THE MAKING OF EXILE: SINDHI HINDUS AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA
Page 44
When these outsiders descended on us, everything that was theirs was imposed on us, as a matter of national pride and duty. Their language became our national language. Their court culture became our national culture. Even their Islam became the authentic version of Islam, because according to them, our religion had been Hinduised. It became our responsibility to embrace their heroes; we had to accept their renaming of our roads, buildings and gardens; we had to learn from textbooks filled with praise for them. Clothes vary from country to country, according to the geography and climate. Here, their dress became our national dress.56
This Sindhi-muhajir conflict has only hardened over the years, resulting in a polarised and embattled Sindh. The Pakistan that Sindhi Muslims had dreamed of turned out to be vastly different from the one that ultimately came into being. Partition had merely replaced Sindhi Hindu domination of Sindh with muhajir and Punjabi domination, and the problems faced by Sindhi Muslims multiplied exponentially.
Notes
1.The Census of Pakistan, 1951, would later define the term ‘muhajir’ as ‘persons who had moved to Pakistan as a result of partition or the fear of disturbances connected therewith. Persons who came for that reason are muhajirs for census purposes, no matter from where, when or for how long a stay they have come.’ As quoted in Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition, p 166, Note 16.
2.Salman Akhtar, interview, March 2013.
3.Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit, p 255.
4.The Times of India, Bombay, 13 January 1948.
5.Penderel Moon, ibid, pp 256-257.
6.As quoted in The Times of India, Bombay, 15 October 1947.
7.See Vazira Zamindar, The Long Partition, p 68.
8.As quoted in The Times of India, Bombay, 2 July 1947.
9.Sarah Ansari, Life after Partition, p 59.
10.Dawn, Karachi, 18 January 1948.
11.Ibid, 24 January 1948.
12.The Times of India, Bombay, 31 January 1948.
13.See Mohammed Ibrahim Joyo, Save Sindh, Save the Continent.
14.A. D. Mani, ‘A Quick Look At Pakistan’, in Mushirul Hasan, ed, India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom Vol II, p 283.
15.David Gilmartin, ‘Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative’, p 1091.
16.Dawn, Karachi, 11 January 1948.
17.Hamida Khuhro, Mohammed Ayub Khuhro, p 327.
18.Jang, Karachi, 13 January 1948, 15 January 1948 and 16 January 1948, as quoted in Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 67.
19.Dawn, Karachi, 28 January 1948.
20.Dawn, Karachi, 9 January 1948 and 12 January 1948.
21.Dawn, Karachi, 18 January 1948.
22.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 64.
23.See Vazira Zamindar, ibid, pp 164-165.
24.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 66.
25.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 166 and p 185.
26.Census of Pakistan, 1951, as quoted in Ram Amarlal Panjwani, The Sindhi Situation in Partitioned India, p 19.
27.S. Akbar Zaidi, ‘Politics, Institutions, Poverty: The Case of Karachi’, p 3283.
28.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 123.
29.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 132 and Vazira Zamindar, ‘1947: Recovering Displaced Histories of Karachi’, in Michel Boivin and Matthew A. Cook, eds, Interpreting the Sindhi World, p 194, Note 53.
30.Ferozuddin Butt, interview, September 2013.
31.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 66.
32.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 170.
33.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 169 and pp 263-264, Note 12.
34.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 161.
35.The Razakars were a private militia organised by Qasim Razvi to support the rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad and resist its integration with India.
36.Fazal Ahmed Bachani, Agen Iyen Huyas, pp 32-33.
37.Yasin Khan Babar, interview, March 2013.
38.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 150.
39.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 157.
40.S. H. Raza, Hamari Manzil, p 99 and p 101.
41.The same situation prevailed in West Punjab, where Sikh- and Hindu- owned land was tilled by Muslims, who later clashed with their new East Punjabi landlords.
42.S. Sathananthan, ‘Sindhi Nationalism and Islamic Revolution in Pakistan’, p 233.
43.Anwar Dingraee, Mohain Jo Manhoo, p 46.
44.In order to avoid the domination of East Pakistan, then the largest and most populous province in all of Pakistan, the Pakistan central government merged the four provinces of West Pakistan – Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan and NWFP – into one. This single province was called One Unit, and lasted till 1970, when the individual provinces regained their status. Although the then prime minister was Muhammad Bogra, the real architect of One Unit is believed to have been General Ayub Khan, then defence minister and later president of Pakistan.
