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

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  5.See, for example, Naomal Hotchand, A Forgotten Chapter of Indian History.

  6.Ibid, p 65.

  7.Foreigners.

  8.The gates of the Karachi fort.

  9.See Nandita Bhavnani, ‘Kalachi, Kurrachee, Karachi: Biography of a Metropolis’, in Pratapaditya Pal, ed, Sindh: Past Glory, Present Nostalgia, pp 134-145.

  10.The principality of Khairpur, in the north, whose ruler Mir Ali Murad Khan Talpur had connived with the British in their conquest of Sindh, became a princely state.

  11.In this book, I have used place names that belong to that era, such as Bombay, Poona, Calcutta, etc.

  12.E. H. Aitken, Gazetteer of the Province of Sind, p 338.

  13.Census of India, 1901.

  14.After their original range of goods, Sindh handicrafts, collectively known as ‘Sindhwork’ among their first British clients.

  15.Now Aligarh Muslim University.

  16.Keith Young, Judge-Advocate General in Sindh, to Charles Napier, 27 May 1846, as quoted in Hamida Khuhro, The Making of Modern Sindh, p 11.

  17.The vaanio – also known as bania or vaania – is an occupational community of merchants, shopkeepers, bankers and moneylenders. They form the Vaishya or the third of four Hindu castes, wherein the Vaishyas are deemed to be the stomach of Hindu society, while the Brahmins are the head, the Kshatriyas the arms, and the Shudras the feet.

  18.Iqbal Akhund in Ghulam Fatima Shaikh, Footprints in Time, p 94.

  19.G. M. Syed, Penhinji Kahaani, Penhinji Zubaani, pp 145-146.

  20.See Naomal Hotchand, ibid, p 64, and S. V. W. Hart, ibid, p 213.

  21.David Cheesman, Landlord Power & Rural Indebtedness in Colonial Sind, p 185.

  22.K. R. Malkani, The Sindh Story, p 115, and Gobind Chellani, as quoted in Rita Kothari, ‘RSS in Sindh: 1942-48’, p 3009.

  23.Shaikh Abdul Rahim played a significant role in Muslim politics, especially in the Khilafat and Silk Handkerchief movements.

  24.G. M. Syed, ibid, p 13.

  25.Khadim Hussain Soomro,The Path Not Taken, p 14.

  26.Baldev Gajra, Sind’s Role in the Freedom Struggle, p 2.

  27.Khan Mohammad Panhwar, Shaikh Abdul Majeed Sindhi: Life and Achievements, p 45.

  28.Vishnu Sharma, Dr Choithram Partabrai Gidwani ji Jeevani, pp 142-143.

  29.Pursuant to the Communal Award of 1932, minorities were given ‘weightage’ (that is, more seats than their proportion of the total population) in the provincial legislative assembly and the bureaucratic cadres of their province. Just like Muslims in the United Provinces, Sindhi Hindus were given more seats in the Legislative Assembly than their numbers warranted. Out of a total of 60 seats, Sindhi Muslims were given only 35, although they were 70 per cent of the population. Also, it became customary for every government in Sindh to appoint one non-Muslim minister for every two Muslim ministers.

  30.Allen Keith Jones, Politics in Sindh 1907-1940, p 78.

  31.The assassination of Bhagat Kanwar Ram had allegedly been ordered by the Pir of Bharchundi, whose son had been manhandled by Hindus in Sukkur a few months earlier. This was due to Hindu resentment over the role that the Pir had played in the conversion of a number of Hindus. Later, in July 1940, when Hassaram Pamnani, a member of the Legislative Assembly, accused the Pir publicly, he too was shot dead.

  32.Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, p 415.

  33.These riots took place against a backdrop of worsening communal relations in northern Sindh in 1928-30, and followed communal violence in Larkana and Jacobabad. The violence in Sukkur lasted for three days in August 1930.

  34.E. Weston, Report of the Court of Inquiry Appointed under Section 3 of the Sind Public Inquiries Act to Inquire into the Riots which Occurred at Sukkur in 1939, p 65.

  35.E. Weston, Report of the Court of Inquiry Appointed under Section 3 of the Sind Public Inquiries Act to Inquire into the Nature of the Manzilgah Buildings at Sukkur.

  36.G. M. Syed, Struggle for New Sind, p 60.

  37.Suhail Lari, An Illustrated History of Sindh, p 260.

