Whatever stories appeared in the papers in Sindh pertaining to Hindus, I would have them delivered to Hindustan through various innovative means. From the newspapers, I would collect my stories enquiring from people, and then prepare my news column. I would burn the first four copies of the news column and even the carbon paper. The fifth copy I would send to Hindustan and Sansar Samachar published from Bombay. I would type in such a way, emphasizing on some alphabets and missing out some, so that in case the news column was spotted, the typewriter would not be traced. I would never type on the paper lying at home. I would buy different paper and envelope from the market and ensure that its duplicate was not in my house. I would wear a pair of gloves while typing, writing, and sealing the [envelope]. I would then go to Hyderabad railway station, and give the [envelope] to some of the refugees, asking them to post it while they were in India. My news column would be as if the refugees in India were giving their account after reaching India. I would write [using] their names, as they were never to return, and as if they were narrating the stories. Through this medium, I would send sensitive information and news columns. The entire operation was clean and no one ever got a scent of it. I would send the information, which would otherwise have never reached Hindustan, only with the objective of a reporter and a columnist.11
Ramkrishin Advani subsequently migrated to Bombay, where he became a writer and a full-time journalist with the Sindhi daily Hindustan.
Second Class Citizens
The position of Sindhi Hindus as second class citizens in a newly formed Pakistan is best exemplified by the story of the Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer, Hari Daryani.
In 1947, Hari Daryani was a young man of 31, living with his parents, his wife and children in Larkana. He was employed as an engineer with the Public Works Department, but was known as a poet and writer, with the nom-de-plume of ‘Dilgir’, meaning ‘sad’. Here Hari ‘Dilgir’ recalls how his decision to migrate was overturned by his parents’ decision to stay:
A few days before 15 August 1947, the pleasant atmosphere of our hometown Larkana began to change. I began to worry about how I would live honourably in this new environment. At that point, there were absolutely no plans to leave Sindh.
Under the green moon-and-star flag of the Muslim League, Muslims in our locality would take out processions shouting slogans such as: ‘Pakistan Zindabad’, ‘Allah-o-Akbar’, ‘Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah Zindabad’, ‘Quaid-e-Millat Liaquat Ali Khan Zindabad’. Sometimes we would even hear slogans like: ‘Hindustan Murdabad’. We would often hear the song ‘Hans ke liya Pakistan, lad ke lenge Hindustan. [Laughing we took Pakistan, fighting we will take Hindustan.]’ Drums, flutes and fireworks, merry dances because everyday affairs. Earlier, such processions used to have slogans like ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ and ‘Mahatma Gandhi aur Jawaharlal Ki Jai’.12
I began to feel claustrophobic in this new atmosphere. Now I was no longer a child of Bharat Mata. Gandhi and Nehru were no longer my leaders but Jinnah and Liaquat Ali were. Instead of the Indian flag, I had to salute the Pakistani flag. No, no, how could this be? How could I continue living here? Wouldn’t it be an act of treachery to disrespect the Pakistani flag while living in Pakistan? Could I live here as a traitor? All these thoughts ran through my head.
I was a junior engineer in the PWD. I expressed my thoughts to my Hindu friends. Everybody’s opinion was that we should tender our resignations and move towards India. We submitted our resignations. When I came home from office and told my father about this, his eyes filled with tears. He said, ‘Son, if you want to go, you can very well go, I will not forbid you. My place however is in Sindh itself. My life is in my Sindh and my blessed pir is here as well.’13
Hari ‘Dilgir’’s parents were devout followers of Rohal Faqir of Kandri, an 18th-century Sufi saint who preached Hindu-Muslim unity, and was considered to be an incarnation of the Bhakti poet-saint Kabir. They were very attached to Saiin Ghulam Ali, Rohal Faqir’s descendant and heir to his gadi, and did not want to be separated from him. Hari ‘Dilgir’ says that the family would make a pilgrimage once or twice a year to Kandri Sharif, and their belief was Kandri Kashi ek hai, Rohal roop Kabir (Kandri and Kashi are one, Rohal is another form of Kabir). The next day, Hari ‘Dilgir’ withdrew his resignation.
