THE MAKING OF EXILE

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  We stayed in that tiny veranda for three years, and later shifted nearby, to a room that belonged to some Muslims. Earlier, the Muslims’ luggage had been lying there; with the luggage removed, we could use the empty room.

  Around this time, Bhai Pratap sent his volunteers all over, to the places where Sindhis had settled in large numbers. His men urged us to settle in Adipur, the town Bhai Pratap had built. The volunteers asked, ‘What do you have here? No housing, nothing. What if we give you a house, and everything you need, including employment? Will you follow us?’

  Therefore, around 1949-50, we made our way to Adipur, by train to Navlakhi and then by launch to Kandla. Free of charge. Bhai Pratap must have paid for it. When we reached Old Kandla, trucks came to get us. At that time, there were no ports; there was little of what you see today.

  Initially, in Adipur, we were made to wait. There were tents put up. My mother said, ‘I will not live here. You promised us houses. What is this?’

  The volunteers said, ‘Just sleep here for tonight.’

  ‘I will not sleep here tonight,’ my mother put her foot down. ‘A house means chaar-deevaari, four walls. Give me four walls. Even if there is no roof above!’

  The volunteers protested, ‘Look, nothing has been constructed yet.’

  Finally, my mother conceded, ‘Okay, we’ll make do for a night, for a few hours.’

  In the morning, at nine, my mother and the others who had come with us from Ajmer were brought to an area behind Madan Singh Chowk. Everybody used to call the area 6-walis. There were other localities too: 4-wali, and 2-wali for instance. The number signified the rent. In 2-wali therefore, one could get a house for a rent of two rupees per month. Later the houses were given as a gift by Bhai Pratap to the residents.

  6-wali was the ninth in line, the last of nine lines. As my mother walked down the lane, she ventured into the first house that caught her fancy; that’s where we stayed. We worked hard, so we could earn enough to support ourselves. We didn’t want to extend our hand [to beg] in front of anyone.16

  Teji Bhojwani’s family had owned a provision store in Samaro but had been driven into poverty by Partition. Teji took up teaching at an early age; she did not marry, so she could continue providing for her relatives.

  It was mainly Sindhi families like Teji’s that came to Gandhidham. These were families that had not managed to settle elsewhere in India after Partition; families living in refugee camps or in the veranda of a relative’s house; families dependent on the largesse of kith and kin.

  The concept of Gandhidham did not gain popularity with the majority of Sindhi Hindus scattered all over India. The absence of a wide appeal for a ‘New Sindh’ had its roots in many factors. First, most Sindhi Hindus had managed to resettle themselves – at least to a limited extent – within a few years after Partition: they were reluctant to uproot themselves and resettle in a new place.

  Secondly, Sindhi Hindus, being business-minded, preferred living in bigger established cities and towns, such as Bombay, Ahmedabad, Pune. There was a widespread perception that Gandhidham, in the desert of Kutch, had limitations in terms of its existing facilities and growth prospects. Rita Kothari describes the area as ‘a region of dry wilderness with no industry, vegetation or urbanisation.’17

  Thirdly, in those days, access to means of various communication, travel and basic amenities was limited; one could only reach Gandhidham via ship from Bombay or Navlakhi, and water was available only from tube wells. Those Sindhi Hindus who wanted decent-quality houses fell between two stools; they didn’t want the low-quality houses that were built for the more impoverished, and they did not have the means to buy shares in the SRC, which would have let them build their own houses.

  Finally, Sindhi Hindus were not preoccupied with notions of ethnic solidarity, which is why there was no grassroots support for a new Sindh.

  Yet Gandhidham did hold out some allure for a limited number of Sindhi Hindus, especially for wealthy philanthropists such as Bhai Pratap. Given that the bulk of Sindhi Hindus in Gandhidham were poor or of the lower middle class – the target of philanthropy – wealthy businessmen who are concerned about the destitute have turned their attention to Gandhidham over the years. The most prominent of these include Murij Manghnani, Ram Buxani, Vikyomal Shroff, all from Dubai, Lal Hardasani from Hong Kong, and Kaka Pribhdas Tolani.