  38.The Hurs were militant followers of the Pir Pagaro, based in Pir Jo Goth or Kingri in the northern district of Rohri. Although the Pir sympathised with the Congress, his Hur followers looted both government officials as well as moneyed individuals; there were a large number of Hindus in both these categories.

  39.Atmaram Kulkarni, The Advent of Advani, p 32.

  40.Tapan Basu et al, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, p 30.

  41.Ibid, pp 16, 34-35.

  42.Vishnu Sharma, ibid, pp 190-192.

  43. ‘Report on the communal riots in Sukkur town submitted to the Congress Working Committee’, by Abdul Qaiyum Khan, as quoted in Ayesha Jalal, ibid, p 416.

  44.North West Frontier Province, the present-day province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan.

  45.Abdul Qaiyum Khan, ‘Reflections on Some of the Causes of the Partition of the Indo-Pakistan Sub-Continent’, in C. H. Philips and M. D. Wainwright, eds, The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935-1947, p 376.

  46.See Pir Ali Muhammad Rashdi, Uhay Deenhan Uhay Sheenhan, Volume I, pp 150-161 and pp 186-188. Also Volume II, p 56.

  47.As quoted in Motilal Jotwani, A Dictionary of Sindhi Literature, p 57.

  48.These leaders included Pir Ilahi Baksh, Qazi Fazlullah and Agha Badruddin Ahmed. See G. D. Khosla, Stern Reckoning, pp 244-245.

  49.Based on several of my interviews with Sindhi Hindus of that generation.

  50.The Times of India, Bombay, 3 April 1947.

  51.G. M. Syed had broken with the League in early 1946.

  52.G. M. Syed, ibid, p 264.

  53.The Times of India, Bombay, 23 May 1947.

  54.Nooruddin Sarki, ‘Anpoori Atamkatha [An Unfinished Autobiography]’, in Sattar Pirzada, ed, Aadarshi Insaan Nooruddin Sarki, pp 40-41. My translation.

  55.Shah Abdul Latif, Sur Sassui Abri, Dastaan 5, Bait 6. My translation.

  SINDH

  CHAPTER 1

  Sindh on the Eve of Partition: 3 June to 15 August 1947

  India’s Independence was formally announced by Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and last Viceroy of India, in New Delhi on 3 June 1947. Mountbatten had returned from London only a few days before, carrying with him the papers of the ‘Master Plan’. On 2 and 3 June, he had had long meetings with the leaders of undivided India: Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jivatram Kripalani, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar and Sardar Baldev Singh. He had also conferred separately with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

  On 3 June, at seven in the evening, Mountbatten made a speech which was broadcast live on radio. His speech was followed by those of Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh, their ‘life warm’ voices reaching the people.1 In Sindh, as elsewhere in India, people flocked around radio sets to listen to this historic announcement, which was also broadcast in public parks and on loudspeakers outside radio shops.2 None of the Indian leaders was happy; Nehru and Baldev Singh had not been in favour of Partition, and Jinnah was given a ‘truncated’ Pakistan.

  Clement Attlee, the prime minister of Britain, had indicated earlier in 1947 that the British would withdraw from India by 30 June 1948: soon enough for most Indians. Now there were just 73 days left for the new dominions of India and Pakistan to come into being, and the government machinery swung into concerted action. Nine expert committees and several sub-committees, overseen by a steering committee, were formed, and started meeting daily to decide the division of the country’s various assets: its armed forces, railways, civil service, etc.

  The question of whether or not to partition India had been left to the representatives of the Indian people, although the end result was a foregone conclusion. By 15 June, the Muslim League, the Sikhs and the Congress had all approved of Partition. By the end of June, Bengal voted for it as did Punjab (in the middle of severe co
mmunal violence); referendums held in the NWFP and the Sylhet district of Assam also voted for Pakistan by early July. On 26 June, Sindh voted to become part of Pakistan. It was then the only province in West Pakistan with a Muslim League government firmly in place.

  Sindhi Muslims were exhilarated by the prospects of both independence from the British and a new social order free from Hindu domination. Further, after Karachi, the capital of Sindh, was proclaimed the capital of Pakistan, they eagerly anticipated that Sindh would play a significant role in the new dominion. Sindhi Hindus, on the other hand, were greatly apprehensive about what the future held in store for them. For them, 15 August spelt not freedom, but fear.

