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

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  The bomb exploded in Shikarpur Colony and Pribhdas Butani died. One day, all of a sudden, at four in the morning, the military surrounded our place. Three or four of them came upstairs. They had guns and torches in their hands.

  One soldier shoved his torch in my face and said, ‘Is this an RSS office?’

  ‘This is a house.’

  ‘Are there ladies here?’

  ‘They have gone to Hindustan. We will also leave in a few days.’

  ‘We have to conduct a search.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For weapons.’

  ‘Weapons? Here? I am a school student and I want to go to Hindustan and become a film actor.’

  ‘Open the door properly.’

  They came inside; Charanjit got scared. He said to me: ‘The military has surrounded the building outside.’

  I told him: ‘You are not good-looking. Tell them that you are my servant.’

  I had hidden the cartridges and the swords under the tulsi pots in the balcony, and if they had found these, we would surely have been arrested and hanged. They looked at our faces and were embarrassed; they merely conducted a superficial search, excused themselves and went away.30

  Mohan ‘Kalpana’ continued to stay in Karachi, until he migrated to India in January 1948. Although he and his associate, Charanjit Singh, evaded arrest, the two main accused, Khanchand Gopaldas and Nand Badlani were sentenced to life imprisonment and 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment respectively on the charge of conspiring to wage war against the government of Pakistan. They were also fined Rs 50,000 and Rs 20,000 respectively. Thirteen other Sindhi Hindus were sentenced to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 1,000 each. Among the names of at least 20 others found to be ‘absconding’ was that of L. K. Advani, then the city secretary of the RSS in Karachi.

  Over a year later, in November 1948, Khanchand Gopaldas and the other RSS members who had been arrested were exchanged for Muslim prisoners in Indian jails, most notably Dr Abdul Ghani Qureshi, a Muslim Leaguer who had received the death sentence for murder. According to Dr Ram Hingorani, they remained under-trial prisoners for about a year. Then, in August 1948, there was an official agreement between the two dominions to exchange Hindu and Muslim prisoners. However, Hingorani maintains that Pakistan wanted to send him and the others to India, not as under-trials, but as convicted prisoners. Consequently, the case which had hung fire for nearly a year was completed in one week flat. The prisoners were sent to the Lahore jail, where they spent a month. Then an official exchange of prisoners took place at Wagah. When these Sindhi Hindus were later brought to Delhi, Golwalkar held a small reception for them.31

  Nand Badlani however was not released with these prisoners. He remained in Karachi jail till 1949, when he was finally sent to India.

  Communal Discrimination Continues

  The Shikarpur Colony bomb explosion only served to heighten Muslim suspicion of Hindus, and their hostility towards them. By November 1947, Sindhi Hindus had a long list of grievances, and their nervousness had increased exponentially. Apart from the forcible occupation of Hindu property and thefts of cows, muhajirs had now started occupying temples and other places of worship, sometimes desecrating them. Robberies and dacoities were still frequent, and there were occasional stabbings and murders of individual Hindus, not to mention harassment and discrimination in day-to-day life.

  In 1947, Tillo Jethmalani was a young man of 27, a freedom fighter active in local politics, from a landowning family based in Larkana, in Northern Sindh. He visited Karachi in mid-October to attend a meeting of the Sindh Provincial Congress Committee, where he was to represent the Larkana chapter’s views on migration. He recalls the changed atmosphere in Karachi:

  I first experienced Pakistan on arrival at Karachi station. I wore a khadi cap, which was famous as the ‘Gandhi’ cap. The moment I landed on the platform, a policeman went through my luggage and started calling me names. He said, ‘He seems to be a Congressman.’ After the search, I came out, hired a Victoria and went to my brother-in-law’s house, which was in Bunder Road Extension. Well, what I saw on my way there was a very big change. The nameplates on most houses had changed and the atmosphere was very dull. The moment I reached home, I realised that he was living alone, since he had sent his family to Bombay by a chartered flight.

