JK PANORAMA VOL 4 ISSUE 5 MAY

educated more, her life story would have been
different.
Razia was the daughter of a landlord
Choudhary Abdullah Khan of RS Pora in
Jammu. In 1946 Razia was married to
Choudhary Ghulam Ahmad of Miran Sahib.
In 1947 when the communal riots broke in
Jammu, Ahmad and other Muslims shifted
women folk to a Hindu friend's glass factory
for safety. However, during November riots
the area was run over by Hindu mobs, who
killed, looted and raped at ease. After the men
were killed, the mob distributed the women
among themselves like a war booty. Razia was
taken by one Balwan Singh of Thub Village
Jammu after she was told her entire family has
been killed.
A young innocent girl who knew nothing of
the world found herself helplessly chained
with Balwan Singh who took her to Punjab.
She gave birth to a son Karan Singh and two
daughter Reva Rani and Anju. In 1965
Balwan, an alcoholic, died and his family in
Jammu disowned his family. However a
patwari friend of Balwan gave Razia and her
children a room to stay in New Plot, Jammu.
Though poor, Razia took small time jobs, did
stitching and tailoring only to ensure
education to her children. She never
compromised on it.
Their life took another unexpected twist when
in December 1974, during a visit to Tehsil
office Jammu, Razia crossed paths with her
ex-husband's sister, also her cousin, who had
survived and had been living in Dalpatian,
Jammu. It was an emotional reunion and both
cried bitterly.
With regular contact now established, Razia
came to know that many of her close relatives
including husband, mother in law, mother and
eight sisters had miraculously survived and
are living in different locations in Jammu and
Pakistan.
Few months later Razia and her family bid
farewell to the old nightmares and shifted to
Dalpatian. She came to know that her exhusband
after surviving had crossed over to
Sialkot. He returned few years later and
unable to find her husband married another
woman.
In the communally charged atmosphere of
1974, Razia and her family took a bold step to
convert back to Islam. Karan Singh remained
Karan Singh but Anju became Zarina and
teenage Reva Rani became Azra Choudhary.
A local Molvi taught Azra, nimaz and Quran.
Razia along with Zarina shifted to Pakistan in
1979 to be with her mother and eight sisters.
Azra couldn't accompany as she didn't get a
passport as her school records still showed her
name as Reva. As destiny had other plans for
Azra, she stayed in Jammu, got education,
married and got employed and ultimately was
chosen for the first ever translator of Quran in
Dogri.
The tumultous life of Razia and Azra was also
detailed by former IGP Kashmir Javid
Mukhdoomi in one of his write-ups.
Last month when Maulana Wahiduddin
released the Dogri Translation of Quran, it
was an accomplishment worth celebrating
and a culmination of a long struggle to inner
peace.
The translation was by a daughter who was
born Hindu to a Muslim mother and whose
life was nothing short of a nightmare. “I give
credit to my mother whose fearlessness made
me what I am today. She would often say had I
been educated more, had I seen the world
outside of my Purdah and had I not been such
an innocent that I believed whatever others
said, I would not had suffered so much,” said
Azra. Her mother died in 1999 in Sialkot and
sister Zarina lives in USA.
As every one asks Azra what are her future
plans in writing, she says that she has now
dedicated her life to Islamic work only.
Maulana Wahiduddin was so impressed with
her work that he gave her a book of Hadith in
Urdu to be translated to Hindi and a Seerat
book in Hindi to be translated into Dogri.
Azra feels that the translated version will have
a greater outreach among people and they will
come to know about the message of peace
and love contained in it.
16
May 2019