But Sindh was completely transformed after the exodus of the Hindus and after the arrival of large numbers of muhajirs in Hari ‘Dilgir’’s hometown of Larkana. ‘Dilgir’ and his family lived in a haveli, which comprised about 20 Hindu houses. After most of these Hindus migrated, their houses were occupied by lower middle class muhajirs. ‘Dilgir’ made a conscious decision to become good friends with them; he also helped several of them get jobs and set up businesses.
‘Dilgir’ not only had his parents and family with him, but also numerous friends. His poetry teacher, Ustad Nawaz Ali Niyaaz, lived in Larkana. As a poet and writer, he was also fond of hosting mehfils, literary evenings, and mushairas, poetry sessions, at his spacious home, and these were well attended by the Sindhi and Urdu writers and connoisseurs of literature of the city. When he’d travel to the interiors of Sindh on official tours for 10-12 days each month, he would host dinners in the village he would find himself in. Local singers, poets and writers would be invited and after dinner, there would be poetry, songs and jokes, and conversations would go on late into the night. ‘Dilgir’ was also well connected with local power centres, whether they were the bureaucratic elite, such as the collector, the district superintendent of police, or the civil surgeon, or prominent politicians like Mohammed Ayub Khuhro, Qazi Fazlullah, Rahim Baksh Soomro and Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto. ‘Dilgir’ recalls how his various friends vied to protect him when there was danger:
Once, perhaps in 1955, there were Hindu-Muslim riots in the city. Hindu shops were looted, and one Hindu was killed. This riot had started in the morning, but I didn’t know about it till five in the evening.
I was seated, entirely relaxed, and the three outer doors of the house were open. Suddenly, a young Syed friend, Khadim Hussain Shah, came rushing in. He was a member of the municipality and was fond of literature, which is why he was my friend. He told me, ‘Saiin, you are really amazing. Here you are sitting with your door open and outside there are Hindu-Muslim riots. And more pertinently, you are in a neighbourhood of Jats. (By Jats, he meant muhajirs.) You are an elder to us Sindhis. I have brought some friends, and they are standing outside; we will keep watch outside your door.’
I was touched by this display of love, and tears came to my eyes. I gave Khadim Hussain a hug, and told him, ‘I share cordial relations with my neighbours and they view me as a respected figure in the neighbourhood. Your patrol therefore will not only be unseemly, but will also give offence.’
Khadim Hussain however refused to accept my stance. He urged me to come outside, where eight to ten Sindhi comrades were standing, with sticks and staves, ready to stand guard. Seeing me, they shouted ‘Allah-o-Akbar!’ On hearing them, my neighbours also came out. When they learned of the whole story, they folded their hands and told me, ‘Saiin, we will sacrifice even our necks for you. Trust us, nobody will harm a hair on your head.’
I told them, ‘Look, I have forbidden my Sindhi friends from standing guard, but they won’t listen.’ At this, the Sindhi Muslims and muhajirs began to argue among themselves. We were standing there, when I received a phone call from the DSP (who was perhaps a Punjabi), and he said, ‘Daryani sahib, I am sending three policemen to you, who will stand guard outside your door till peace returns.’ I told him loudly (so that everybody else could hear) that my friends and my neighbours were ready to help me, that I didn’t need the help of the militia, but in response he told me, ‘Daryani sahib, your well-being is my responsibility and the policemen will definitely come.’ We saw the policemen arrive; everybody dispersed. I then arranged to get police patrol for many other Hindus.14
‘Dilgir’ was doing very well at work. Receiving swift promotions, he rose to become an executive e
ngineer (class I). Yet, he recalls, he had to keep proving his loyalty to the state. He had to write the number ‘786’ (which represents the auspicious Muslim word, Bismillah) on all his official correspondence, following a government order. While he was working in Dadu district, his subordinates would take long breaks from work, ostensibly to read namaaz; ‘Dilgir’ could not protest on account of his religion. The situation improved only when the chief engineer, a Sindhi Muslim, reprimanded them.
‘Dilgir’ had to stop wearing khadi; he started wearing a Jinnah cap in winter. At home, he took down the pictures of various Indian leaders that hung in his otaq or guest house. He began greeting his friends with Salaam-alaikum. Once in a while, he would hear an anti-Hindu, anti-India joke. Dilgir realised that he had begun to consider himself a second class citizen and had developed an inferiority complex.
