THE MAKING OF EXILE: SINDHI HINDUS AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  (Today in India, Labana Sikhs from Sindh appear to be outnumbered by Labana Sikhs from Punjab, with whom they share a cultural affinity; Labana Sikhs from Punjab also speak a version of Labani, which is slightly different from that spoken in Sindh.)

  As mentioned earlier, Sikhs in Sindh had been targeted for violence because Punjabi Sikhs had played a significant role in the communal violence in East Punjab. As a result, Sikhs were among the first to leave for India. While some Labana Sikhs had left Sindh even before the Karachi pogrom (in which Labana Sikhs were again the prime targets), many of them – who lived in Northern Sindh – continued to stay on in their homes. According to Gandhi, there were still about 15,000 Sikhs in Sindh by 21 January 1948.29 As a result of the changed stance of the Congress government in India, and its organised evacuation of the minorities of Sindh, many Labana Sikhs say that their families were informed by the local authorities that they had to leave Sindh and migrate to India. It appears that most of them had no say in whether or not they should migrate, or their mode of transport, or even when they could migrate. Yet, almost all of them remember the Congress – and especially Jawaharlal Nehru – with gratitude for ‘saving their lives’.30

  These Labana Sikhs, who led lives of hard labour and hardship, now faced great difficulties in migrating to India. Pribhibai Dohit, who was a young unmarried girl of about 18 at the time, recollects her departure from Rohri:

  In Rohri-Sukkur, we used to stay by the side of a canal: Sikhs and Hindus on one side, and Muslims on the other side. The Sindhi Muslims were very good. They also used to speak Sindhi; we used to speak one language. At the time of Partition, they gave us refuge. They told us not to leave.

  But it was the government’s wish that we should go. To which the Sindhi Muslims said, ‘We cannot stop you. If there are riots later, if your girls are abducted, then it will be terrible! It’s best that you leave.’

  The Congress took us out from there. This included my grandfather, and my father, and my brother; the rest of us were mostly women. Early in our journey, at Kotri station, there was an attack on us. A solid attack. It was clear: ‘Be prepared to kill or die.’

  We were sitting at the station, when the Muslims threw huge stones at us, hurt our necks, our faces, our backs. My grandfather said, ‘Don’t cry out. Even if you die, don’t make a sound.’ We just sat there, we didn’t shout out. My grandfather was hit by a stone on his forehead. It bled a lot. He picked up handfuls of dust to dry up the blood and then he tied his turban.

  My father and my brother had jobs in the railways department. My brother’s Muslim colleague saved us. He said, ‘These Sikhs are known people, they have worked with us. They are not fanatics, they are not aggressive.’ Shortly thereafter the police came, and put us on the train to Hyderabad.

  My father fought 10 people at Kotri station. You see, the officials didn’t let us take our luggage, our Guru [Granth] Sahib. My father made us sit in the train. He said, ‘Wait, I’m coming.’ Then, he went and picked up the Guru. The Muslims were angry that he had taken it. My father boarded the running train. One Muslim tried to pull my father’s feet, my father kicked him, and he fell off with a thud. Then another one came, and another, but my father kicked them all off. Sardars really know how to fight!

  We left everything else there at Kotri station – our utensils and our belongings. We couldn’t take anything. We reached Hyderabad. Here, the Congress locked us up, that is, they kept us in a room. They didn’t let us leave, lest we get killed by a furious mob. We stayed indoors, ate indoors, lived in the Hyderabad camp for about 15 to 20 days. The camp was good; we got everything – makke ki roti, mooli ki sabzi. We were looked after.

  Then we were sent off to Hindustan by train. We reached Marwar Junction. They evacuated all the Sikhs, along with the Sindhi [Hindus]. The Sindhis came with us; lots of them did.

  We thought we were going to die. Especially, since other travellers would not let small babies cry. They’d say, ‘We will throw them out. If the babies cry at any station, we will be heard by Muslims and be caught.’

  We didn’t get any food at Marwar Junction, we were left to starve to death. Occasionally, we’d be given a handful of channa, and some water. But that was all.