45.See Ruk Sindhi, Qazi Faiz Muhammad, pp 43-48 and Mahmood Hasan Khan, Sind Hari Committee, 1930-1970: A Peasant Movement?, p 27.
46.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 263, Note 80.
47.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 62.
48.The Times of India, Bombay, 12 February 1948.
49.Sarah Ansari, ibid, p 60.
50.Suranjan Das, Kashmir & Sindh, p 105.
51.Ram Amarlal Panjwani, ibid, p 19.
52.S. Sathananthan, ibid, p 236.
53.As quoted in Suranjan Das, ibid, p 114.
54.It was only in 1956 that Bengali was also included as the second state language of Pakistan, after the language movement launched by the Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan.
55.Ahmadiyyas (also known as Qadianis) are Muslims who follow the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed. Ahmed, a Punjabi Muslim from Qadian in present-day India, claimed to be a divine reformer and messiah, and founded a reformist sect in the late 19th century. Ahmadiyyas are considered to be heretics by many mainstream Muslims, and have been classified as non-Muslims in Pakistan.
56.Najam Abbasi, Dithum Andithal, pp 193-194. My translation.
CHAPTER 16
Looking Over their Shoulder
Those Who Stayed
After the Karachi pogrom and the ensuing Hindu exodus, Sindh increasingly adopted predominantly Muslim mores. In less than a month, at the end of January 1948, The Times of India, Bombay, reported:
The face of Karachi is changing every day. Gandhi caps which hit one’s eye till August last have yielded to Jinnah caps. Loudspeakers periodically proclaim Muslim prayers from mosques, which are increasing rapidly in number. Only early this week a large Muslim deputation urged the Sind Premier, Mr. M. A. Khuhro, to build a Juma Masjid to eclipse the old one of Delhi. The “burca” which was scarcely seen till last June is common everywhere. Whether one likes it or not, Karachi is becoming overwhelmingly an Islamic city, which is but natural.1
By 1951, there were barely 1,50,000 Hindus left in Sindh – about 10 per cent of the population of 14,00,000 in the 1941 Census. Also, the Hindu population of Karachi – which had been a Hindu-dominated city for the last 200 years – had plummeted from 47.6 per cent to 0.4 per cent.2
These 1,50,000 Hindus had various reasons for not leaving Sindh. Some Sindhi Hindus returned to Sindh because their fathers or husbands, who were Sindh government employees, had been informed that they would not receive their salaries unless they called their families back from India.
Some Sindhi Hindus chose to stay behind on account of a collective decision, as a biradari or clan, which also gave them a limited sense of security through solidarity. Mehrumal Ramnani was born shortly after Partition and continues to live in Sindh. According to him, his paternal grandfather chose not to migrate to India because he was a mukhi, the headman of the village Wakro, near Larkana, and the entire Hindu panchayat there had decided to stay on in Sindh. While his grandfather stayed in his native village, three of his grandfather’s five brothers chose to migrate to India. They carried with them the property deeds for their agricultural lands and their
house in Larkana city, which they submitted to the settlement commissioner to obtain compensation. As a result, Ramnani’s family not only lost their share in the family’s agricultural property, but were also on the verge of being ousted of their home in Larkana city. They were finally obliged to purchase what was legitimately theirs at a public auction by the custodian of evacuee property.3
There were still other Sindhi Hindus who believed that they were too poor to migrate. They were scared to leave what little they possessed. Their situation was similar to that of the Muslims who stayed on in West Bengal; many of whom ‘tended to be the weak and the poor, who had few or no assets, no connections and hardly any skills to help them begin a new life across the border.’4
Then there were pastoral tribes from the Thar desert area – such as Bhils, Kolis, Menghwals and Odes – who were loath to abandon their cattle and their lands. In mid-June 1948, The Times of India, Bombay reported:
Harijans still in Sind present a serious problem. Being mostly agriculturists, they want to bring out their cattle and want in advance allotment of agricultural land for re-settlement and co-operative farming in places like Alwar, Jodhpur and Bharatpur. Harijans migrating from Sind, it is stated, are not being allowed to bring their cattle, and this is another factor responsible for retarding their evacuation.5
At the other end of the spectrum were a few extremely wealthy Hindus who were held back by the sheer size of their landed property. Pribhdas Sakhawatrai Tolani was a prominent and wealthy zamindar in Sindh, a Congress worker, and president of the Larkana municipality for several years. In October 1948, he was imprisoned on fabricated charges of spying for India. Ironically, he was imprisoned in Sukkur Central Jail, while his eldest son Gopal was the additional district and sessions judge in the same city. After three months, he was released on the condition that he migrate to India. It is likely that a major motive to eject Pribhdas Tolani from Sindh was his considerable landed property in Northern Sindh which, according to him, ran into thousands of acres.