  Bhai Pratap, who ran an import business in Bombay, was, however, convicted on charges of misuse of imported goods, and ultimately sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment. In 1962, he filed for a mercy petition before the governor of Maharashtra, Vijaylakshmi Pandit. On re-examination of his case, it was found that he was innocent and had been falsely implicated; he was consequently pardoned and released. The stress and the infamy of the trial took a heavy toll on Bhai Pratap; he became a recluse and died a few years later in 1965.

  Pribhdas Sakhawatrai Tolani, popularly known as Kaka Pribhdas, had one of the largest landholdings in Sindh. In 1947, he was president of the Larkana Municipality (and of various other local organisations), and had no intention of migrating to India. However, in October 1948, he was arrested and imprisoned by the government of Pakistan on fabricated charges of espionage. He was released on condition that he migrate to India, a pretext for the Sindh government to confiscate his wide swathes of fertile agricultural land in Northern Sindh. Arriving empty-handed in Bombay in February 1949, he (together with his son Nandlal) built a construction and shipping empire from scratch, at the age of 56. After losing his eyesight in 1965, he shifted to Adipur in 1966 to devote his time to philanthropy, and so he was able to fill the vacuum created by Bhai Pratap’s death. In Adipur-Gandhidham, Tolani set up many institutions: several colleges and hostels, a stadium, an auditorium and an eye hospital and research centre. Today he is accorded the same respect and status as Bhai Pratap for his contribution to Gandhidham.18

  Apart from Sindhi philanthropists, Gandhidham also attracted a small number of Sindhi intellectuals, who were deeply inspired by the ideology behind the establishment of a new Sindh. As a result, Adipur is now home to the Indian Institute of Sindhology, a centre for the study of Sindhi language, literature, education, art and culture, with a library, a database on Sindhi Hindus, and a museum. Founded in 1989 by Lakhmi Khilani, Pritam Varyani and Satish Rohra, its explicit mission is to preserve the Sindhi language and promote the oral culture of the Sindhi community.

  Today, Gandhidham is like any small dusty town in India. However, thanks to its planned development, it is relatively uncongested. The SRC continues to administer Adipur, and has grown in stature over the years. Gandhidham has become an educational hub, with several colleges and polytechnics, and also serves (along with Ajmer and Indore) as one of the principal recruitment areas for Sindhi firms abroad seeking new employees from India. It is no longer, however, a Sindhi-majority town: Sindhis are now outnumbered by speakers of Gujarati, Kutchi and Hindi.

  Bharatpur

  When Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, it did not take long for the Indian government to clamp down heavily on the RSS. Soon it was suspected that the Hindu right-wing leader, N. B. Khare, who was then the prime minister of the princely state of Alwar, had played a significant role in plotting the assassination. The neighbouring princely state of Bharatpur was also suspected of having participated in the conspiracy. In February 1948, the administration of both Alwar and Bharatpur (where the RSS had risen in ascendancy over the last few years), was taken over by the Government of India. In March 1948, the new state of Matsya – which merged the princely states of Alwar, Bharatpur, Dholpur and Karauli – was formed. (Matsya later merged with Rajasthan in 1949.)

  Alwar and Bharatpur, part of the cultural region called Mewat,19 had also been home to a large number of Meos, a Muslim peasant community. In 1947, there had been severe anti-Muslim pogroms in both these princely states, actively encouraged by the respective governments. In fact, Bachchu Singh, the brother of the king of Bharatpur and military secretary, acqui
red great notoriety for the role that he personally played in the violence. According to the historian and political scientist, Shail Mayaram, Partition violence left 82,000 Meos dead20 and the maharaja of Bharatpur reportedly expressed delight that no Muslim was left in the state.21 She notes that, for the Hindu Jats who dominated these states, ‘[…] violence held the promise of swift possession of land.’22

  While many Meos subsequently returned to their homes and farms, thousands of Meos migrated to Pakistan, leaving behind their property. After the Indian government took over Alwar and Bharatpur, it sought to distribute this property (along with property similarly left behind by Muslims elsewhere in India) among the refugees newly arrived from Pakistan. This was done in conjunction with the Displaced Harijan Rehabilitation Board (supervised by Rameshwari Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru’s cousin’s wife and social worker), which sought to resettle Dalit refugees and other small farmers from Pakistan on small parcels of 10-15 acres of agricultural land in Mewat. They were also offered loans for the purchase of bullocks, fodder, seeds and other agricultural equipment, repair and construction of houses and wells. What is more, the government offered to look after these families for an initial period of six months after the allotment of land.