  The first step he took was to remove my cap with a warning not to wear the cap outside the house. This shocked me and I resisted, but he warned me not to do it. I left home around 11 am with the cap on for the PCC meeting at Swaraj Bhavan (Congress House). I took a city bus. After a couple of minutes, some young boys from the back of the bus started talking amongst themselves about my khadi cap. I looked back and heard them abuse me. After a moment, one boy just swept my cap away from my head and on to the floor. I picked it up and held it in my hands. I got off the bus one stop before the Congress House and ran into the House. In the meeting, I said I had come with a resolution that we should not migrate but my opinion [had] completely changed and [I] related what had happened and concluded by saying that we cannot live here safely.

  […] I returned to Larkana, accepting my brother-in-law’s advice to migrate and, if possible, to sell some property.32

  On returning to Larkana, Tillo Jethmalani tried in vain to convince his father to leave Sindh. After six influential Hindu zamindars – including Tillo’s elder brother – were arrested arbitrarily in November, Tillo decided to leave. Shortly afterwards he worked in Sindhi refugee camps in Marwar Junction, Bombay and Indore. The rest of his family also migrated to India in 1948, except his father, who was loath to leave Sindh, and migrated only in 1952.

  By mid-November 1947, 250,000 out of Sindh’s 14,00,000 Hindus – just under 20 per cent – had left Sindh for India. There was also a smaller number of Sindhi Hindus, who had business interests – and therefore bases – in other parts of the world and migrated there. As mentioned earlier, Sindhi Muslims continued to reassure their Hindu friends of their protection. Also, many Hindus who had left still considered their departure to be temporary; moreover, the bulk of Sindh’s Hindus still did not contemplate migration at this stage. According to Vazira Zamindar, in November 1947, the president of the Sarva Hindu Sind Panchayat expected that 70 per cent of Sindh’s Hindus would not migrate, and that many of those who had left would return ‘if things grow better’.33

  The departure of a small but significant section of society had also brought education to a standstill. In any case, several schools had been shut down, since their premises were being used to accommodate muhajirs. Those schools which had not been requisitioned for such purposes found that pupil attendance was abysmally low; in many cases, there were more teachers than pupils. Several families did not send their children to school owing to the chaos of Partition, but many more children had migrated to India. Muhajir teachers were not able to replace Sindhi Hindu teachers in vernacular schools, as they did not know the Sindhi language. In mid-October 1947, with the departure of non-Sindhi Hindus from Karachi, about 50 primary schools in the city – mostly Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi-medium, about one-third of the city’s primary schools – were temporarily closed down, and their staff retrenched.

  Now with college professors and students also leaving for India, colleges in cities like Karachi and Hyderabad had effectively stopped functioning. The D.J. Sind College in Karachi – Sindh’s premier college which had been dominated by Hindu administration, professors and students – had been taken over by the Sindh government in June itself, ostensibly to prevent its imminent ‘collapse’ due to the expected departure of Sindhi Hindus after Partition.34 The Commerce College in Hyderabad had practically closed down by the end of November 1947, while on the opening day of D. G. National College later the same month, one solitary girl out of a total of 650 students showed up, while 10 out of 26 teachers attended. This was the case throughout Sindh, affecting Muslims as well.

  In 1947, Allah Rakhio Gorar was a young boy of 12, studying in the first standard (Engl
ish)35 in Government High School in the town of Mehar, which was a short distance away from his native village of Sojhro Gorar. As there was no means of regular conveyance between his village and his school, he lived in a hostel in Mehar. In his memoir, he recalls that, thanks to the migration of the Hindus, the schools in Mehar lost most of their teachers. The Government High School in Mehar began to teach only five standards and the Model High School in Mehar simply closed down. Since muhajirs had been accommodated in his hostel, the students were asked to fend for themselves. Allah Rakhio Gorar was obliged to leave Mehar and take admission in a school in Nasirabad. He then began to live with his maternal relatives in the village of Hamzo Khan Bhutto, four kilometres away, from where he had to walk to school every day.36 The situation all across the province would later become so extreme that, in February 1948, the Sindh government would appoint a committee to look into the working of ‘abandoned’ educational institutions in the province.

  In November 1947, it was announced that the Karachi municipal corporation would be dissolved: Many Hindus had emigrated, and the influx of large numbers of muhajirs had altered the composition of the city’s population beyond recognition. This was also true of other major cities of the Northern subcontinent – Delhi, Lahore, Calcutta and Dacca – which were irrevocably changed after Partition. All were flooded with refugees, witnessed tremendous communal violence, and bade farewell to large numbers of minorities.

