THE MAKING OF EXILE: SINDHI HINDUS AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  This book does not open that dialogue, but its compassionate empathetic description of the context within which violence of Partition acquired its more sordid, sinister, sadomasochistic tones can be an invitation for such a dialogue. Future generations of Sindhis – staying in Sindh, India or elsewhere in the world – trying to protect their ‘Sindhiness’ will be grateful to Nandita Bhavnani for this sensitive self-exploration.

  ASHIS NANDY

  The result is that killing is no murder, looting no robbery, setting fire no arson, encroachment no illegal possession, forcible conversion no interference with religion; massacre of innocent men, women and children has lost its horror in the eyes of the custodians of law and order. Brutalities, bestialities, butcheries, barbarities and unspeakable atrocities are justified as acts of retaliation. About a million must have been murdered, maimed or injured. Property worth several millions has been destroyed; villages, towns and fine city quarters consumed by flames; and two generations cannot completely rebuild what has been wiped out. Several millions have been rendered homeless refugees and many more millions are ready to flee in all directions for safety. Trade and commerce have virtually come to a standstill. Sources of revenue are in a state of paralysis. Crops have suffered and shortage of food is threatening famine. Epidemics may break out at any moment. Depleted treasuries point to the inevitable bankruptcy of Government and financial ruination. And this is called the freedom of Hindustan and the freedom of Pakistan.

  – Shaikh Abdul Majeed Sindhi

  The Times of India, Bombay, 25 September 1947

  *

  Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.

  – Edward Said,

  Reflections on Exile and Other Essays

  Prologue

  Sassui-Punhu

  The little baby girl lay fast asleep in the box.

  When she was born, there had been a riot of festivity in her parents’ home: the long winter of their childlessness had finally ended. But then soothsayers had prophesied that she, the daughter of a Brahmin, would grow up to marry a Muslim. Unable to look this terrible future in the eye, her parents chose to give her up to the river instead.

  The baby in the box was floated on the waters of the Sindhu. It floated downstream till it reached Bhambhor, in the south of Sindh, where it was found by a dhobi called Muhammad. A childless man, he was overjoyed to receive this munificence from the river. Gazing at her beautiful face, he decided to name her Sassui, after the moon.

  Sassui grew up, blossoming with the years, till her radiance filled the town of Bhambhor. In those days, traders from Makran would pass through Bhambhor on their way east to Thatta, the capital of Sindh. So one day there came to Bhambhor a merchant by the name of Babiho, a servant of Ari, the Jam of Makran. Peddling his wares, he chanced to meet Sassui and her friends.

  Greatly taken with Sassui’s beauty, he described to her in great detail the handsome and graceful Punhu, son of Ari. And when Babiho returned home to Makran, he then recounted to Punhu the exquisite charms of Sassui. Thus, without their even meeting each other, did the love story of Sassui and Punhu begin.

  But now Punhu, aching to meet Sassui, ran away from home and made his way to Bhambhor. When he met Sassui, it was love at first sight for both of them. Her father, Muhammad, unable to part with her, permitted them to get married only on the condition that Punhu stay with them. And so, in the name of love, the prince became a washerman.

  Meanwhile in Makran, Punhu’s family became frantic for their missing son. When news of Punhu’s marriage and new life trickled back to them, his three brothers vowed to their father that they would go to Bhambhor and bring him back, come what may. When they arrived in Bhambhor, Punhu, Sassui and her father, Muhammad, welcomed them with open arms and the next few days were spent in drinking and feasting. But one night, once Sassui was fast asleep, and when Punhu was in his cups, the brothers carried him away on their camels, galloping westwards.

  When Sassui awoke, it was too late. Beating her chest and tearing her hair, she refused all offers of help, and set out to find Punhu, barefoot and all alone. In search of her beloved, she braved the scorching sun and the biting winds, her feet torn to ribbons by the rocky Pabb mountains. When she reached the Marbar hills, she met a shepherd and asked him if he had seen Punhu.

  But the shepherd, meeting a woman alone in the wilderness, looked at her with evil in his mind. And Sassui, realising her predicament, prayed to God to save her. So the earth opened up, and Sassui was swallowed up, all except for a corner of her shawl left fluttering on the ground. Overcome with remorse, the shepherd fell to his knees. He built her tomb on that very spot.

