THE MAKING OF EXILE

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  When the creation of Pakistan was announced, we were very happy, very excited. We thought that our mortgaged lands would be returned to us, that we would take over the businesses of the Hindus. There were no communal riots in Garhi Yasin. The muhajirs came here only after the Hindus migrated…

  After the Hindus left, however, the village was deserted. It became like a ghost town, with their empty houses. Some Hindu houses were looted, some were ruined, some went to the muhajirs.

  At the time of Partition, Sant Singh and his family hired a small plane from Jacobabad to Karachi. My father accompanied them to Jacobabad. Sant Singh gave him the keys to his house, full of his belongings. For a long time, my father was reluctant to open the house. He felt that if anything got misplaced, he would not be able to face Sant Singh. Sant Singh’s crops remained standing in the fields. My father got the crop harvested and sold, and remitted the money via money order to Sant Singh in Kalyan camp. Such was our friendship.

  We didn’t get a good exchange for the Hindus. Initially, when the muhajirs arrived, we helped them a lot. The government had also put up posters, welcoming them to Sindh. All the prominent people of the village – the mukhtiarkars and the zamindars – would cook cauldrons of food for them. Initially, they were put up in the Seva Mandli, a sort of community centre built by the Hindus.

  The muhajirs were mostly telis, oil pressers, from East Punjab. They were labourers, peasants. But many claimed that they used to be zamindars in India. Several muhajirs acquired lands on the basis of false affidavits. The muhajirs are still here. But many have gone to Karachi, where they feel more secure.37

  Yasin Khan Babar’s father was not able to protect Sant Singh’s property for very long; it became evacuee property.

  To oversee the allotment of Hindu property to muhajirs, an evacuee trust property office was set up, administered by a custodian. However, given that demand for housing in cities like Karachi and Hyderabad far outstripped supply, bribery became rampant. According to Vazira Zamindar, ‘the Custodian of Evacuee Property is widely remembered […] as the first site of the nation-state’s corruption’.38 Although corruption was not new to Sindh, it is likely that the muhajirs had their first brush with it in Pakistan in this context.

  The issue of Hindu property became a major bone of contention between muhajirs and Sindhi Muslims, on occasion degenerating into violent clashes between the two communities. Out of the 1,345,000 acres of land left behind by Sindhi Hindus, 8,00,000 acres were allotted to muhajirs. Many Sindhi Muslims believe even today that several muhajirs obtained property allotments on the basis of false claims. This was an especially bitter pill for Sindhi Muslims to swallow, considering that they had expected to inherit Hindu property. They found a new name for the muhajirs: makar, or locusts. On the other hand, muhajirs felt that evacuee property was meant to be used principally for the resettlement of Partition refugees, as was the case in West Punjab, and in India. Indeed, the allotment of evacuee property was perceived as the fundamental solution to the problem of refugee rehabilitation.

  There was also fierce competition among muhajirs for evacuee property. According to Vazira Zamindar, there were numerous court cases fought, not only between muhajirs and Sindhi Muslims, but between muhajirs vying for the same property.39 Syed Hashim Raza, who was then collector and district magistrate of Karachi as well as rehabilitation commissioner, had to tackle the urgent and mammoth problem of rehabilitating muhajirs. He recalls an occasion where two muhajir brothers both claimed prior occupation of an evacuee house; both were ready to swear by the Quran in order to prove their claim.40

  The allotment of evacuee property was complicated by the fact that in many cases, agricultural land owned by Sindhi Hindu absentee landlords was tilled by Sindhi Muslim peasants. These haaris, who expected to inherit their lands after the departure of the Hindus, now found that they had muhajir landlords instead, several of whom were keen to evict them.41

  Hindu property was a thorny issue between waderos (Sindhi landowners) and Sindhi peasants as well. According to the writer S. Sathananthan:

  The Muhajirs received unexpected support from Sindhi landlords. The latter colluded with the former to preclude the distribution of evacuee land to landless Sindhis, a land reform that could have threatened the supremacy of Muslim Sindhi landlords; and the Muhajir leadership rewarded some Sindhi landlords with allocations of evacuee land.42