Kewalram Shahani was the son of Dayaram Gidumal Shahani, the renowned Sindhi writer, social reformer, judge and philanthropist, and his family owned substantial property in Karachi as well as in the hinterland. He too was deprived of the bulk of his property which was confiscated by the Pakistan government as ‘evacuee property’ even though he had no plans to migrate. He still chose to stay on in Pakistan, and over time, his family managed to recoup a part of their assets.
There were also other affluent Hindu professionals – such as doctors and lawyers – who stayed behind, not because of their property, but because they had very close friends among the Sindhi Muslim elite, and so felt somewhat reassured by the protection that these friendships afforded them.
Then there was a smaller number of Hindus who chose to stay on in Sindh in order to be near their Muslim pirs. This Sufi approach was shared by Sadhu Thanwardas Lilaram Vaswani, who elected to stay on in Sindh at his native Hyderabad, along with a considerable number of his followers. Every week, he held a prayer meeting, a satsang, after which prasad would be distributed, according to Hindu custom. On 13 September 1948, two days after Jinnah’s death, India invaded the princely state of Hyderabad. At Sadhu Vaswani’s subsequent weekly prayer meeting, he expressed his regret at Jinnah’s demise, and after the meeting, prasad was distributed, as usual. This caused a furore among the Muslims who chose to interpret the distribution of prasad as an unpatriotic celebration of the death of the founding-father of Pakistan.
While one motive behind the harassment of Sadhu Vaswani and his followers was the substantial property that these Sindhi Hindus possessed, it is also true that the protests were triggered off by the exacerbation of anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiments after Indian action in the princely state of Hyderabad.6 Despite the fact that he had given material assistance to the muhajirs resettling in Hyderabad (Sindh), death threats were issued to Sadhu Vaswani, his satsang hall was stoned, and the satsang was disturbed on a regular basis. Muhajirs in Hyderabad threatened to start rioting and killing Hindus if Sadhu Vaswani did not migrate.
Finally, when one of his followers, Motiram Gidwani, was murdered in November 1948, Sadhu Vaswani reluctantly agreed to migrate to India. (However, he insisted on making a pilgrimage to the dargah of Shah Abdul Latif at Bhit Shah, before leaving Sindh.) He and his followers soon resettled in Poona, where the religious, educational and social service organisations established by him in Hyderabad were transplanted.7
Similarly, Swami Ranganathananda, head of the Ramakrishna Mission in Karachi, was obliged to wind up the mission in 1948, since he found the mission could no longer continue its activities there.
Congress Workers in Sindh
By the end of 1947, there was a call to dissolve the Muslim League in India, and the Congress in Pakistan, given that these two parties ruled the two new dominions, and their branches in the other country would be perceived as fifth columns. By the end of December 1947, the Sindh Congress took steps to disaffiliate itself from the Indian National Congress, and to function as an independent body.
However, most Congress workers who were still living in Sindh continued to be strongly influenced by Gandhi, Nehru and other senior Congress leaders. In fact, many of them had stayed on precisely because of Gandhi’s exhortations to avoid migration at all costs, be loyal Pakistani citizens and befriend muhajirs and help them resettle in Sindh. Some of them – including Hundraj ‘Dukhayal’ and Baldev Gajra – also tried to dissuade other Hindus from migrating. They continued to maintain close contact with the Congress high command and senior Congress workers in India. This proved to work against some of them, as in the case of both Gajra and ‘Dukhayal’.
