Jhelum proud of PM

Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral is the pride and talk of the town in Jhelum, his birthplace in Pakistan.

His elevation to the premier's post has stimulated hopes in Pakistan for better relations between the two countries. Press reports on Wednesday said that Jhelum expects their native boy to resolve the Kashmir problem which Islamabad says lies at the core of 50 years of hostile relations.

Some Jhelum natives hope that Gujral would allow them to travel to India without visa, reported the mass-circulated Urdu newspaper Jang.

Gujral was born in Jhelum in December 1919. His family migrated to India in the mass exchange of Hindu and Muslim populations that accompanied the Partititon of British India into the independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947.

In 1992 he visited the city while taking part in the so-called 'Track Two' unofficial efforts by the intellectuals of India and Pakistan to normalise relations between their two countries which have so much in common.

''Inder Kumar hugged me for long when people introduced me to him as the same Younus Shah he used to play hockey with, and we relived the memories of childhood,'' the old friend told Jang.

Shah, 87, said Gujral's father Avtar Narain Gujral was a kind man. He was the president of the city Congress party at Partition and turned his mansion into a transit camp for the Hindus migrating from Pakistan to India.

''Inder Kumar was a dear friend. He became Gujral only later and grew that weird beard,'' another childhood friend Ziauddin Malik told Jang.

Mirza Abdul Ghafoor Baig, a family friend and a former president of the district bar association of Jhelum, said, ''Gujral addressed the bar during his visit to the city. I found him a balanced person, a man without airs.''

Baig said Gujral was presented a rare photograph of his father on the occasion by the former governor of Punjab, Chaudhry Altaf Hussain.

Subh Sadiq Bhutta, another Jhelum lawyer, told the newspaper that he vividly remembered how Gujral pater was arrested during the Quit India movement and how he refused to enter the jail through a small gate because he was holding the party flag and would not lower it to enter. Eventually, the jail authorities had to open the main gate to let him carry the flag aloft.