‘Dilgir’’s teacher, Kishinchand ‘Bewas’, had died in September 1947. Two close friends of his, Hundraj ‘Dukhayal’ and Pribhdas Tolani, had been arrested on trumped-up charges and forcibly expelled from Sindh. Other relatives and friends had also migrated to India. His elder brother, Naraindas, 22 years older than him, and a retired deputy collector, had also been obliged by difficult circumstances to leave for India in 1950. ‘Dilgir’ began to feel very alone. In his own words, he felt as though he had becoming a walking corpse. Even so, ‘Dilgir’ tells us that at work, at home or in literary circles, he received much love and respect. When his father died in 1955, he was devastated. He recalls:
On Baba’s final journey, hundreds of Hindus and Muslims gathered, and all of them came to the cremation grounds. I had expected about 500 people but here there were perhaps not less than 1,000, of whom there were barely 200 Hindus. On this occasion, the Brahmin maharaj suddenly whispered in my ear, ‘In the presence of Muslims, I will not be able to perform the pagdi ritual. I will only do it after they leave.’
I told him that requesting the mourners to leave was simply not possible. How could I tell my dear friends, including the collector, the DSP, the judge, the civil surgeon and engineers that they should leave? They had come all the way out of affection for me.
But the maharaj was very obstinate and it was difficult to find another Brahmin in Pakistan at short notice. Finally I lost my cool and I told him, ‘Maharaj, if you insist, I will do the pagdi ritual without you, but immediately after, I will definitely get you jailed under the Defence of Pakistan Act.’ When threatened with imprisonment, the maharaj relented and the pagdi ritual was completed.15
After ‘Dilgir’’s father died in 1955, his mother still refused to leave Sindh. Finally she, too, passed away in 1957.
At that point in time, ‘Dilgir’’s eldest son was learning Arabic, which was compulsory in schools, and took Arabic tuitions from a maulvi at home. ‘Dilgir’ realised that his children, growing up in an Islamic environment, knew more about Muslim rituals, about roza, namaaz and Id, than they did about Hindu festivals such as Janamashtami, Dussehra and Diwali. He was especially concerned for his two daughters. ‘Dilgir’ writes:
I realised that under the present circumstances, neither would my children be brought up properly, nor would I be able to fully express my passions and thoughts. At that moment I made a decision in my heart that, for the sake of my children and my conscience, I should leave Sindh quickly.16
His resolve became firm the day he took his family to watch a movie in a cinema hall in Thatta. When they left the cinema after the show, the family had to pass through a large crowd of rural Muslim men. ‘Dilgir’ and his kin were the only Hindus there, and his wife, Nanki Daryani, the only woman, that too without a burqa. When a bystander leered openly at his wife, ‘Dilgir’ lost his temper and hit him. This caused a great furore in the crowd, that a Hindu could hit a Muslim in Pakistan. Although the situation was ultimately resolved with the arrival of a policeman who was sympathetic to the Hindu family’s predicament, it left an extremely sour taste in ‘Dilgir’’s mouth.
‘Dilgir’ was unable to sell his house in Larkana and his landed property in Rato Dero taluqa, since, according to him, there was a government order that no Hindu could sell immoveable property. He gifted his Larkana house to his good friend, Dr Ashraf Abbasi, but this was later auctioned off by the government to muhajirs, to whom Dr Abbasi was then obliged to pay rent. (‘Dilgir’ was also unable to file a claim for compensation for his property after arriving in India, since this had become time-barred.) His narrative continues:
Meanwhile, I was made the roads and buildings executive in Thatta city, but my heart was just not in it. There were six people in my family, but not one had a passport. After living in Thatta for a few months, I arranged for a final posting in Hyderabad (Sindh) where the Indian deputy high commissioner had an office. I came from Thatta to Hyderabad, where many friends (some literary acquaintances and some engineers) were, but I firmly resolved not to meet anyone. […]
In Hyderabad, I gradually started giving away my possessions. My wife’s brother had come from India to help me with this difficult task, and gradually I got rid of all the furniture: the beds, cupboards, chairs and tables. Finally the situation was such that we used to sleep on the floor of the government bungalow; only the car remained. I sold that car secretly to a reliable contractor who was also a friend, on the condition that this transaction would remain a secret and that the car would drop me to the airport.
