Throwback! Rare pic shows former PM Manmohan Singh registered as schoolboy in his village in Pakistan's Gah

Manmohan Singh was born in Gah village located in the Chakwal district of Punjab province which is a part of Pakistan.

Dr Manmohan Singh - former Prime Minister of India, veteran Congress leader, noted economist, technocrat and the architect of India's liberalised economy that achieved high growth from a phenomenal low of the balance of payments crisis, died on Thursday night. Singh, who had been ailing for a while, breathed his last at Delhi's All-India Institute of Medical Sciences. He was 92. 

As the country and world remembers late Manmohan Singh, an interesting fact about his childhood connection with Pakistan has come to light. Similar to BJP's veteran leader Lal Krishna Advani, Manmohan Singh also suffered the pain of the partition of the country and crossed the border with his family before settling in Punjab’s Amritsar.

Manmohan Singh was born in Gah village located in the Chakwal district of Punjab province which is a part of Pakistan.

In 2004, Manmohan Singh’s appointment as the Prime Minister of India was not only discussed in India but also in Pakistan, where his village is. 

A rare picture has surfaced on social media, showing Manmohan Singh registered as a schoolboy in his village Gah, on the outskirts of Chakwal in Pakistan.

Interestingly, the government even named a Government Boys School in Gah village after Manmohan Singh. The school is reportedly known as 'Manmohan Singh Government Boys School', where he did his primary education.

Manmohan Singh's childhood friends remember him

Muhammad Ashraf was Singh's classmate and friend. A farmer, he maintains a small holding in the peripheries of Chakwal, and studied with Manmohan in the mid-1930s in the primary school in Gah. He still has vague but valuable memories of their time together. He says even if Manmohan Singh has risen to become India’s prime minister, he still considers him a friend – he used to call him Mohna…

Sixty five years ago, a land was divided, families were divided… sixty five years ago the dream of India and Pakistan became reality. Before the great partition, the village Gah Begal was predominantly inhibited by Hindus and Sikhs, but afterwards their homes, lands and cattle were allocated to the exodus of Muslim refugees flowing in from the other side of the border.

Gah lies about eighty kilometers south from the federal capital, Islamabad. The village was unknown, only until eight years ago when Manmohan Singh became the prime minister of India. My father came to me saying “oye apna mohna hindustan da wajeer ho gaya jay” (our Mohna has been elected India’s premier) “We finally came on the map” says Muhammad Zaman, Ashraf’s son.

“There were celebrations and everyone danced on the beats of dhol… when I was a kid, my father used to tell me tales about Mohna.” Ashraf recalls, “We used to walk five miles to school, we were together till the fourth grade, I failed but he continued to study. He was a very hard working student, while I was not that intelligent. I couldn’t even write my name. He used to study in candlelight and prepare for exams, sometimes he used to do my homework too! “I remember the day of our exam, we had left for school early, without having breakfast…and after the paper, when we were returning home we discovered a berry tree.

Mohna picked up some stones and threw at the berries and I picked them from the ground and ate them all, he got so annoyed that he started beating me saying “wattay assi sut-dae nay, tay bairey tussi khanday ho” (I throw the stones and you eat all the berries). I want to tell Mohna that the tree is still in our village.

They were going to cut it down to construct a road, but I told them that this tree belongs to Manmohan Singh.” Zaman says “I recently read in the newspaper that our government and India have removed visa restriction for people over sixty years of age, I’m trying to convince my father to go and meet his friend but he simply says…I will only talk to him when he comes here since I am one year older to him…I know he is a big man now and I’m still a poor farmer, but I’m older and much stronger than little Mohna…” Only a couple of Singh’s class fellows, Ghulam Muhammad Khan and Muhammad Ashraf live there now, the rest have either died or left the village during partition.

After moments of silence, in the echo of a distant tractor’s ploughing, Ashraf once again tries to recollect from his horrified memories of the days of partition, “we frequently heard gunfire, we did not even know what was happening until our village was attacked…Mohna and his family had to leave, we heard they had shifted to Lahore or maybe Amritsar, and then the bloody riots began, we heard that a Sikh family was killed, I cried for many days…!” Raja Muhammad Ali, another friend of Manmohan and the deputy mayor of the village died two years ago, but he was fortunate to meet his childhood friend in 2008, after six decades, in Delhi.

Ashraf smiles…“He took presents for Mohna, shoes and shawls. I sent him the famous Chakwali “rawori”. He invited Mohna to come to Pakistan and visit Gah, but then we heard about some terrorist attacks in India which were blamed on Pakistan.” The Mumbai attacks in November 2008 pushed the Indo-Pak relations to the back burner. Just months after raja visited India.

Despite sore relations, Mr. Singh had not forgotten his schoolmates and school.  He arranged funds for the school’s renovation. And the school was to be named after him during President’s Musharraf’s time. Renovations were done but the school still retains the original name, for some unknown political reasons.

The school record of Manmohan Singh is still well preserved in the head master’s cabinet. It shows Mr. Singh was a promising student… Ghulam Mustafa, the Head Master of the primary school says, "We tell our children that one of the students at this school became a prominent political personality, so if they work hard they too will achieve their objectives. We pray to God that he becomes the Prime Minister of India once again, and we want him to come to Pakistan.”

After being elected as Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh funded the construction of a road and also sent teams to install solar-powered lights, and a water geyser for the village mosque.

Mustafa says, Singh financed a development project worth Rupees Hundred million for this village, “they constructed a high school for boys and girls, a hospital and a new water supply system. These roads were also built under the same project. The work stopped after the PPP came to power, but then, what else can we expect? Atleast Manmohan has given us solar lights, and has brought his village out of darkness…you know, when there is load-shedding in Chakwal, our village glows like the moon!”