  We faced a lot of difficulties. This was the life we confronted – with hunger, thirst, miserable children. How terrible it was! It was too much. Back in the train, people were getting killed; they were being cut up, entire carriages full of them. It was a very difficult time.31

  Several Labana Sikhs originally from the villages around Larkana say that their Muslim neighbours escorted them in their bullock carts to the railway station, and wept when they left. Kewalsingh Dohit, who was a 10-year-old boy living in Nau Dero at the time of Partition, says:

  Our Sindhi Muslim friends over there [in Pakistan] were good, the Muslims over here [in India] are not that good. The Sindhi Muslims really helped us out in times of trouble.32

  According to Arjunsingh Rawaan, then a 15-year-old boy:

  When we left, some Muslims were crying, others were saying that it was good that we were going, they would get our things. The Muslims that we interacted with regularly, the ones with whom we were close, they were crying. The others, who were more distant, were glad to be rid of us. There are all kinds of people in the world.33

  Yet others who hailed from the twin cities of Rohri and Sukkur say that they had little or no contact with the local Muslims there. According to Hakimsingh Dingnot, who was a seven-year-old boy living in Sukkur at the time of Partition, the local Muslims threatened the Labana Sikhs when they were leaving: ‘Leave your things behind or we will kill you.’34 Pribhibai Varjitia, then a young woman of 20 with an infant son, relates that local Sindhi Muslims threatened to attack the Labana Sikhs in her marital village of Bakhri.35

  Sundersingh Ramaan was a young boy of 18 at the time of Partition. He lived in Deparja, in Central Sindh, and his father bartered the wooden combs that he made for grain from the local Muslims. Ramaan says that the 100 or so Labana families in Deparja were mostly landless labourers. They had good relations with the local Sindhi Muslims, but the latter had a change of heart at the time of Partition, and threatened to surround their houses and kill them all. According to Ramaan, the Labana Sikhs barricaded themselves in the local gurudwara, and came away with just the clothes on their backs. On their way to Karachi, Ramaan’s father and maternal uncle ‘fell off the train’ but were rescued by Sindhi Muslims, and were subsequently reunited with the family in Bombay.36

  Labana and other Sikhs were transported to Karachi or Hyderabad, under armed police escort, often by freight train, in windowless wagons, so that they would not be visible and hence not be attacked. As Pribhibai Varjitia recalls:

  The police brought us to the station, and then put us in a freight train, like cows and buffaloes. They told us, ‘Make sure your children don’t cry inside. Keep them happy.’ Then we ate our food inside, we had our water pots inside, we did our toilet inside, everything inside.37

  Several Labana Sikhs who travelled by regular passenger trains say that their trains were stoned by Muslims at Kotri Junction, and remember ducking down to evade the assault. While some say they were able to bring many of their possessions with them, others say that they were not permitted to carry much luggage. According to Sundribai Kirnaut, then a 20-year-old mother of a son from Rohri, ‘We had many difficulties. We didn’t bring anything, we left everything behind. We came only with the clothes on our backs. I could not bathe for a month.’38

  Most of the Labana Sikhs who were brought to Karachi were taken straight to the Keamari docks, where they immediately boarded a ship for India. Again, this was to ensure that anti-Sikh violence did not rear its head once more. Those who were taken to Hyderabad were put up in a transit camp, before taking further trains onward to Marwar Junction.

  Sikhs who were not Labana were also evacuated from Sindh. Sardar Nihalsingh Ailsinghani was a small boy of about 11 when Partition took place. His family was
from the village of Naich, near Larkana, which was dominated by Sikh zamindars. He recollects that the massacre of Labana Sikhs at the Ratan Talao gurdwara was a wake-up call for the Sikhs remaining in Sindh. A freight train, with two armed guards in each wagon, and escorted by senior government officials, was organised for upper class Sikhs living in Naich, Johi and other parts of Northern Sindh. Sardar Nihalsingh and his family boarded this train with as much luggage as they could carry; however, most of this was confiscated later at the Karachi docks. He recalls:

  There were hardly one or two Hindus who boarded the ship; the rest were Sikhs. I remember, because I was on the top deck. You see, I had had a fight with Muslims at the docks. As a result, the Muslims said, ‘Let’s throw him into the sea, he’s a Sardar, look at how he’s talking.’ My elders pulled me away. They said, ‘The Muslims will finish us off if you fight them.’ I stopped myself, and sat on the ship’s deck, right at the top.