  By the first week of June 1947, there had been reports of communal violence in several parts of northern India – in Bihar and the United Provinces (UP),3 in Delhi and Calcutta, in Lahore and Amritsar. Partition-related communal violence had actually begun long before, beginning with the Muslim League’s call for Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946.4 Starting with the bloodshed in Calcutta and other places in Bengal, this fire had spread to Bihar and UP, and later West Punjab. By mid-1947, the flames had engulfed most of North India, from the NWFP in the west to Bengal in the east.

  Yet in the weeks leading up to Partition, Sindh remained relatively free of communal violence. There was only one incident on 6 June 1947, in Jacobabad in Northern Sindh. Envelopes containing pieces of cotton soaked in glycerine and potassium permanganate were thrown into 17 Hindu shops in the main bazaar at night, setting them on fire. But no person was attacked, injured or killed.5

  But the absence of communal violence did not mean that Hindu-Muslim relations were completely amicable in Sindh. With reports of riots and massacres from other parts of India flowing in daily, Sindhi Hindus were deeply fearful of similar violence from Sindhi Muslims. And, even in the absence of physical violence, they were apprehensive about how they would be treated in a Muslim state.

  Hindus dominated several important spheres in Sindh – trade, education, the bureaucracy and the judiciary – and as a result, they considered themselves to be in command of the province. Now with Pakistan around the corner, Sindhi Hindus began to realise that they would lose their power and privilege, and undergo a loss of status.

  Dr Choithram Gidwani, president of the Sind Provincial Congress Committee, articulated his doubts about the Muslim League’s intentions in July 1947:

  If 25% of Muslims could not trust 75% of non-Muslims in India and wanted a separate state to safeguard their rights, how does Mr Jinnah expect the 30% of non-Muslim minority in Sind to rely merely on assurances which have been honoured more in breach than in observance in the past?6

  Nimmi Vasvani was a 10-year-old girl in 1947. Her large family lived in a spacious bungalow in Bunder Road Extension in Karachi. Nimmi Vasvani recalls the climate of fear and tension among Sindhi Hindus that she was sensitive to even as a child:

  In 1947, before Partition, my older sisters were studying in D. J. Sind College. At night, their classmates, Muslim boys, would come on bicycles. It would be quiet at that hour, and they would shout from downstairs: ‘Please ask your father to take you all away, otherwise you will be sorry.’ I don’t think they wished to threaten us, only warn us, tell us to ‘get out of their hair’.

  There used to be soda water bottles lined on the terrace. That was our defence: soda water bottles, and the servants of the house – two or three male servants and one or two female attendants. Most Hindus in our locality kept Hindu servants, and the Parsis and the Muslims kept Muslim servants. And there was a watchman who guarded the whole street. The watchman used to walk up and down the street, and every so often he would call out to each house, ‘Sujaag raho, be alert! All okay?’ And we would say, ‘Yes, everything’s fine.’

  So yes, the atmosphere at night used to be tense.

  In Bunder Road Extension, the bungalows and grounds were very big, and quite far from each other. The closest bungalow to us was behind a small lane at the back. In those days, not many people had phones, and we would shout messages to the houses in the vicinity. Sometimes, we would be told: ‘There’s a whole crowd of Muslims near Parsi Colony.’ The man of the house would then go to the terrace.

  Now in my house, we had my father, and two of my three brothers, and two or three servants. My eldest brother, who was 18 or 19 at the time, had gone to college in Lahore. Everyone used to be on tenterhooks on hearing of mobs: Are these crowds going to attack us? Are they going to walk through the door and scare the living daylights out of us? Or what? To add to our apprehension, we’d hear stories about the events in Lahore.

  Being a 10-year-old, I arrived at my own conclusions regarding the situation, even though I really didn’t understand what was going on. We would sit at the dining table and I recall, there would be discussions. I would absorb everything like a sponge. But I did not understand what was scaring me. One day, I piped up and asked my father, ‘Are they going to kill all of us?’ That statement made everyone sit up.

  My older sister, Padam was married and living in Lahore. She, along with her two daughters and ayah, had come down to Karachi for her holidays as always. She was not able to go back to Lahore, because the situation there had become much worse. She decided to move to Bombay with her children and ayah. There was an Australian first class boat which was going from Karachi to Bombay, which a lot of Sindhi Hindus boarded. My dad said, ‘Padam is going, why don’t you go too?’ So he sent me off.7

  Nimmi Vasvani left Karachi before Partition, and sailed to Bombay with her sister Padam and her family.

