‘I thank the almighty that I am not from the Badlands’

By Datuk Seri Kalimullah Hassan

THE BADLAND of Badlands - That’s how a renowned Indian scholar described the district in India when I told him where my forefathers were originally from.

My grandfather, Tufail Ahmad Khan, a Pathan, came to Malaya in 1908, escaping the brutally violent state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in British India.

The village of Mirzapur (there’s a very violent hit Indian television series on Mirzapur) and district of Azamgarh he came from was the worst. Hence the description “badland of the badlands”.

Today, UP is still a hotbed of right-wing violence and racial and religious strife. With a population of 245 million people, UP is bigger and more densely populated than most countries in the world.

 I was lucky to be born in independent Malaya.

Today, I caught up with some of my cousins whom i grew up with in the 1960s and 1970s in rural Malaya. I am from Pengkalan Hulu on the Malaysia-Thai border where my grandfather became a successful businessman.

He must have done good things because we have a road named after him in our hometown.

He died when I was 11 but I remember how, while he pampered his grandchildren, the elders were terrified of him. He was, after all, from the Badlands.

Why he chose to settle in Pengkalan Hulu, no one knows. I can only speculate that he might not have wanted to be found - like in the movies.

But more likely, he probably came overland through the old Burma and Thailand and Pengkalan Hulu was the first settlement he encountered in British Malaya.

Or he could have been brought in by the British to work here. I should try to find out.

But going back to where he came from, and the accounts I have heard, Azamgarh was both a place of intellectuals and very, very bad people - dacoits and killers.

My late father used to proudly tell us that one of India’s top post-Independence poets, Kaifi Azmi was from Azamgarh.

And Kaifi’s daughter is Shabana Azmi, the famous Bollywood actress. He said we were related but I have never met them in my life. Nor, I believe, do they know of our existence.

I think more likely, since they were from the same district, a lot of village folk, including my dad, claimed a kinship.

But more to the point, most of my uncles were professors in places like Aligarh Muslim University, Shipley College, institutions of learning in Lucknow or doctors and lawyers.

My paternal grandfather was a local judge. So, they are not from the bloodthirsty side of Azamgarh-wallahs. Little mercies.

India was not an inviting place then and Malaya was and still is a land of plenty and a land of opportunity.

It appears that my cousins have spent more time tracing our roots and told me lots of things I didn’t know. In 1964, my family moved to Penang and although we still went back to the old hometown, KROH as it was then called (later renamed Pengkalan Hulu), our environment was different, and we became a bit more detached from the UP-wallahs.

I have been to Azamgarh a few times over the years - but despite it clawing up to the 21st century - it’s a place I don’t feel much kinship with.

It’s where my ancestors came from after leaving Afghanistan and probably Persia over the centuries. And it’s where they are buried in the family plot in Azamgarh.

I pray for them at their unmarked graves whenever I have visited. But save for my father, I did not know them.

My past, present and my future and that of my children and grandchildren is here in Malaysia. And whenever I think of how bad some of our leaders have been and are, I am consoled and thank the almighty that I am not from the Badlands. – August 2, 2025

Datuk Seri Kalimullah Hassan is the chairman of ECM Libra Foundation and a former NSTP group editor-in-chief