I didn’t meet anyone in Hyderabad, save my dear friend Hyder Baksh Jatoi. […] I have a lot of love and respect for him. […] One day I told him that in a fortnight, I would bid adieu to Sindh permanently and leave for India. Tears filled his eyes. In a choked voice, he said, ‘Friend, you too?’ I was very moved. He said, ‘Don’t go, please don’t go, I am ready to give my life for you.’
A day or two before I left, he came with his burqa-clad wife in a tonga at night to my house. I had never met his wife before. She went and sat with my wife, and putting her arms around her, tried to persuade her to stay in Sindh.
This was my last meeting with Hyder Baksh. After that, I read in the papers that he had been put in jail, and that one of his sons had also been arrested. Hyder Baksh is no more now, but his sense of humour and his love, his stories and our intimate conversations are etched in my heart even today.17
On 8 August 1958, I bade farewell to my beloved Sindh. As soon as I reached the Karachi airport (Karachi had been separated from Sindh) I knelt and bowed before the soil of the city. In the airplane, and throughout my journey, I was filled with sorrow; I felt helpless, unlucky, and worse, like a traitor. How could I leave my country? I was shattered. My parents had left me a few years ago, but today I was truly orphaned.18
‘Dilgir’ had already sent three of his children and his luggage to India. Through a Hindu merchant in Karachi, he had arranged to send his money to India too, at a hefty fee of 30 per cent. During the flight to Bombay, which was over two hours long, ‘Dilgir’ had been unable to speak a word to his wife or to their youngest son who was travelling with them.
In India Hari ‘Dilgir’ ultimately settled in Gandhidham, where, at the age of 42, he started life over as a professor in an engineering college. He says that on the first day of his teaching job, his hands were shaking with nervousness as he began to write on the blackboard. He and his family continued being devoted to the successor of their pir, Saiin Ghulam Ali of Kandri Sharif, who visited them in India.
Many Sindhis who left Sindh for India thought that they would return once things settled down, but in reality only a few actually made the journey back. My mother’s paternal cousin, Sarla Kripalani, then a 17-year-old girl, was sent to India in September 1947, and she lived with her grandparents in Indore. Her father was reluctant to leave his large agricultural holdings, and so her parents had stayed on in Sindh. In 1952, Sarla married Dr Nari Kripalani in Bombay and they both returned to Pakistan in early 1953; at that point they were 22 and 26 years old respectively.
Sarla’s paternal grandfather, Dialmal Doulatram Bhavnani, had been a mi
nister in the Sindh Assembly before Partition, and her husband’s father was one of Hyderabad’s prominent doctors. As a result, Sarla and Nari Kripalani rubbed shoulders with the Sindhi Muslim elite. Yet Sarla recalls several occasions when her elite Muslim friends made jibes about their being pro-Indian. After the advent of martial law in 1958, some of them even sent her cryptic notes saying that they could not meet her any more. Around this time, fearful of being accused of espionage, the Kripalanis felt compelled to destroy anything in their home that could be connected to India: stamps, letters, documents, anything that had ‘India’ written on it. The couple would burn these papers secretly, in the dead of night. Ultimately, in 1963, they too decided to migrate to India and sent Sarla’s parents-in-law there first. They kept their departure a secret, however, till the very end, only confiding in their Muslim nanny who swore absolute devotion to them.19
As is evident from these narratives, the communal hostility that attended the birth of Pakistan did not die after the exodus of most Sindhi Hindus to India. Those Hindus who stayed on came to be perceived as closet India-sympathisers, as fifth columnists, as interlopers in a Muslim homeland. As a result, there existed an atmosphere of great suspicion, which sometimes could be blown out of proportion as in the case of Baldev Gajra. This, not surprisingly, gave birth to a deep sense of fear, distrust and isolation among most Hindus, many of whom continue to look over their shoulder, internally identifying with India while publicly distancing themselves from the country, unable to voice their fears, anger and resentment at the treatment they receive.
THE MAKING OF EXILE: SINDHI HINDUS AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA Page 45