  Fears of violence as also anxieties about a loss of social standing compelled some Sindhi Hindus to confront an ominous question: Should they migrate or shouldn’t they? Hiranand Karamchand Makhijani8 was then a 46-year-old leading journalist, staunch Gandhian and freedom fighter from Hyderabad (Sindh). He was married to Kamla Hiranand – both husband and wife were jailed several times during the freedom struggle, and wore khadi all their lives. Here are some excerpts from Hiranand Karamchand’s diary from 1947:

  20 April 1947: What will happen? What will become of Sindh? Will there be a massacre in our beloved Sindhri9 also? What is my duty? Can I go away? I am unwell as it is. But leaving will be an act of cowardice. How can I leave my home at this precarious point in time?

  1 May 1947: The same old story. Friends and relatives say, why should we leave Sindh? But how can we continue to live here? Can we simply twiddle our thumbs while our house is on fire? Will Pakistan happen? Will we become aliens in our own home? What kind of problem is this? What joy is there left in Sindh now? But how can we leave Sindh? As long as there is danger, we have to stay. Later, we will see.

  10 May 1947: If there is an attack, what should I do? All my life I have preached the sermon of non-violence. How will I raise my hand against another? How do I face the religious lunatics? If I cannot respond with violent means, then with non-violence, will I be able to throw myself in front of the mob? I cannot find this courage within myself.

  What will happen to the women? How will I be able to bear it if anyone is attacked in front of me? How will I be able to stop them?

  6 June 1947: Sindh has settled down. The causes of conflict have been removed but I have been separated from India! Have I become alien to India? I simply cannot believe it, that this has happened with one stroke of the pen! How can I become an alien in my own country? The threads of my life are tied up with my motherland! How can I break them? The ideals of my life are linked with the freedom of India. Now how can I say that India is no longer my country? No matter what the laws say, I will continue to consider myself an Indian, I will live as an Indian.10

  A ‘Nervous Peace’

  Clearly, Hiranand Karamchand, like several Sindhi Hindus, was beset by the dilemma of whether to leave or to stay in Sindh. He also describes the dismay of Congress workers in Sindh, who found that the independent India that they had worked for, for so many years, was to be an alien country for them. Rather, they now fou
nd that they were citizens of Pakistan, the creation of which they had staunchly opposed. Many Sindhi Hindus, including Hiranand Karamchand, wished to stick to their ‘Indian’ identity regardless, which would only propel them towards migration later.

  On the other hand, the advent of Pakistan had emboldened many Sindhi Muslims. Even though there were no actual instances of physical violence, Hindu-Muslim relations began to spiral downwards with several instances of Muslims intimidating and harassing Hindus, especially in the countryside where the Hindus were outnumbered.

  Some Sindhi Muslim haaris refused to till agricultural lands belonging to Sindhi Hindus, with the intention of coercing them to abandon or sell their lands. There were several reported instances of Muslims forcibly occupying Hindu-owned agricultural land, and seizing standing crops. There were also other forms of harassment. For example, in late July, a Sindhi Muslim zamindar in Dadu district is reported to have given his tenants the following order: ‘Muslim cowherds shall not lead out for grazing cows, buffaloes and goats belonging to Hindus nor shall Muslim barbers, washermen, etc. serve Hindus.’11

  At the same time, many nervous Hindus blocked the lines of credit that they usually extended to Sindhi Muslim zamindars. Thus, for the time being, the Sindh government found it extremely difficult to collect land revenue for the rabi crop12 sown in the winter of 1946-47.

  Hindus living in the hinterland began abandoning their farms and fields and moving to the cities, where they felt safer. However, the cities were not entirely free from communal discrimination either. By early July 1947, there were reports that in Karachi, some Hindu firms, and even some European ones, were being pressurised to take on Muslim employees – and in some cases, even take on Muslim partners – or else ‘face dire consequences’.13 Discrimination took various forms. For example, the Karachi Bus Service, a Hindu-owned company, had its licence cancelled since it had not switched its vehicles to coal-gas instead of petrol on government orders. Yet, the Sind Transport Syndicate, a Muslim-owned company, was allowed to run its vehicles on petrol.14