THE MAKING OF EXILE

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  Since the elderly among the Sindhi refugees had been uprooted in the evening of their lives, several of them were left broken-hearted. There are abundant references in personal narratives to elderly Sindhis who died shortly after Partition. The Sindhi writer, Arjan ‘Shad’ Mirchandani said that Karachi appeared in his dreams for the rest of his life. According to him, there were Sindhi Hindus, traumatised by what they had gone through, who became insane or who committed suicide after Partition; this is, of course, difficult to verify.26

  Gul Ramchandani was a 14-year-old boy in Hyderabad, at the time of Partition. His family decided to migrate to India immediately after the anti-Sikh violence in Nawabshah, and resettled in Jodhpur. According to Gul Ramchandani:

  This sudden departure from their homes, businesses, etc., took a heavy toll on many families and individuals. In the first year in Jodhpur, we saw hundreds of deaths in Sindhi society, not caused by physical injuries but by mental anguish and torture. Even multimillionaires in Sindh became penniless overnight. Sindhis do not beg for assistance, even when they have no food to eat. To help the community, Sindhis formed a panchayat, which […] also arranged for the last rites of the departed and arranged for the cremations. My brother, Parso, and I were two of the many volunteers who carried dead bodies for cremation. We worked together. We do not have an exact count, but each of us must have carried at least 140 to 150 people on our shoulders during the first year. On some days, we even had to rush back to carry another body. I remember, at least on four occasions, we carried three bodies, one after another. This was not an easy task since the cremation grounds were about three miles away from the city. We had also to climb a hill before we reached the grounds, and we were carrying the body on our shoulders.27

  Although many Sindhis resurrected their lives in India after Partition, there were a few who were unable to do so. Often, these included the poor in Sindh, who did not have the education or the means to become successful in India. A notable example is that of the Labana Sikhs, now resettled in Bharatpur (even though they are not considered part of the mainstream Sindhi Hindu community). Coming from a background of poverty and illiteracy in Sindh, many Labana Sikhs continue to lead a hand-to-mouth existence even today, working as manual labourers, cycle-rickshaw drivers and fruit hawkers.

  Pribhibai Dohit, then an unmarried 18-year-old girl from Rohri, is now an 83-year-old great-grandmother in Bharatpur. Her husband used to make string cots in Rohri. In Bharatpur, he made a living by selling firewood, plying a cycle-rickshaw, and through manual labour. Pribhibai explains:

  Do I remember Sindh? Won’t one remember one’s own village, own town, one’s own life?

  I was married in Rohri. Over there, our men would make cots for a living. Now our life is here. Our men drive rickshaws and earn a little money. We had mauj, a good time, in Sindh; there is no mauj here. Over there, even if we didn’t earn, we could still eat. Sindh was Sindh. We would get mangoes and dates – where do we get that over here? I remember people catching pallo, and all kinds of fish from the Sindhu. We were better off there.28

  Apart from the aged and the poor, a third category of Sindhis Hindus who were most sensitive to the ravages of Partition were the writers. There were, essentially, two generations of writers. First there were those who were already established writers in Sindh. There were also a large number of Sindhis who were children or in their teens or 20s at the time of Partition, who became writers subsequently in India, often with mentoring from the older generation. The younger generation not only reacted to the trials and tribulations that they faced in the process of uprooting and resettlement, but also to the loss of their homeland. The trauma of Partition provided a tremendous spur to their writing. It is they who produced the mass of Partition literature in Sindhi – in short stories, novels, poems and memoirs – writing about their experiences in Sindh and in India. It is they who maintained old friendships and forged new ones with Sindhi Muslim writers across the border. Some of them even journeyed to Sindh in subsequent years, revisiting their hometowns and meeting their Sindhi Muslim friends.

  The linguist and writer, Pritam Varyani, then a 19-year-old youth, refused to leave Sindh until he narrowly escaped death in the Hyderabad pogrom of December 1947. When he and his family came to Ajmer, he recalls:

  In Ajmer, I wanted to study, I tried to study. Those were such difficult days. We would make bajri jo dhodho, buy curd for one anna, and dip the dhodho in the curd. That was our meal, that was our condition.

