and Heerawalapura, Sialkot (see Figure 9), playing Ghulee-Dhandha and other pursuits to pass the time.

Rashid, around 5 years old, almost drowned once whilst swimming in a canal in Sialkot, and not realizing the depth of the water panicked. He remembers vividly being under water for a very long time before his brother rushed some local passers-by to rescue him.

Figure 9   : Narrow streets of Rangpura, Sialkot

Rashid was also close to his brothers Abdul Ghani, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Latif, , but always treated them with the respect due to older brothers, particularly Abdul Ghani who was almost 20 years his senior and whose son Yunus had grown up to be his close friend.  Abdul Ghani had started working for the Indian Railways when Rashid was very young, and helped support the whole family too on his small salary.

Rashid enjoyed the 7 years he spent in Calcutta, going to school and in the evenings supporting his father and uncles in the business. He remembered it was a good time for the family financially and also fondly remembered the long train journey between Sialkot and Calcutta and back vividly.

In 1939 (at the outbreak of the Second World War) when Rashid was 12 years old, he returned to Sialkot to complete his education. He attended Islamiya High School between 1939 and 1944 in the centre of Sialkot to get a proper Islamic education. See Figure 11. It was a government run school, the headmaster being Ch. Allah Ditta, BA, a very imposing figure for Rashid at the time. His teacher whom he admired very much was N U Khan. During this time his father, Meher Ellahi and his uncles remained behind in Calcutta. They infact did not return to Sialkot till after partition in 1948, after they had wrapped up their businesses there. Therefore Rashid spend many years separate from his father during these early days.

Figure 11: Government Islamia High School, Sialkot spring 1944. Rashid  middle row, 4^th from left.

At the Islamiya school Rashid excelled in sports, he was athletic and quite muscular for his age. He particularly enjoyed playing hockey and badminton and was good at both. Infact he played badminton unto well into his 60s.