  The BJP ideologue, Kewalram Rattanmal Malkani, was then a 26-year-old member of the RSS and a lecturer in D. G. National College in his hometown of Hyderabad in 1947. He had left Hyderabad in September 1947 at the instance of Rajpal Puri, to go to Jaipur and receive incoming refugees from Sindh. However, after months of living in Jaipur and deeply missing his homeland, he returned in December 1947. This is K. R. Malkani’s account of how radically and irrevocably the complexion of Hyderabad – and Sindh – had changed by the end of 1947:

  In the morning, the sand dunes of the Thar made me unusually enthusiastic. Hyderabad’s power station was lazily spewing smoke as always. It felt as though the small and big manghs, the wind-catcher towers, were sticking their necks out excitedly and joining their hands in welcome. My heart started beating with joy. Finally the train reached the platform. Eagerly, I looked outside. But why was there no familiar relative to be seen? None of my acquaintances! Not a single known face. Impossible. I got down. Lest anyone laugh at me, I didn’t salute the earth. But in my heart of hearts, I made a solemn greeting, and carrying my few pieces of luggage by hand, left for the house of a colleague.

  I went out for a walk in the evening, to the bazaar. But the shops were shut, there was darkness. Had it become a ghost town? Was there a curfew? Later on I found out that there was definitely a curfew – in the hearts of the people.

  Every day, morning and evening, I enthusiastically roamed the whole city. I’d wander from [Tilak] Charhi to Hirabad, but I would barely meet anyone. Even if I did meet someone, they would be in fancy clothes, barely recognisable. Those who had never covered their heads in their lives were now moving around wearing the shoe-like Jinnah cap. They would have the star-and-moon [badge] on as well. Their moustaches reminded me of the curved tail of the scorpion. Many wore salwars, and carried under their arms either Dawn or the Urdu Jang. I was dumb-founded. When finally I asked someone to reveal the secret behind this change, he immediately replied, ‘Those days have gone. If you want to stay here, then it will be like this.’ I was silenced. One person asked me, ‘When are you leaving?’ I told him, ‘I have only recently come back.’ He was silenced.

  They say that the degree of civilisation of any country may be judged by the status of its women. But here, neither in the lanes nor on the roads, neither in the buses nor in the gardens could a woman be seen. […]

  Everybody’s door was shut, with all the locks and latches on. They would ask a dozen times, ‘Who is it?’ Sometimes a voice would plainly say: ‘There’s nobody there, go away. Why don’t you listen?’ Sometimes, perhaps for fear of a thief at night, quilts would be arranged on a bed so as to make it look as though a heavy man was sleeping there. Even slippers would be placed in front of the bed. And the children of the house? Either abroad or locked up inside. Where would they study? All the schools were closed. Girls, big and small, were tired of sitting inside. With them were their brothers. […]

  There was practically a river of people in the bazaar. Every day there would be a crowd, as though it were Diwali, even during the day. Rarely would two people meet and stop to talk to each other. Some were from Ajmer and some from Lucknow, some were from Jaipur and some from Alwar. They did not know each other. If there were plenty of people on the roads, then there was no dearth of goods either. From dolls and toys to cupboards and swings, sometimes there would be dozens of high-quality mirror-fronted cupboards placed in a queue on a single road.

  […] Sindh is a corpse. Looking at these roads, lanes, homes and trees breaks my heart, numbs my limbs. It’s the same body, the same hands, the same face. But they don’t move. Where is my language? I cannot hear its laughter.37

  K. R. Malkani left Sindh once more in late January 1948.

  Notes

  1.Vazira Zamindar, The Long Partition, p 64.

  2.Gobind ‘Malhi’, Adab Ain Adib: Nirvaas Mein Aas, p 31. My translation.

  3.Hiroo Hingorani, interview, October 2009, and Mira Advani, A Saga of Trials and Triumphs of Sindhis, p 68.

  4.As quoted in Free Press Journal, Bombay, 19 September 1947.

