What made General Pervez Musharraf tense and shaky at Rajghat?

Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf passed away in Dubai, after a prolonged illness.

It was monsoon time and the national capital was witnessing incessant rain when the then-Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who passed away in Dubai, was visiting Rajghat to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi on July 17, 2001. Wearing a cream-coloured sherwani, Musharraf might have appeared calm and composed on the television screen at Raj Ghat, but in fact, he was very shaky and tense.

After closely studying Gen. Musharraf's handwriting in the visitors' book of Rajghat, Rajneesh Kumar, a caretaker there told me that Musharraf looked lost and confused and that his handwriting suggested he was shaky and tense at Raj Ghat. On Musharraf’s passing away, here in Delhi Rajneesh Kumar had a special reason to remember his visit to Rajghat: He was the first Head of State of Pakistan to visit Rajghat.

Kargil Fresh In Memory

When Musharraf came to settle long-standing border and other disputes with India, he was dubbed everywhere as the architect of the 1999 Kargil. He was a hated personality in India. And not too surprising too, because he was in India within two years of the gory Kargil conflict.

After Rajghat, he visited Neharwali Haveli at DaryaGanj, the house of his mother’s parents. A crowd of memories must have come to his mind, after spending some time there and meeting the people of Old Delhi. That haveli is no longer there. Now apartment buildings stand in their place. However, it is not true that he was born in the haveli, as some people say. He was born at the Girdhari Lal Maternity Hospital at Kamla Market in 1943.

Zareen Musharraf’s Quest

In 2005 when Zareen Musharraf, General Musharraf’s mother, was visiting Delhi, the anger generated due to Kargil was slowly subsiding. After all, time is a big healer. In Delhi, Zareen’s first task was to collect the birth certificates of her three kids, including Pervez. The then 85-year-old lady went to Girdhari Lal Maternity Hospital at Kamla Market. The hospital management didn’t disappoint her.

It managed to find the birth certificates of Pervez and his two siblings. Madan Thapliyal, then Director (Information) of NDMC, recalled that directions for finding the original birth certificates of Zareen Musharraf’s children came from the Prime Minister’s Office itself. Subsequently, they burned the midnight oil searching old records and finally managing to locate the certificates from the pre-Independence era. Moreover, during those days all of NDMC’s work took place in Urdu, making the task tougher. But Mr Thapliyal recalled Zareen’s delight at retrieving those certificates. Well, Delhi was her city too. She had her schooling at Queen Mary’s School, Tees Hazari.

Partition’s Stories

Another person with a deeply personal recollection of the Musharraf family’s life in Delhi was RP Puri, the legendary founder of the Central News Agency (CNA) of Connaught Place. During Musharraf’s 2001 visit, Puri narrated to me a very interesting story about Musharraf’s father. Puri said that he used to supply newspapers at Pervez’s father Mr Mushraffudin’s Minto Road residence before 1947 in Delhi. Puri was a newspaper vendor then. And the house was allotted to Mushrafuddin who was a government servant.

“I used to spend some time with him very often. He was a very gentle and decent man. Before leaving for Pakistan, after it was carved out of India in 1947, I was called by him one day. He told me to stop supplying newspapers to his place as he was leaving for Pakistan,” Mr Puri, who passed away in 2016, had recalled. The Musharraf family went to Pakistan by train that was departing from the Lodhi Road Railway station. Puri was keen to meet his friend-of-sorts Musharraffudin’s son in 2001. Alas, he could not.

Actually, India was seeing another side of Musharraf in 2001. For instance, when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was hosting a banquet in his honour at Hyderabad House, the “Who’s Who” of India was there. Bollywood icon Dilip Kumar came with his wife, actress Saira Bano. When he was meeting other guests, Musharraf was taken aback to see Dilip Kumar. While talking to him, he was standing with folded hands and looked adoringly as though he was meeting a long-held icon. That picture was splashed in all the newspapers of the capital. Dilip Kumar was the same gentleman who was called by PM Vajpayee to speak to the then PM of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif to end the Kargil conflict. Perhaps, Musharraf would have known this fact.

But I still wonder what could have rattled General Pervez Musharraf so much at Rajghat that day.