  I used to have tears in my eyes, since I had left my land. At night, when I drifted off to sleep, I would dream that I was going back to my village, Nasarpur. But where was my village?29

  Pritam Varyani revisited Sindh and his hometown of Nasarpur in 2010.

  For some writers, the pain of the loss of their homeland never went away. Mohan ‘Kalpana’, who was a 17-year-old when he left Sindh in early 1948, later became one of the Sindhi community’s most prominent writers, despite living most of his life in poverty. He writes of his childhood in Sukkur:

  A building was being constructed in a lane [not far from my house in Sukkur]. Lying around were sand, bricks and a tub, three-quarters filled with lime. One day I saw a black cat sitting next to the tub, with her eyes closed, as though she were rapt in prayer. As fast as the wind, I bent down and put her in the tub, sometimes inside, sometimes outside. She struggled tremendously. She was a black cat and her face became white. I looked at her for a long time. Finally she sank into the tub.

  In my life, whenever I am faced with any sorrow, whenever a feeling of helplessness grips my heart tightly, and no ray of light can be seen, when my mind is deprived of fresh air, this cat awakens from the museum of memory and is seen struggling to come out of the tub. For the time being, at the intellectual level, this tub for me is India and outside the tub is only Sindh.30

  Mohan ‘Kalpana’ longed to revisit Sindh but died before he could.

  The older generation of Sindhi writers were not merely writers – they were deep thinkers, often politically active, and were then at the vanguard of bringing about a renaissance in Sindhi culture. Deeply involved in the fields of education (almost all were teachers or professors), research and the press, these writers had a deep impact on Sindhi society and the succeeding generation of Sindhi writers. Although most of them did not write about their Partition experiences, the exile from their homeland took a heavy toll on their minds and bodies.

  Several senior Sindhi writers died shortly before or after Partition. Hotchand Mulchand Gurbuxani died in February 1947 at the age of 63. The poet Kishinchand Khatri ‘Bewas’ fell ill in March 1947 and, his health worsening over the next few months, finally died in his hometown Larkana in September 1947 at the age of 62. Narayandas Malkani, the senior Congress worker and writer witnessed the Karachi pogrom at close quarters. For the 57-year-old Malkani, who had been under considerable mental and physical strain for the last several months, this was the last straw. A few days after the pogrom, he became so weak that he didn’t ‘feel like talking or eating or living’.31 Diagnosed with pernicious anemia, Malkani was bedridden for a week before he could return to his normal life. The writer, thinker and activist, Jethmal Parsram Gulrajani, was also deeply traumatised by Partition. Since the rest of his family had already migrated to Bombay, he decided to go there for a short while in March 1948 and recoup before returning to Sindh. But he died barely four months later.32 The historian and writer, Bherumal Mahirchand also migrated from Karachi in 1948, but suffered from penury and ill health till he died in Poona in 1950.33

  Lalchand Amardinomal

  Then there was the eminent Sindhi writer, Lalchand Amardinomal Jagtiani. With Bherumal Mahirchand and Jethmal Parsram, he was part of a triumvirate of titans in the field of Sindhi literature and culture. A Hyderabadi Amil, Lalchand Amardinomal worked for many years as a school teacher and later established a school and a college in Karachi (both of which were short-lived, however). For a while, he (along with Jethmal Parsram) also tau
ght at the Sind Madrasatul Islam in Karachi. During this period, he studied Islam and published the Sindhi language’s first biography of the Prophet Muhammad in 1911, for which he was teased by his Hindu friends, who called him ‘Lal Muhammad’.

  A true heir to the Sufi tradition of Sindh, Lalchand Amardinomal was influenced by several schools of religion, philosophy and thought: Islam, the Vedas and Upanishads, the teachings of the Theosophical Society, the Sindhi Sufi poet-saints of Sindh, and the writings of Tagore, Marx and Lenin. In his personal life, he had great faith in Sakhi Qabool Muhammad, the spiritual heir of Sachal Sarmast, who had appeared to him in a dream when he was six-years-old. Lalchand Amardinomal was also deeply influenced by Gandhi’s teachings, and he took part in the Non-Cooperation Movement, for which he spent a year in jail in 1922-23. Exposed to the swadeshi movement in his school days, he wore khadi all his life. He served as the secretary of the Karachi District Congress for a while.