  Raising the slogan of ‘Jo khede, so khaaye (he who tills shall eat)’, the haaris protested against this scheme of property allotment and started a movement to obtain land allotment for themselves: the Allottee Tehreek. To accommodate them, the government began to make allotments in the names of agriculturists but, according to the writer Anwar Dingraee, some waderos now began to register themselves and their various family members as haaris, in order to obtain allotments.43

  This struggle between waderos and haaris continued until the formation of One Unit44 in 1954, when fresh allotments were made to muhajirs. Now haaris found that their allotted lands were being taken away from them. Some haaris were made to pay rent to absentee landlords, while others were evicted from their lands and put in jail by rival claimants with the connivance of the local police; their lands were confiscated. When the opening of the Kotri barrage in 1955 released many thousands of acres for cultivation, most of these were allotted to Punjabis and Pathans. All these developments only led to the intensification of the Allottee Tehreek, led by a spectrum of grassroots leaders, including Qazi Faiz Muhammad, Sobho Gianchandani, Maulana Azizullah, Jalaluddin Bukhari, and later, G. M. Syed. The movement resorted to civil disobedience and hunger strikes, and over 100 haaris were arrested and jailed. The Sindh government, on its part, chose to denounce haari politics as ‘communist’ and refused to negotiate with its leaders. In 1957, a haari conference was held in Karachi, which was attended by thousands of common farmers from all over Sindh. The presence of this vast number of peasants in the city shook up the government, which finally agreed to talk to the leaders of the movement. In early 1958, a delegation led by Qazi Faiz Muhammad met Iskander Mirza, then the president of Pakistan, who gave them assurances of cooperation, but the onset of martial law shortly after put paid to that.45

  In Pakistan, the issue of evacuee property was also complicated by the subsequent birth of Bangladesh. The Evacuee Property Trust Office in Karachi – itself located in evacuee property, a bungalow in Jamshed Quarters – continued to be operational even in the 21st century. According to Vazira Zamindar, it was reconstituted in 1960, and now manages only charitable, educational and religious trusts.46

  The Separation of Karachi

  One of the most glaring examples of the Sindhi-muhajir conflict was the move to separate Karachi from Sindh and convert the city into a centrally administered area, and to shift the capital of Sindh to Hyderabad. Talk of shifting the capital to Hyderabad had first been mentioned as early as September 1947, but at that time the idea had been brushed aside by the Sindhi Muslim League.

  In its initial flush of enthusiasm for Pakistan, the Sindh government had made great sacrifices to lay the foundation for the new nation. In July and August 1947, Khuhro, as minister for public works, had already overseen the rapid construction of several buildings in the centre of Karachi for use by the Pakistan central government. After Independence, the Sindh government gave up Government House, its Legislative Assembly and its secretariat for the use of the Pakistan central government. The Sindh government offices were relocated to Napier Barracks, then at the edge of the city; Khuhro’s office was a small annexe behind these barracks. The Sindh Assembly first used the Assembly Chambers when the Pakistan Constituent Assembly was not using the premises; later they began to use the NJV High School on Bunder Road, which happened to be at the opposite end of town from Napier Barracks.

  While Jinnah had moved into Government House (earlier the official residence of the governor of Sindh), Mrs Liaquat Ali Khan’s first choice for a house was the one occupied by the chief justice of Sindh. W
hen the latter refused to vacate his house, her next choice was the residence of Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur, who also refused to relinquish his home to the prime minister of Pakistan. Finally, Khuhro offered to vacate his home and move to a smaller house, usually given to the collector of Karachi. Ghulam Mohammad, the finance minister, was offered a handsome house belonging to a Parsi which was located on the unfashionable end of a fashionable road; he accepted grudgingly, while remaining resentful of the fact that his son-in-law had not been given a separate house. There had been accommodation available for the Pakistan central government at the military barracks in the distant suburb of Malir, mostly unused after the war. But the Muslim League high command had rejected this as being too remote from Karachi. Barracks and military housing on Bunder Road and Civil Lines had also been given to the Pakistan government.