Baldev Gajra, who was a young man of 38 in 1947, published Prabhat, a daily newspaper, from his hometown, Shikarpur. He was a staunch Gandhian, and had been jailed for about three years during the freedom struggle. After Partition, he supplied regular news updates on the situation of Hindus in Sindh to Congress leaders in India. This required him to travel across Sindh from time to time, and his travel expenses were reimbursed by Jairamdas Daulatram, a senior Sindhi Congress leader, who had already migrated to India. In accordance with Daulatram’s instructions, he received his money from the office of the Sindhi daily, Hindustan, in Karachi. In January 1948, however, Hiranand Karamchand wound up the Hindustan and migrated to India. Consequently, Jairamdas Daulatram, who was by then the union minister of food and agriculture in India, sent Gajra a cheque for Rs 50 by registered mail. Apparently the Sindh government intercepted this cheque. Baldev Gajra recalls that he was suddenly ordered by the Sindh government to close down his newspaper. He requested his friend and fellow Shikarpuri, Haji Maula Baksh Soomro, to intervene with Khuhro. It was Soomro who informed him that, after seeing a cheque to Gajra from a minister in the Indian government, the Sindh government suspected him of being a spy. Tipped off about his impending arrest, Gajra left Sindh practically overnight at the end of March 1948.8
Hundraj ‘Dukhayal’ Lilaram was a young, energetic Gandhian, who had been highly active in the freedom struggle. He had been jailed six times. In 1940, with the encouragement of Jairamdas Daulatram, ‘Dukhayal’ had founded the Gandhi Khidmat Ghar in Rato Dero, near Larkana, for the welfare of peasants, labourers and Dalits. With the objective of promoting Hindu-Muslim amity, some branches also opened in nearby villages.
In 1947, the 37-year-old ‘Dukhayal’ took Gandhi’s exhortations to heart and decided to stay on in Sindh, dissuading Sindhi Hindus from migrating, while also resettling muhajirs. He says that he was the general secretary (and the only Hindu member) of the committee formed for the resettlement of muhajirs in Larkana, his hometown. He edited and published a newspaper, also called Dukhayal, in which he further urged Sindhi Hindus to stay on in Pakistan. This step was resented greatly by a number of muhajirs, who felt that they would be deprived of property.
In October 1948, ‘Dukhayal’ was arrested on charges of using the Gandhi Khidmat Ghar to make weapons to destro
y Pakistan. The ashram, however, only manufactured charkhas, spinning wheels, mostly for sale and some for use on the premises, and also produced hand-made paper. When his house was searched, a small blunt knife was found. ‘Dukhayal’’s case was tried in the courts and he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, which was later reduced to two months on appeal. The Gandhi Khidmat Ghar was taken over by the government. After ‘Dukhayal’’s release from jail, the collector of Larkana, who was a well-wisher, requested him to leave the province since he feared that muhajirs might attempt to kill him. ‘Dukhayal’ left for Karachi, where he stayed for a few weeks, and then migrated to India in January 1949, where he subsequently played a major role in the establishment of Gandhidham.
Other Congress workers or persons with links to the Congress government in India were also harassed or arrested. Ram Mamtani, then a 26-year-old Congress worker in Hyderabad, recounts how he, along with three colleagues in the Congress, all living in different parts of Sindh, discovered that they were about to be arrested. They all managed to evade arrest by fleeing Sindh overnight. Since Congress workers were helping Sindhi Hindus evacuate from Sindh, they were able to obtain train passes relatively easily.9
Mukhi Gobindram Pritamdas, a Sindhi Hindu leader from Hyderabad and a former member of the Sindh Legislative Assembly, had stayed on in Sindh because of his extensive landholdings, but also to assist those Sindhi Hindus who wanted to migrate. Mukhi Gobindram had leased out a part of his palatial mansion in Hyderabad to the Indian High Commission, which had set up its branch office there. Because of this, Mukhi Gobindram was suspected of being a spy for the Indian government, according to his son, Jagdish Mukhi.10
Prompted again by suspicions of espionage, the Pakistan government also took drastic action against journalists. Kessu Jhangiani, the staff correspondent of the Hindustan Times, New Delhi, was externed from Sindh in early September 1948, and Waris Ishaq, the staff correspondent in Karachi for The Times of India, Bombay, was arrested in late September 1948.
Some journalists, who wrote about the condition of Hindus in Pakistan, had to be circumspect. Ramkrishin Advani, the young man on the bus who had narrowly escaped being lynched by a mob during the Hyderabad violence of 17 December, had stayed behind in Sindh. His mother started a kitchen for Hindu refugees in transit, at their large family home in Hyderabad. They also rented out some of their rooms to muhajirs, and Advani helped some of them find jobs. As a correspondent with Sindhi newspapers in India, Ramkrishin Advani recalls the elaborate precautions he had taken to avert suspicion or arrest: