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Pak high commission keeps Musharraf's kin waiting

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Gen Pervez Musharraf's cousin in Lucknow is still awaiting a formal response to his request for an audience with the Pakistani president during his visit to India.

"We learnt from media reports that Gen Musharraf had expressed a desire to meet his relatives in India and that he had proposed to reserve some time for them during his visit," the president's second cousin Sidrat Ansari told rediff.com.

Ansari, general secretary of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee's minorities cell, is the son of the late Hayatullah Ansari, founder editor of Qaumi Awaaz, a Lucknow-based Urdu daily that played a major motivational role in the freedom movement. The elder Ansari was a Congress politician and represented the party in the Rajya Sabha.

Hayatullah Ansari's wife, the late Sultana Hayat, was the first cousin of Musharraf's father, Syed Musharrafuddin. The General's grandfather and Sidrat Ansari's maternal grandmother were siblings.

Before shifting base to Delhi, Syed Musharrafuddin had studied with Hayatullah Ansari at Lucknow's Jubilee College and the historic Firangi Mahal madarsa.

Sidrat Ansari knows yet another Musharraf kinsman who was based in Lucknow, but is currently away in the United States. "He is my maternal uncle, Q M Humayun, retired managing director of the National Handloom Development Corporation," he said. "Gen Musharraf and my maternal uncle are first cousins."

The Ansaris had no idea of their relationship with Musharraf until an old family friend told them about it some time in 1998 after the General became chief of the Pakistani Army.

Some kind of contact between the two families was revived in 1987 when Gen Musharraf's father Musharrafuddin visited India, Ansari said adding that after his mother's demise in 1994, they families lost contact.

"I remember my mother talking about her ancestral home somewhere behind Golcha cinema in Delhi's Daryaganj locality (the now much-talked-about Naharwali haveli, where the General was born)," he added.

Differences over the question of Partition were responsible for the snapping of ties between the two families.

"We belonged to a family that was strongly opposed to the creation of Pakistan. My father wrote articles and editorials against the two-nation theory," Sidrat Ansari said.

Hayatullah Ansari was not merely a devoted Congressman, but also one of those who enjoyed close proximity to Mahatma Gandhi, who was also responsible for his marriage to Sultana.

Sidrat Ansari recalled how his father, who passed away in 1998, never reconciled with the idea of Partition, that too on religious lines.

"Now that a path is being paved for a new era of relationship between the two countries, we are keen to do our bit towards the fulfilment of this mission," he said.

While he has not given up hope of an official invitation from the Pakistani high commission, Sidrat Ansari is planning to write a letter to his cousin 'Pervezbhai' to make the visit a 'success story, not a flop show like the bus ride to Lahore'.

"We only pray to Allah that the forthcoming summit ends the 53-year old mistrust and hatred between the two nations and opens a new chapter of love, friendship and mutual trust," he added.

Indo-Pak Summit 2001: The Complete Coverage

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