  A prolific and versatile writer with an immense command over his mother tongue, Lalchand Amardinomal wrote about 60 books in Sindhi: novels, essays, short stories and plays. He also edited several newspapers and literary magazines in his lifetime.

  Fond of travelling, Lalchand Amardinomal had travelled all over Sindh, as well as certain other parts of India. He was full of praise for the warmth and hospitality of the Sindhi Muslim villagers. He was a rare Sindhi Hindu who had been in favour of the separation of Sindh from Bombay Presidency.

  Both Lalchand Amardinomal’s parents had died when he was still a school-going boy. He had lost four children in their infancy, and his wife died in 1921. As a result, he was extremely attached to his only surviving daughter, Devi. Lalchand Amardinomal had a personal history of falling seriously ill every time he became emotionally distraught. Although a physically robust man, he would become sickly and bed-ridden whenever he was separated from his daughter for any length of time. Lalchand Amardinomal remained quite ill in Karachi in the difficult year of 1947, suffering from a large and painful carbuncle that took inordinately long to heal.

  Lalchand Amardinomal was also extremely close to his friend and colleague, Jethmal Parsram. His daughter Devi married Jethmal Parsram’s son Ram, her classmate from school. When his daughter and her marital family migrated to India after Partition in 1947, Lalchand Amardinomal, too, followed them in a few months. He packed his most precious belongings – his books, papers and writings – in gunny sacks and left Karachi in June 1948. Unfortunately for him, some of these were stolen on the way. Perhaps the shock of this loss, combined with his exile from Sindh, was too much for him to bear. He fell ill again on his arrival in Bombay.

  In Bombay, Lalchand Amardinomal devoted his energies to providing education to Sindhi refugees. He was involved with setting up new schools, writing new school textbooks in Sindhi, teaching at the SNDT University and participating enthusiastically in the Sindhi Sahit Mandal, a literary society set up by Sindhi writers in Mumbai after Partition. Yet, he lived in near-poverty.

  In 1954, he resigned from his teaching assignments, and fell ill with dysentery soon after. Ever since 1947, he had kept indifferent health. Lalchand Amardinomal considered illness a blessing in disguise, which gave him free time to write. Almost till the very end, he continued to work on books from his sickbed.

  In mid-April 1954, he was invited to speak at a writers’ conference organised by PEN in Madras, but was too ill to make the journey. The last session of this conference was held on the afternoon of 18 April 1954. Even as his paper was being read out, Lalchand Amardinomal died in Bombay at the age of 69.

  When his friend, Jethmal Parsram had died in Bombay soon after Partition, his ashes had been immersed in the Godavari at Nasik. When Lalchand Amardinomal heard of this, it had come as a great shock to him. He made it abundantly clear to his family that, when he died, he wanted his ashes to be immersed in the Indus, in Sindh. After his death, his family followed his wishes to the letter. His ashes reached Karachi on 12 December 1955, where it was decided that his ashes would be immersed in the Indus on his second death anniversary.

  On 17 April 1956, a meeting was held at the NJV High School, Karachi, to commemorate Lalchand Amardinomal. The next day, five Sindhi newspapers came out with special issues devoted to him, his writings and his immense contribution to Sindhi literature, education and culture. On the same day, the Sindhi Adabi Board released his book, Son Varniyun Dilyun (Golden Hearts) in Karachi. A group of people – including Osman Ali Ansari, a well-known writer and a one-time colleague of Lalchand Amardinomal’s – took his ashes to Hyderabad by car that day. There, the ashes were kept in Besant Hall, where a public meeting was held at 1 pm for people to pay their respects to the late writer. Even though it was summer, the month of Ramzan and the hottest hour of the day, the hall was packed. In the evening, another meeting was held at Gidu Park on the banks of the Indus, where five boats had been kept ready. Over 100 people collected there to pay their respects to Lalchand Amardinomal. When the five boats filled with people reached the middle of the river, Faqir Holaram sang shabad-kirtan, Sikh devotional songs. Then Osman Ali Ansari immersed the ashes in the waters of the Indus. Lalchand Amardinomal was home again.34

  *

  The beautiful Marui lived in Malir, a small village in the Thar desert. Umar Soomro, the king of Southern Sindh, fell in love with her, but Marui, faithful to her fiancé, spurned him time and again. Out of desperation, Umar came to her one day, disguised as a weary and thirsty traveller. When Marui went to the village well to fetch water for him, he abducted her and took her away to his capital, Umarkot. After locking her up in his palace, he begged her to marry him every day, tempting her with jewellery and silks and riches. But Marui remained constant to her fiancé, to her beloved people, the Maarus, and to her village, Malir.