  The muhajirs were an angry lot. The Punjabi Sikhs from India had really slaughtered them. What did they know, that we were not the same Sikhs, we were Sindhi Sikhs, who had studied Sami, Sachal, Shah.39 We were not jaati, born Sikhs, we were sufaati, converted Sikhs. What did the Muslims know, that there are various kinds of Sikhs. No matter which Sikh they saw, they wanted to kill.

  When we got off the ship at the Bombay docks, there was a ship of Muslims leaving from Bombay for Pakistan. Our elders were of a belligerent nature, they had a zamindari temperament, they were fighters. ‘Let’s loot the Muslims!’ they cried. ‘We have left everything behind over there; they are taking everything and going. Loot them all!’

  How much was looted I don’t know, but the Sikhs forcibly looted the Muslims. Worried, the authorities brought us straight here to this Kalyan camp. And ever since we came, we have been living here itself.40

  According to Sardar Nihalsingh, about a dozen or so Sikh families chose to stay behind in Naich. Many of them faced difficulties subsequently: Some were shot dead, others were compelled to cut off their hair and flee to India (and later obtain absolution at gurdwaras), still others converted to Islam.

  Sindh Emptied of Minorities

  The evacuation of Sindhi Hindus and Sikhs continued for a long time, at an erratic pace. Since some muhajirs also returned to India, there was great pressure on the trains. In order to accommodate the Hindus and Sikhs from Sindh, and to ensure that they did not travel with Muslims – a potentially explosive situation – refugee special trains were instituted for some months. According to Narayandas Malkani, the bulk of the evacuation was completed by the beginning of May 1948, and the Sindh government stopped running refugee special trains. At the end of July 1948, the Jodhpur State Railway ceased its train services to Pakistan.

  By the middle of June 1948, 10,00,000 Hindus had been able to migrate to India; 4,00,000 more remained in Sindh. (By this time, evacuation of Hindus and Sikhs from the NWFP and Bahawalpur was also complete.) In August 1949, there were incidents of renewed communal violence in Shikarpur and Sukkur, giving new impetus to the exodus. Evacuation continued for three whole years, finally tapering off in 1951. By this time, the transit camp set up at Karachi still had 644 evacuees waiting to leave, but Sindh was largely emptied of its Hindus: It was estimated that a scant 150,000 to 200,000 remained in their home province. Sri Prakasa tells us, ‘On my tours in the interior, I saw what appeared to have been flourishing townlets before, complete with houses, temples, fields, now entirely deserted, the whole of the population – evidently all Hindu – gone to the last man.’41

  Yet, it should be noted that the stream of Hindus fleeing Sindh only thinned down to a trickle by 1951, and never dried up entirely. There has been a continuous migration of Sindhi Hindus from Pakistan to India from the 1950s to the present day, varying in intensity over the decades.

  Here is the narrative of a Sindhi Hindu’s departure in 1949, which depicts the large crowds still in the process of migrating to India. Kirat Babani, the prominent Sindhi author and journalist, was a young man of 25 in 1947, working with the Communist Party in Karachi. He and his other Communist friends decided not to migrate, but many of them were arrested in 1948. Babani was jailed for 11 months and released on the condition that he would be externed from Karachi. Later, in 1949, he thought he would visit his family, which had migrated to India, and then return to Sindh. When he boarded the ship at the Keamari docks, government officials searched his belongings extremely roughly, and then served him a legal notice of exile from Pakistan. He recounts his departure from Sindh in his autobiography:

  Evening has fallen as I sit on the empty steel trunk. I have no idea when the ship weighed anchor and set sail towards its destination. My belongings are still scattered around me, and there, on the entire deck, people are scattered. Entire families, mostly from villages in the interior of Sindh, have been thrown here. They are from the poor and middle class, their dress and behaviour is Sindhi. […] Some mothers also have suckling children with them, whom they are nursing, covered with their dupattas, and with their backs to the men. This transgression of custom must cause them mental agony. […]

  As night falls gradually, and as the ship starts to careen up and down and sideways like a rocking horse, subjected to the blows of the forceful waves of the deep sea, the condition of the travellers on deck begins to worsen. Many begin to feel dizzy and their stomachs start to churn. Many are retching, and some are actually vomiting. The crying and wailing of the children has cast a pall of gloom everywhere.42