  Meanwhile in Makran, when Punhu came to his senses, he desperately wanted to return to Bhambhor. But his family would not let him leave again. Soon, however, Ari realised that his lovelorn son was simply wasting away, pining for his beloved. And so his father let him return to Bhambhor to bring back his bride.

  But a terrible shock awaited Punhu, when he came across the new tomb and heard from the shepherd what had happened. Overcome with grief, Punhu collapsed there and then. He, too, was buried beside Sassui’s grave. And thus, the star-crossed lovers, the Hindu girl and the Muslim boy, were united only in death.

  Sindh

  Sindh1 lies in the north-western corner of the Indian subcontinent, a dry desert land greened by the mighty eponymous Indus. Bordered by the thirsty Thar desert and the Rann of Kutch in the east, and the dark Khirthar mountains in the west, the Indus, revered by both Hindus and Muslims, is the main source of water in this rainless land. It is a capricious god, though: bringing floods one year, abandoning its path the next, changing the course of history.

  Although Arab traders had already brought Islam to the Malabar coast during the Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime, Muslim rule came to Sindh with the Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim in the year 711 ad. But bin Qasim and his army did not convert the bulk of the Sindhi people by the sword. Most of Sindh’s Muslims converted gradually over the centuries, with the lower classes – the haaris or peasants, craftsmen and labourers – seeking to escape the harshness of the Hindu caste hierarchy by embracing Islam. Most of these conversions were the work of missionaries, first the Syeds from Arabia, then the Ismailis, and finally the Sufis.

  Sufism in Sindh springs from the confluence of three religions: a lenient form of Islam, a relaxed version of Hinduism, and the gentle Sikhism of Guru Nanak. This has wrought a deep, unspoken belief in the unity of God – advaita or wahdat al-wujud – expressed in a plurality of forms. If the divine has many faces, what does it matter which god you choose to worship, which guru or pir you choose to follow?

  Since the Sufis borrowed and moulded local religious beliefs, several Sufi saints in Sindh had both Hindu and Muslim identities, such as Khwaja Khizr, the incarnation of the Indus, who is also known as Zindah Pir. Both Hindus and Muslims worship at his shrine on an island in the middle of the Indus, between Sukkur and Rohri. At the shrine of Uderolal in Southern Sindh, there are both a dargah and a temple. And at the famous dargah of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar at Sehwan, Hindus still perform the mehndi ceremony at the annual urs. Numerous Hindus were – and still are – followers of Muslim pirs, and would make sharbat for Muharram processions, while Muslims often visited Hindu temples to partake of the prasad.

  For centuries, Sindh was the westernmost frontier of Hinduism, on the route of invaders – Persians, Greeks, Scythians, Arabs – approaching from the west to conquer the riches of Hind. It was also a clearinghouse for trade: with Persia and Mesopotamia to the west, Punjab, Afghanistan and Central Asia to the north, Gujarat, Kutch and Rajasthan to the east. This traffic of traders and invaders, the vagaries of the Indus, the gentleness of the Sufis: all these left Sindh with a legacy of flexible tolerance. The Sindhi language itself is a mixture of words derived from S
anskrit, Persian and Arabic.

  Hindus and Muslims in Pre-Colonial Sindh

  The Hindus of Sindh were obliged to put aside their orthodoxy and ideals of purity in order to survive. They ate meat, and drank wine, and did not lose caste if they travelled abroad or became disciples of Sufi pirs. They were mostly Lohanas, a small minority confined to business and trade, in which they flourished. They took their identity from their hometowns: Karachi had its merchants, with their trading networks spread over the Persian Gulf, and Shikarpur had its bankers, with their moneylending networks extending across Central Asia. Among the Hindus was a smaller sub-minority, a sub-sect of the Lohanas – the Amils – who were divans, administrators to the Muslim rulers of Sindh. Dressing in a quasi-Muslim style, they were adept in Persian, the language of the court.

  The Muslim community – the majority of Sindh’s populace – had many different faces. There were Baloch pastoralists who had been settled in Sindh for several centuries, as also canny Memon traders from neighbouring Kutch. There were the Syeds who claimed lofty descent from the Arabs, and the Sammats, the earthy indigenous Sindhi tribes.