  Offers of resettlement on these lands were made to Sindhis as well – especially those living in refugee camps – but these offers were mostly refused, given that Sindhis were mostly urban traders, and looked down on agricultural labour. However, many Labana Sikhs – who came from an impoverished but rural background – chose to grab this opportunity with both hands. As Kewalsingh Dohit recalls, ‘I liked living in Kalyan camp, but our elders said, “Let’s go to the villages, let’s go to the villages.” So we came to Helak village near Bharatpur.’23 Although Kewalsingh Dohit now works as a manual labourer in Bharatpur, as do his sons, they still have a house in Helak. In Hakimsingh Dingnot’s family, each male member filled up a separate form, with the result that they each received separate allotments, together amounting to 22 bighas of land, also in Helak. ‘The government also gave us bullocks and money,’ Dingnot affirms.24

  As a result, close to about 4,000 such families moved to Alwar and Bharatpur. (It is ironic that while Labana Sikhs from Sindh took over Meo farms in Mewat, the original Meo owners of these lands resettled in Sindh.) A few Sindhi Hindu farmers were also resettled on these agricultural lands.25 Apart from Labana Sikhs from Sindh, Labana Sikhs from Bahawalpur and West Punjab also came to settle in this region.26 The Census of India, 1951 records a total of 23,394 Sikhs in both Alwar and Bharatpur districts, but it is difficult to say how many of these were Labana Sikhs from Sindh, or Labana Sikhs from Bahawalpur or elsewhere, or indeed other Sikhs.27

  Sadly, the scheme did not work out for many Labana Sikhs, for a variety of reasons. Some say that the land given to Labanas was rocky and infertile; other pieces of land had no irrigation. A few Labanas confess that they had no knowledge of agriculture. Still other Labana Sikhs report that the local Hindus eyed the land given to them and tried to interfere – they sent their herds of goats to destroy their crops, committed thefts of cattle, harassed their women, gave loans at crippling rates of interest, or manipulated Labanas in multiple ways so the latter would sell their land. Shail Mayaram also affirms that there was a triangular contest for land in this area between the Muslim owners, the incoming refugees who were allotted land, and the locals. According to her, ‘Sindhi refugees complained […] that Baniyas took Muslim land on the pretext of being owed money, looted property, cattle, houses and other moveable property, manoeuvred the ouster of refugees’ and also spread anti-refugee propaganda among lower class Hindus living in the region, in order to acquire Muslim land.28 Today, however, a few Labana Sikhs are still settled on farms in the vicinity of Bharatpur and Alwar, in villages such as Helak and Musakheda.

  Although Bharatpur had been taken over by the Indian union, Maharaja Brijendra Singh, the king, continued to exercise some power over his erstwhile kingdom. Many Labana Sikhs recall that the king helped and supported them, by giving them Muslim evacuee houses, and by allowing them to cut wood in the Keoladeo Ghana (then the royal hunting grounds, and now the world-famous bird sanctuary) to sell as fuel. On the other hand, Labana Sikhs who initially settled in villages near Alwar recall Congress workers giving them assistance.

  Dotted with several gurudwaras, Bharatpur has become the Labana Sikh capital of India, for Labanas from Sindh, as well as from Punjab and Bahawalpur. Many of them continue to work as manual labourers, and pull rickshaws in the town. Some Labana Sikhs also pull rickshaws in the bird sanctuary (where motor vehicles are not allowed), and have become expert ornithologists in the bargain.

  Notes

  1.Ram Jawhrani, ‘Interview with Kishu H. Mansukhani’, Sindhishaan, Vol 10, Issue 4, Oct-Dec 2011, pp 10-12.

  2.Heeru Kirpalani, interview, August 2009.

  3.The Times of India, Bombay, 19 January 1948.

  4.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, Government and the Displaced Persons, p xi.

  5.An under-the-table lump sum payment to the landlord to guarantee possession of rented property.

  6.The Times of India, Bombay, 5 November 1947.