  Now, the Pakistan government proposed to not only shift the capital of Sindh from Karachi to Hyderabad, but to also separate Karachi from Sindh. This gave birth to great bitterness among the Sindhi Muslims; they felt that not only were their sacrifices and efforts going unappreciated, but their home province was also ‘being beheaded’.47 One member of the Sind Assembly likened the situation to ‘a guest asking a host to clear out of the house’48 – an extension of the real estate metaphor that plagued Sindhi Muslim-muhajir relations.

  Moreover, with the extra expenditure incurred on account of both setting up Pakistan’s capital as well as refugee rehabilitation, the Sindh government was faced with a deficit; there were no funds to build new government buildings. It was feared that the loss of Karachi would cripple the province politically and economically. As a result, the separation of Karachi from the rest of Sindh was denounced – by both the Sindh Assembly as well as the Sindh Muslim League Council – as a ‘flagrant violation’ of the express provisions of the Lahore Resolution of 24 March 1940 which guaranteed the territorial integrity of each federating unit.

  But the heart of the matter was that Karachi was perceived by most Sindhis to be the nerve-centre, the true capital of the province. Sindhis were loath to relinquish their capital and move to Hyderabad which did not compare with Karachi. The Pakistan central government’s response was that Karachi was no longer a Sindhi city since now Sindhi Muslims were overwhelmingly outnumbered by muhajirs.

  There was also a personal angle to the separation of Sindh from Karachi. Khuhro was at loggerheads with Liaquat Ali Khan – they both vied for supremacy in Karachi as well as for Jinnah’s favour – and the two had clashed on several occasions. With Khuhro in Hyderabad, Liaquat Ali Khan could reign supreme in Karachi. Khuhro also had a poor relationship with Ghulam Hussein Hidayatullah, the governor of Sindh, and the two had fallen out over Hidayatullah’s reallocation of ministerial portfolios without consulting Khuhro. Consequently, Hidayatullah did not back Khuhro.

  The Sind Provincial Muslim League council met on 8 February 1948, to pass a resolution recording its protest against the ‘unjust, impolitic and unwise’49 move to separate Karachi from Sindh, making it a federally administered area. Outside the meeting hall, the students’ federation held a demonstration, shouting slogans denouncing the separation of Karachi. Meanwhile, according to one source, the Muslim League high command prevailed upon Hidayatullah, then the governor, and Pir Ilahi Baksh, the education minister, to sway the Sind Assembly Muslim League Party into accepting the separation of Karachi. When this did not work, Jinnah prevailed upon Governor Hidayatullah to dismiss his old foe, Khuhro, on charges of alleged maladministration, misconduct and corruption at the end of April 1948. (He was subsequently tried on 62 charges by a special court of inquiry, with a bench of judges from outside Sindh.) A week later, a new government was sworn in. On 22 May 1948, the Pakistan Constituent Assembly resolved to make Karachi a permanent capital as well as a federally administered area, separate from Sindh. Pir Ilahi Baksh – who in February had claimed that Sindhi Muslims were not prepared to give up even an inch of the land of Sindh – quietly acceded to the separation of Karachi in July 1948, having won the plum post of premier for himself. (He himself was found guilty of corrupt practices less than a year later, and was superseded by Yusuf Haroon. Yet, given the fickle nature of Sindhi politics, both Khuhro and Pir Ilahi Baksh were able to revive their political fortunes in subsequent years.)

  The partition of Karachi from Sindh dealt a strong blow to the province’s finances, already weakened not only by the departure of Hindu businessmen but also by the increased expenditure on muhajir relief and rehabilitation and the establishment of the Pakistan government machinery in Karachi. Now Sindh had to give up trade revenues from the port city, while also dealing with the damages caused by the severe floods of 1948. In 1955, with the formation of One Unit, Sindh ceased to exist as a province, and it was only in 1970, when One Unit was dissolved, that Karachi was reunited with Sindh after 22 years.

  A Cultural Gulf

  At one level, the Sindhi-muhajir conflict stemmed from a competition for dominance. The muhajir elite were used to their pre-eminent position in the Muslim League, and were reluctant to play second fiddle. The Sindhi Muslim elite, on the other hand, could not imagine not ruling their own homeland. Yet, this conflict also had an important cultural facet.