  5.Kamla Hiranand, ‘The Situation in Sindh during Partition’ in Bhin Bhin Sugandhi Phool, pp 93-95. My translation.

  6.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 54.

  7.A Muslim stonecutter caste.

  8.Popati Hiranandani, Muhinji-a Hayati-a ja Sona Ropa Varqa, pp 66-67. My translation.

  9.The Times of India, Bombay, 28 July 1947.

  10.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 30 September 1947.

  11.Interviews. Also see Pir Ali Muhammad Rashdi, Uhay Deenhan Uhay Sheenhan, Volume I, p 186.

  12.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, p 166.

  13.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 54.

  14.Gobind ‘Malhi’, ibid, p 29. My translation.

  15.G. D. Khosla, Stern Reckoning, pp 246-247.

  16.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 24 November 1947.

  17.Suhail Lari, An Illustrated History of Sindh, p 295.

  18.This newspaper had been founded by Jinnah, and had been shifted from Delhi to Karachi. It was at that time effectively the mouthpiece of the muhajir community, edited by Altaf Husain.

  19.Advertisement in The Times of India, Bombay, 23 September 1947.

  20.The Times of India, Bombay, 11 September 1947.

  21.Nand Badlani, interview, July 2008.

  22.Atmaram Kulkarni, The Advent of Advani, p 35.

  23.Dawn, Karachi, 17 September 1947.

  24.M. K. Gandhi, Delhi Diary, pp 9-10.

  25.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, ibid, p 398.

  26.Khanchand Gopaldas later migrated to Bombay, where he became the founder-principal of K.C. Law College in 1955.

  27.L. K. Advani, My Country, My Life, p 51.

  28.Ram Hingorani, interview, March 2009.

  29.Rita Kothari, ‘RSS in Sindh: 1942-48’, p 3011.

  30.Mohan ‘Kalpana’, Ishq, Bukh, Adab, pp 45-53. My translation.

  31.Ram Hingorani, interview, March 2009.

  32.Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, pp 375-376.

  33.As quoted in Vazira Zamindar, ibid, pp 56-57.

  34.Sarah Ansari, Life After Partition, p 49.

  35.This would be equivalent to the fifth standard in Indian schools today.

  36.Allah Rakhio Gorar, Jeevan Safar Sika Jo, p 85.

  37.K. R. Malkani, ‘15 August’, in Virhango, pp 252-263. My translation.

  CHAPTER 4

  Setting Sail

  More Hindus Depart

  The violence in Quetta, the massacre of S
ikhs on the train from Nawabshah, and, subsequently, the sporadic incidents of violence in Sindh had triggered the departure of Hindus from the province, with non-Sindhis leaving first. Several Sindhi Hindus also began to leave cities such as Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Sukkur and Shikarpur. By mid-September 1947, about 50,000 Hindus and Sikhs had registered with local Congress offices for assistance in leaving Sindh. The Sindhi Hindus who left at this time were mostly middle class, many of them government servants who had opted for service with the Indian government, and other professionals, businessmen and small landholders: They had the means to emigrate to and resettle in India. Many Hindus were undertaking a tentative, contingent migration, and they intended to return ‘once things settled down’. In several cases, most members of the family were sent to India, while a senior male member of the family – usually the father or the eldest son – stayed behind to keep watch over the family’s immovable assets.

  There were three significant points of departure in Sindh: from Karachi by steamer, and from Hyderabad and Mirpur Khas by train. Trains went from these two railway termini via Bahawalpur State to Lahore or via the Thar desert to Jodhpur. There was also a much smaller number of Hindus who travelled by air from Karachi, mainly to Bombay and also to Delhi. Air tickets were also in short supply: In mid-September, a newspaper report observed that it was ‘impossible to get a passage by air to Bombay till October 5.’1

  The railways had instituted ‘special’ trains, which made extra runs to transport refugees from both sides of the border. Shipping companies like the Scindia Steamship Navigation Co and the Bombay Steam Navigation Co had also stepped up their charters between Karachi and Bombay. Englestan, Jaldurga, Ekma, Kalavati, Netravati, Shirala… even today many emigrating Sindhi Hindus clearly remember the names of the ships that brought them to India.