  Many Sindhi Hindus report an immense sense of relief and security merely on crossing the border into India, after covering the 124 miles of railway line through the Thar desert to the border of Jodhpur State, or on setting sail from Karachi harbour. It was an era when India and Pakistan were perceived as being essentially Hindu and Muslim respectively, and the simple act of crossing the border made an enormous difference to incoming refugees.43 As a result, the majority of Sindhi Hindus felt they were fleeing Muslim persecution, on the basis of their religious identity, to take refuge in a Hindu haven. Ironically, most of them had no idea that their trauma would worsen after they arrived in India.

  Notes

  1.Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Sur Poorab, Dastaan 2, Bait 4. My translation.

  2.Subhadra Anand, National Integration of Sindhis, p 51. Similarly, 243 out of 270 refugees interviewed in Kalyan and Sion Koliwada camps said that they left because they felt their lives were in danger. See C. N. Vakil and Perin H. Cabinetmaker, Government and the Displaced Persons, p 26.

  3.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 20 January 1948.

  4.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, speech given as president of the Indian National Congress, 1940, as quoted in Stephen Hay, ed, Sources of Indian Tradition, Volume II, p 238.

  5.Mona Mumtaz Hidayatullah, ‘Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah on Sind as a Separate Province’, p 16.

  6.Interview with Chandra Malkani, niece of Ghanshyamdas Jethanand, February 2009.

  7.Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition, pp 111-112.

  8.Chetan Mariwala, Hikde Dinhan-a Ji Gaalh, pp 129-131. My translation.

  9.Kalyan Advani, ‘Kalh Ji Yaad, Subhaan Ja Sapna [Memories of Yesterday, Dreams for Tomorrow]’, in Naeen Duniya, Bombay, August 1963, pp 45-50.

  10.Subhadra Anand, ibid, p 51.

  11.As quoted in G. D. Khosla, Stern Reckoning, p 244.

  12.Muhammad Usman Baloch, interview, January 2008.

  13.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 6 January 1948.

  14.Shaikh Ayaz, Jug Miryoee Sapno, pp 11-14. My translation.

  15.The Times of India, Bombay, 9 February 1948.

  16.Mohan G. Rohira, ‘Sindh Maan Lad-Palaarn – Janvari 1948 [Exodus From Sindh – January 1948]’ in Virhango, pp 302-305. My translation.

  17.Mohan Makhijani, interview, April 2009.

  18.See Vazira Zamindar, The Long Partition, pp 72-75 and Note 81, p 255.

  19.As quoted in Vazira Zamindar, ibid, pp 71.

  20.Sri Prakasa, Paki
stan: Birth and Early Years, pp 72-73.

  21.S. K. Kirpalani, Fifty Years with the British, pp 356-357.

  22.Narayandas Malkani, Nirali Zindagi, pp 151-152. My translation.

  23.Pia Oberoi, Exile and Belonging, p 52.

  24.U. T. Thakur, Sindhi Culture, p. 29.

  25.Sri Prakasa, ibid, pp 74-75.

  26.H. T. Lambrick, The Census of India, 1941,Volume XII, Sind, p 49.

  27.Labani or Labanki, a mixture of Marwari, Saraiki, Gujarati and Marathi, is not considered a dialect of Sindhi.

  28.According to one legend, after Guru Teg Bahadur’s head was cut off at Sis Ganj in Delhi, his body continued fighting with the Mughal army and finally fell at Rakab Ganj. When Aurangzeb’s soldiers attempted to recover his body, they were prevented from doing so by a community of Sikh ironsmiths from Jaisalmer. These Sikhs placed the body of Guru Teg Bahadur in their wooden carts, which they then set on fire, thus cremating the Guru. Since they had achieved an audience with the Guru (Guru jo darshan labhji viyo), they called themselves Labana. Interview, Raju Singh Kirnaut, Bharatpur, December 2012. According to another legend, Makhan Shah, a Labana Sikh, was a prominent supporter of Guru Teg Bahadur, whom he helped install as the ninth Guru. He later led many of his compatriots into battle to fight for Guru Gobind Singh.