  Over the centuries – both before the reign of Jam Tamachi, and after – Sindh had been invaded and conquered many times. It had also become home to immigrants of many different ethnicities – Arabs, Baluchis, Afghans, Punjabis, Rajputs, Kutchis, to name a few. The great poet-saint of Sindh, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, could trace his lineage back to an Afghan ancestor who had migrated from Herat in the late 14th century. The pioneering and prolific Sindhi writer, Mirza Qalich Beg, was the grandson of a Christian Emir from Georgia. Yet there was a crucial difference between the immigrants of old and the muhajirs. All the earlier immigrants had adopted Sindhi customs and the Sindhi language and had, over time, assimilated into Sindhi society. Both Shah Latif and Mirza Qalich Beg wrote in Sindhi, and not Arabic or Persian.

  Given the vast numbers of muhajirs that had arrived in Sindh – ultimately they numbered three million50 – most of them did not consider themselves a minority or obliged to adapt to the host community; instead several muhajirs brought with them the approach of colonisers, which only antagonised Sindhi Muslims. Further, the bulk of the muhajirs who settled in the cities of Sindh were urban, middle class, literate and articulate, with aspirations of upward social mobility. Stepping into the shoes of the Sindhi Hindus, by 1951, they took over most of the main cities of Sindh – Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpur Khas and Nawabshah – ranging from 54 per cent to 68 per cent of the urban population51 and also acquired dominance in commerce, as well as in the army and the civil bureaucracy, as junior partners to the Punjabis. (It was the rural and the lower middle class muhajirs who were settled in the interior of Sindh.) According to S. Sathananthan:

  In 1970, out of 10,000 bank employees in the Sindh province only 250 or 2.5 per cent were Sindhis. The proportion of Sindhis in the Sindh government was less than 40 per cent; and in the central government service there was only one Sindhi per 5,000 employees.52

  The cultural outlook of the muhajirs was vastly different from that of the Sindhi Muslims, who came from a more rural, tribal and feudal background, and who were not highly literate. Coming from Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad – erstwhile bastions of Muslim rule with traditions of urban culture – most muhajirs could not appreciate Sindh’s Sufi-flavoured folk culture and instead felt that Sindhis had no culture to speak of. According to one account, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan supposedly remarked on one occasion: ‘What is Sindhi culture, except driving donkeys and camels?’53

  The muhajirs considered Urdu to be superior to other languages in Pakistan, and ‘more Islamic’, and so Urdu was declared the state language by the muhajir leadership of the new country as early as February 1948.54 In May 1948, Urdu was made compulsory for Sindhi Muslims in schools in Sindh, but Sindhi was not compulsory for muhajirs. After 1952, Urdu was also compulsory for students a
t the Sindh University. Street signs were now written in Urdu. In 1957-58, University of Karachi students were forbidden to answer examinations in Sindhi. Sindhi medium schools began to close down. Prominent English and Urdu newspapers and Radio Pakistan, which were dominated by muhajirs, paid little attention to the Sindhi language or issues pertaining to the Sindhi people. From the Sindhi point of view, the history of the Pakistani movement came to be written from a muhajir perspective.

  Partition also changed the texture of religion in Sindh and in Pakistan. Most muhajirs, who looked towards the ulema for leadership, leaned towards scriptural Islam. With an increase in religious orthodoxy, there was a parallel decline in mission schools run by Christians, alcohol consumption and tolerance of religious minorities, especially the Hindus. Instead, Pakistan saw the rise of a strong anti-Ahmadiyya sentiment,55 taking root in the early 1950s, and continuing to the present day. This orthodoxy contrasted sharply with the religious outlook of the Sindhi Muslims. Given their Sufi beliefs and customs, Sindhi Muslims were often perceived by muhajirs as ‘lesser’ Muslims. Their reverence for pirs and dargahs was deemed as unorthodox and uncivilised. Muhajirs also looked with contempt at the way Sindhi Muslims greeted each other – that they joined their palms in a manner reminiscent of the Hindu namaste, instead of raising their hands in salaam.

  The marginalisation of Sindhis in trade and commerce, in the central and the state government, in the provincial civil services, in education, in culture and language – that too in their own homeland – by muhajirs and Punjabis, who treated them with condescension, created deep resentment among the Sindhi Muslims. The Sindhi writer Najam Abbasi says:

  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