  7.See also Vazira Zamindar, The Long Partition, p 146.

  8.Mohan Shahani, interview, September 2012.

  9.Ratna Thadhani, interview, June 2011 and Chandra Hiranandani, interview, November 2011.

  10.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, pp 486-489.

  11.The brother of Narayandas and Kewalram Malkani.

  12.Gulab Gidwani, Sindh Jyun Yaadgiryun, pp 65-68.

  13.Hundraj ‘Dukhayal’, interview, November 1997.

  14.This was subsequently transformed into an educational organisation, and today runs a number of schools and colleges in Adipur- Gandhidham.

  15.Pritam Varyani, interview, March 2013.

  16.Teji Bhojwani, interview, November 1997.

  17.Rita Kothari, The Burden of Refuge, p 141.

  18.See Pribhdas Sakhawatrai Tolani, My Reminiscences.

  19.Mewat, located within the triangle between Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, is named after the Meos.

  20.Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes, p 5.

  21.Shail Mayaram, ‘The Making of Partition Violence in Mewat’, in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds, Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society, pp 149-150.

  22.Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes, p 174.

  23.Kewalsingh Dohit, interview, December 2012.

  24.Hakimsingh Dingnot, interview, December 2012.

  25.Lata Tahiliani, ed, Sindh Jo Surhya Sipahi: Dada Rochiram Thawani, p 42.

  26.There had been severe anti-Sikh violence in Bahawalpur, and several Labana Sikhs who came from there report that they walked all the way to India. Although they were given an armed police escort, this journey by foot sometimes took as long as a month. The refugees would walk at night and rest during the heat of the day. Lalsingh Chohith, Khemasingh Chohith and Gurmukhsingh Ramaana, interviews, December 2012.

  27.Census of India 1951, Volume X, Rajasthan and Ajmer, Part II, Tables, pp 296-297.

  28.Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes, p 208.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Role of the Indian Government

  Refugees or Citizens?

  Cyril John Radcliffe, a British judge, drew up the frontiers of the two new nations ensconced in the safety of his office in Delhi, without even visiting the lands and fields and towns that he had divided. Then he fled the subcontinent after the six meagre weeks allotted to him. (After learning of the extent of the carnage that ensued, he subsequently refused his salary of 3,000 pounds.) Yet, the process of disentangling Pakistan from India was an extremely complicated one, which some may argue is yet to be completed. Where were these new borders to be drawn – on maps, on land, and in people’s hearts and minds?

  As Yasmin Khan points out, various critical aspects of Partition were nebulous at the time, and before the p
eople of the subcontinent could begin to examine these aspects, they were overtaken by unimaginable violence.1 One such aspect was the concept of citizenship, in both India and Pakistan. For some hardliners, religion automatically denoted nationality: Muslims were assumed to be Pakistani citizens regardless of where they lived, just as Hindus and Sikhs were presumed Indian. But for many people, the question of citizenship was not so easily resolved.

  These new borders began to impinge – or not – on people’s quotidian lives in unexpected ways. When Gandhi was assassinated, government offices in Pakistan (both central and provincial) remained closed on 31 January 1948, as a mark of respect. Jinnah himself retained his palatial bungalow on Malabar Hill in Bombay, expecting to have the freedom to visit it when he wished. He never returned, however. Yet, in March 1948, when the Bengali leader, Shaheed Suhrawardy made a speech in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in which he claimed that his residence in India was not incompatible with his Pakistani citizenship, this caused much controversy.2

  In late November 1947, the Government of India informed the various provincial governments that foreigners (defined as persons other than residents of Pakistan) travelling between the dominions of India and Pakistan needed valid visas to enter India, as distinct from visas for Pakistan. Residents of Pakistan, it appears, were not yet considered foreigners who needed visas to enter India. Yet, in the same month, when there were movements of troops from the princely state of Jodhpur on the Sindh border, the Sindh government found this disconcerting. When some troops entered a Sindhi village, the Sindh government was not sure how it should react: On the one hand, this did not appear to be legal, while on the other hand, the soldiers had come only to purchase provisions. In mid-January 1948, Pakistanis sending telegrams to India had to be informed by the Pakistan government that it was necessary for them to actually write the word ‘India’ as part of the address.