  Shah Latif speaks through Marui:

  If I die, longing for my land,

  Take my body to my own land, Miyan

  Let me be in the Thar, buried beside my Maarus

  If my body goes to Malir, I will come back to life.35

  Notes

  1.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 16 September 1948.

  2.The Times of India, 19 January 1948 and 28 February 1948.

  3.Subhadra Anand, National Integration of Sindhis, pp 101-102. See also Victor Barnouw, ‘The Social Structure of a Sindhi Refugee Community’, p 151, and Vakil and Cabinetmaker, Government and the Displaced Persons, pp 107-108.

  4.The Times of India, Bombay, 25 May 1948.

  5.Victor Barnouw, ‘The Social Structure of a Sindhi Refugee Community’, p 150. See also the research of the psychologist V. K. Kothurkar, which found that the local Maharashtrians perceived Sindhis to be ‘dirty’, ‘showy’, ‘wealthy’ and ‘luxurious’, as quoted in Victor Barnouw, ibid, p 151.

  6.See Rita Kothari, The Burden of Refuge, pp 144-177.

  7.C. S. Lakshmi, Standing On Her Own Feet: Kala Shahani, p 17.

  8.Subhadra Anand, ibid, p 115.

  9.Subhadra Anand, ibid, p 106.

  10.Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, pp 75-76.

  11.Popati Hiranandani, interview, November 1997.

  12.Shobha Bhojwani, interview, August 2012.

  13.Rochiram Godhwani, interview, December 1997.

  14.Victor Barnouw, ibid, p 147.

  15.Mohan Panjabi, ‘Doctor Choithram Gidwani Sindhyun Laye Penhinji Siyasi Aaindah jo Daav Lagayein’. My translation.

  16.Mohan Panjabi, ibid.

  17.Sardar Nihalsingh Ailsinghani, interviews, December 1997, January 1998 and February 1998.

  18.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, pp 34-35.

  19.Horace Alexander, New Citizens of India, pp 60-61.

  20.Nandita Bhavnani, I Will & I Can, p 40.

  21.Lakhmichand Bahirwani, interview, August 2009.

  22.See letter to the editor, The Times of India, Bombay, 29 April 1948.

  23.Ratna Thadhani, interview, June 2011.

  24.Saaz Aggarwal, Sindh: Stories From A V
anished Homeland, p 14.

  25.S. K. Kirpalani, Fifty Years with the British, p 365. See also Sarla Advani’s narrative as quoted in Lata Jagtiani, ibid, pp 451-452.

  26.Arjan ‘Shad’ Mirchandani, interview, October 1997.

  27.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, p 426.

  28.Pribhibai Dohit, interview, December 2012.

  29.Pritam Varyani, interview, March 2013.

  30.Mohan ‘Kalpana’, Ishq, Bukh, Adab, pp 13-14. My translation.

  31.Narayandas Malkani, Nirali Zindagi, pp 138-139.

  32.See Deepchandra Belani, Jethmal Parsram, Motiram S. Ramwani, Jethmal Parsram ain Sandas Chund Likhyatun, pp 108-109, and G. M. Syed, Ajj Pan Chakyum Chaak, pp 81-82.

  33.Hiro Thakur, Bherumal Meharchand, pp 24-25.

  34.See Murlidhar Jetley, ed, Lalchand Amardinomal Jagtiani, pp 1-36, and Kaikeyi Pahlajrai Advani, ‘Shri Lalchand Amardinomal Jagtiani – Jeevan Lekha’.

  35.Shah Abdul Latif, Sur Marui, Dastaan 6, Bait 8. My translation.