- Dr. Javed Jamil

When I was studying in King George's Medical College, Lucknow, I had earned a kind of disrepute among my medico friends from different cities for talking of Saharanpur a little too much.  I tried hard to curb my tendency to always bring Saharanpur in every discussion.  But such was my fondness for my city that I would recurrently give my friends an opportunity to yell in an orchestrated symphony, "No Saharanpur, please!"  My stay in Lucknow for several years was enough for enhancing respect in my heart for the capital city especially for its cultural richness; but it could not diminish a bit my craze for my birthplace.  I often wondered if this craze was merely the result of one's natural love for one's own city.  Was it simply a manifestation of nostalgia that I would try to compare all cities with my city?  But I was convinced in my heart that it was surely much more than that.  After about a quarter century of my having left Lucknow and settled in Saharanpur, love for Saharanpur has almost become an article of faith for me.  It is exactly this faith that has kept me glued to this place, despite the kind of work I have been involved in, which perhaps requires the landscape of a big city to flourish.

What, then, is that distinguishes Saharanpur from other cities?  Whenever I travelled abroad or to other parts of the country and I'd introduce myself as someone from Saharanpur, I have often been greeted with an enthusiastic welcome on account of this association.  For example, I often heard Muslims saying, "Oh, you are from a sacred city! The place of Shaikhul Hadeeth"  or Hindus saying, "Oh District Saharanpur, which has lots of places of pilgrimage!"  Others would call it "City of mangoes",  "City of communal harmony",  "City of Woodcarving".  Naturally, such epithets for my native city would make my soul inundated with an indescribable feeling of pride and joy.  But I would not forget to tell people that the epithet I love most for Saharanpur is "City of Peace".

Peace is a term which carries different meanings for different people. When it is discussed at international platforms, more often than not, it is the political definition of peace that is being alluded to - which means the absence of war or riots.  Socialists impart a social definition to peace implying equality of socio-economic rights to all classes of society.  Clerics, whichever religion they belong to, tend to describe peace as an internal calm that comes out of unadulterated devotion to God.  My own vision of peace however is much more comprehensive.  It is interanal as well as external; it is individual as well as social including family peace as its most essential component.  I call Saharanpur the City of Peace because its culture conforms, to a great extent, to my vision of Grand Peace.  It is true that Saharanpur can be called a city of peace because its name is not associated in history with any remarkable military combat.  It is also true that the whole country has huge respect for the city and its people for maintaining communal harmony even in the worst of times.  It is also equally true that the crime statistics of this city are far less worrying, compared to those of the other cities.  What amazes me most however is the wonderful equipoise that the people of the city demonstrate in their personal, family and social lives.  This harmony cannot embellish a community or society unless its people are simple, selfless and frank.  People of Saharanpur are people of heart.  Though every animal has a biological heart,  God bestows the spiritual heart only upon the chosen few.  It is this quality of the people of this great city that distinguishes it from the others.  Poor or rich, educated or illiterate, from rural background or urban, all without exception have a kind of rare simplicity in their style and manners.  They may be blunt at times and may appear to be uncivilised and uncultured on account of the dialect they speak.  But this apparent bluntness and lack of sophistication would never mingle with hypocrisy.  A Saharanpuri can be anything but a hypocrite.  This is no ordinary tribute to its people knowing that we are living in a world where hypocrisy rules almost all speheres of individual and organised life.

There is one more important constituent of the nature of Saharanpurians that immensely impresses me: self-respect.  Even the poorest of poor cannot tolerate an onslaught on his self-esteem.  A rickshaw-puller in an Eastern city of U.P. would almost acquiesce to anything commanded by the Sahib who has hired his services.  For a rickshaw-puller in Saharanpur, Sahib is nothing more than a client.  I strongly believe that self-respect is a cudgel that safeguards man against demeaning intrusions.  Though occasionally it may take the form of misbehavious in the streets, which must be avoided, I would always regard this as a virtue that must be assiduously inculcated in all future generations.