  By the early 19th century Sindh was ruled by a unique federation of Talpur Mirs, originally from Baluchistan. Four brothers (and later their sons) – the Char Yar – ruled in Hyderabad, while other branches of the family reigned in Khairpur in the north, and Mirpur Khas in the south. A rung below them were the powerful Muslim landholders – the waderos – who governed the countryside. The Hindus – merchants, traders and administrators – were a highly urban community, seeking safety in numbers behind city walls. The common people – the haaris, labourers and artisans – were generally Muslim, rural and poor, and they were severely dominated by both the Muslim elite and the Hindu middle class.

  For centuries, Sindhi Hindus and Muslims had shared a chequered and ambivalent relationship, ‘a relationship in which conflict and hostility mingled easily with amity and a syncretic attitude to religion.’2 If the Muslims sat on the throne, the Hindus held the purse strings to the economy. If the Muslims dominated the countryside, the Hindus wielded great influence in the cities.

  Under Muslim rule, though, Sindhi Hindus were subject to certain restrictions. Generally, they were not allowed to own land, and were forbidden to ride horses; only donkeys and camels were allowed to them, and when a Muslim nobleman passed, they had to dismount and stand by.3 When Captain S. V. W. Hart of the Bombay Native Infantry visited Karachi in 1840, he found an equal number of temples and mosques;4 yet religious idols and pictures were not openly displayed in Hindu shops. Sindhi Hindus also feared that their temples might be demolished by the Muslim regime.

  But the greatest fear of Sindhi Hindus under Muslim rule was that of forcible conversion to Islam, although this does not appear to have been very common. There are various accounts of Sindhi Hindus scrupulously avoiding Arabic, the language of the Quran. They chose not to speak either the word rassi (rope) which might be misunderstood for rasool (prophet), or the full name of the village, Tando Allahyar – either of these might have resulted in the Muslim public forcing the Hindu to convert against his will. Although a converted Hindu could perform rites of penance and return to his original religion, a forcible conversion was naturally a matter of great social disgrace to the individual and an outrage to the Hindu community as a whole.

  Yet the Muslim rulers were shrewd enough to recognise the importance of the trade revenues that the Hindus brought to Sindh, and the fact that they played an indispensable role in matters of administration, too mundane for the Mirs to deal with. And so the Hindus, especially those living in the trading marts of Karachi and Shikarpur, were patronised and protected to some extent, although they were always aware of their dependence on the goodwill of the Muslim rulers and the Muslim majority.5

  Naomal Hotchand

  Around the year 1832, a young Hindu boy, the son of a labourer, was scolded by his teacher. Sulking, he happened to stand outside the doorway of a mosque. Some Muslims entered into a conversation with him, and took him inside the mosque. It is said that they kept him within, and converted him. The enraged Hindus of Karachi downed the shutters of their shops, and refused to sell anything to the Muslim populace. The Muslims, in retaliation, polluted the wells in the bed of the river Lyari, from where the Hindus obtained their drinking water.

  Communal temperatures were still running high the next day when Syed Nooral Shah passed by the house of the family of Bhojoomal, one of the founders of Karachi. Bhojoomal’s great-grandson, Parsram, was sitting outside the house at the time, and an argument erupted between him and Syed Nooral Shah. A crowd of Muslims gathered, and now Syed Nooral Shah claimed that Parsram had insulted not only him, but also the Prophet. In the words of Seth Naomal, Parsram’s brother:

  The news spread throughout Sind and the whole province seemed to be lit up with one blaze of religious fire. All the Mussalmans seemed to make one common cause, and the Hindus, too, rallied together.6

  Parsram was sent for safety to the neighbouring Hindu kingdom of Jaisalmer. Meanwhile, the controversy had reached the ear of the Mirs, and a summons was issued for Parsram to attend the Hyderabad court. Since Parsram was away, his father, Seth Hotchand, decided to go to Hyderabad himself. Hotchand and his family, merchant princes of Karachi, had had good relations with Mir Karamali, who had arbitrated in disputes in Hotchand’s extended family. On his past visits to the Mir, Hotchand had been invited to sit with him on the same cot, and not on the carpet below, with the rest of the audience. But this time, his friendship with Mir Karamali yielded very little. The Muslim crowd carried Hotchand away by force to Nasarpur, where they forcibly converted him to Islam.

