Sain Dass has lived in Khour village on India’s northwestern fringe all his life. All 101 years of it.
The village in Jammu & Kashmir is a 20-minute drive from the frontier with Pakistan. And since 1923, he has watched from that vantage point as the country struggled for freedom, as it was yoked apart, as it fended off enemies, and as it cooled and calmed itself into stability.
But the centenarian hasn’t been a passive onlooker. An army veteran, he first served Maharaja Hari Singh’s cavalry, and then joined India’s military ranks in August 1957, a decade after Independence. As Dass says, he wrenched a lot of his rights with his own bare hands.
“It’s been a life of struggle and adventure – and success,” said Dass, sitting upright, cross-legged on a wooden cot. He holds a bamboo cane for support, but it’s really not required.
Dass walks with the strides of a man several decades younger, the years of military training bearing fruit in the sunset of his life.
Khour village, of roughly 6,400people, is packed with Hindu and Sikh refugees who fled West Pakistan and settled there in the brutal aftermath of Partition.
Dass was 23 when undivided India was split in two.
“I witnessed the mayhem Partition caused and the migration it triggered. Several Hindu families reached Khour overnight and spent nights in the open,” he recalls. “They had nothing to eat”.
His father, Dharam Singh, moved to the small village in Jammu several years earlier.
“He moved from Sheikhupura in Pakistan’s Punjab province. That village was earlier known as Kot Dayal Dass. He got married here,” Dass said.
Veteran of many wars
“I first joined Maharaja Hari Singh’s army’s Risala, a corps of cavaliers in the cavalry division. I stayed there for 10 years before joining the Indian Army’s artillery regiment in August 1957,” said Dass.
His memories as a soldier are unblemished. In that time, he faced off with Pakistan and China as part of a fledgling nation’s struggles to keep its territorial integrity intact.
Dass was in Twang, Arunachal Pradesh during the Sino-Indian war in 1962.
“During wartime, we were ferried in coal-fired trains from Pathankot in Punjab to Twang. It used to take five days to get there,” he said.
With a glimmer in his eyes and a smile on his wrinkled face, he recalls how Indian cannons destroyed a fleet of “imported” Pakistani tanks in the 1965 war in Khemkaran, Punjab.
He also recalls Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi meeting the soldiers at Jhajjar Kotli, a village in Jammu district, during the 1971 war with Pakistan.
“She distributed money and soaps to wives of the army personnel and also sanctioned 10 days’ leave to the soldiers so that they could spend time with their families,” he said.
The gunner’s travels took him across the country – Punjab, Bihar, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. Those visits today help appreciate the scale of the task the nation has achieved – keeping its ranks together even in the face of strife.
“India has come a long way. I still remember the hand-to-hand combats we had with the Chinese soldiers in the north-east,” he said.
He holds a tan leather wallet with him. One of its see-through flaps proudly holds a frayed, pockmarked photograph of him in his army fatigues. Dass, in his 30s at the time, is looking over his shoulder in front of a raw brick wall.
It’s one of his few tangible memories from the time. He was awarded dozens of medallions as a serviceman, of course, but lost them all in cross-border shelling a decade ago.
“We had to flee our home to escape the shelling, which used to be a routine affair. The shelling on Indian villages also gave thieves enough opportunity to scour through the vacant houses and strip them to the core,” he said, remembering how he lost all those medallions.
That shelling, he stresses, is now in the past.
“The Pakistanis don’t target villages any more.”
The wonders of modernity
But of the many marvels he enjoys about modern life, quality health care is foremost. Famine and disease claimed lives around him in the dozens, says Dass.
“Medical infrastructure was barebones when we were young. People died of starvation and diseases. Now, we have well-carpeted roads and so many vehicles. Ambulances zip through the villages,” he said.
Dass is also quick to point out – “I had to wade across the Chenab River in Akhnoor to reach Jammu city for work.”
“Till the 1980s, people in our country were largely poor. Vehicles in rural areas were rare and so were education and healthcare facilities. People had to walk long distances. When we were young, the relatively well-off travelled by horse carts and bullock carts to reach places,” he said.
“People used to die of diseases without medical care. Even mosquitoes were a big problem because villages had no electricity.”
The 101-year-old also keeps abreast of contemporary politics and voted in the 2024 assembly elections.
“Former deputy chief minister Tara Chand lost the Chhamb seat (of which Khour is a part), which was won by an independent candidate who sided with the National Conference,” Dass said.
He’s right. The senior Congress leader lost to Satish Sharma in one of the major upsets in the Union territory’s assembly elections last month.
One of seven siblings – four brothers and three sisters – Dass says he and his family were given voting rights only in 1970.
“Initially, we used to be called refugees. I got my voting rights only in 1970 after handing revenue authorities in Akhnoor my pension records. The administration used to label us as Pakistanis,” he said.
He married Amro Devi of the neighbouring Pallanwala village in 1948. She is now 88.
His eldest son, Arjun Singh, followed in his footsteps and joined the Indian Army. However, he died of liver disease in 2017.
Dass now spends his time overseeing work on his farm plot, which earns him enough and feeds his family well.
“I bought two 1.21 hectares of land from my earnings and I eat home-grown vegetables and desi ghee. Until two years ago, I used to work in my field,” he said. “Now, my sons and grandsons take care of the farming.”