  Although Hotchand returned to his family later and performed expiatory rites, he was ultimately obliged to retire to neighbouring Kutch in disgrace. Till now, the Talpurs, having recognised the importance of the trade revenues, had generally patronised and protected the Hindu merchants of Karachi. Now, when they turned a blind eye to this outrage, Hotchand’s son Seth Naomal vowed to take revenge.

  By this time, Sindh had also taken on increased political significance for the British, who were nervous about Russian designs on Afghanistan. In their less-than-scrupulous dealings with the Talpurs – reneging on their treaties, penalising them on exaggerated grounds and ultimately resorting to unwarranted aggression – they were aided by a vengeful Naomal, who supplied them with provisions, beasts of burden and valuable information.

  And so in February 1839, the HMS Wellesley sailed into ‘Crotchey Harbour’ and immediately proceeded to fire at the fort, quickly pulverising it to dust. The British later claimed that the fort had sounded a cannon in greeting, which they had misunderstood as hostile, but this unjustified and carefully planned attack was meant to pressurise the Talpurs into signing a new treaty with the East India Company. For years, legends would be told of the thick smoke rising from the smouldering fort, spreading like a dark cloud over the town, turning day into night.

  When the East India Company, came ashore, it was Naomal’s elder brother Seth Pritamdas who greeted the guests at the wharf, and took them to his home for refreshments. There was a plain between the walled town and Rambagh, the old Hindu tank, and this is where the British initially chose to pitch their camp. The people of Karachi though, stood aloof from the invaders, hostile and uncooperative, and it was only Pritamdas who gave them any initial help.

  Now Karachi became the British gateway to the rest of Sindh, the disembarking firangis7 piggybacking on fishermen across the marshes till they reached solid land. Adjacent to the indigenous town, they added the tidy Cantonment and the gridlines of Saddar Bazaar, but Talpur soldiers continued to guard the Mitho and Kharo Darwazas.8 Then, in early 1843, the British conquered Sindh, a self-confessed ‘piece of rascality’, which was attached a few years later to the Bombay Presidency.9

  Colonial Rule Transforms Sindh

  After Sir Charles Napier – whom the Baloch called ‘Shaitan ka bhai’, the devil’s brother – con
quered Sindh in 1843, most of the region came under British rule.10 The British, in their misplaced enthusiasm, assumed that it would be easy for the Bombay Cadre11 to administer Sindh, and so in 1847, Sindh was made part of the Bombay Presidency, governed by a Commissioner-in-Sindh. In reality, Sindh was markedly different from the rest of the Presidency – especially the geo-climate and culture – and the British made several blunders in their first decades of governing Sindh.

  The British’s disastrous experiments with the revenue system resulted in the overtaxation of many Muslim waderos. Several of these waderos, who had mortgaged their lands with Hindu moneylenders, were ruined. What made matters worse was both the extravagant spending habits of the average wadero, and the exorbitant rates of interest charged by the moneylenders.

  Now, after the advent of the British, the Hindus were free to own land and they were far more careful with their finances. And so, by the turn of the century – after just 50 years of British rule – Hindus owned, or controlled through mortgage, more than 42 per cent of the land in Sindh.12 This was a monumental shift, considering that the Hindus were still barely 23 per cent of the population,13 and had owned hardly any land in Sindh before 1843. But, with the coming of the Raj, the Hindus’ star was on the ascendant in other ways as well.

  The merchants of Hyderabad, having lost their patronage from the Talpur court, turned their gaze, first to the soldiers of the East India Company, and later to the various colonies of the British empire. By the turn of the century, these merchants – now known as Sindhworkies14 – had set up a lucrative trading network which stretched from Yokohama to Cape Town to Panama.

  The Shikarpuri bankers suffered a temporary setback, when the Russian Revolution resulted in many of them winding up their businesses in Central Asia and returning home. But most of them were quick to adapt, shifting their base to Karachi, and further afield to Quetta, Bombay and Madras, to regain their earlier riches.