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

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  The rioters were indiscriminate about whom they targeted; the car of 59-year-old Jamshed Nusserwanji Mehta, a doyen of Karachi and eight times over the mayor of the city, was surrounded and he was about to be attacked, when some Sindhi Muslim passers-by appealed to the rioters to let the Parsi gentleman go.

  For a few hours, large gangs of muhajirs roamed the city, often accompanied by empty trucks into which were thrown the spoils of the looting: clear proof that the violence was premeditated and organised. According to the narratives of both Thakur Chawla as well as Kamla Hiranand, the rioters had taken the precaution to cut telephone wires in several neighbourhoods before the violence started.10 It was later estimated that about Rs 1 crore worth of goods were looted.

  The Karachi pogrom however also saw numerous cases of individual large-heartedness and communal amity, where Hindus were saved by either Sindhi Muslims or by other muhajirs who hid them in their houses and/or lied about their presence in order to protect them from the mob – as the narratives of Sobho Gianchandani, Kamla Hiranand and several other Sindhi Hindus testify. The writer Motilal Jotwani tells us that he and his family were given protection by their Muslim landlord, Allahdino, who lied to the mob that they had already left for India. Jotwani’s father and Allahdino sang Kabir’s verses late into the night.11 Kala Shahani was deeply worried about her husband, Shanti Shahani, a Congress worker, when she heard that Congress House in Karachi had been set on fire. She too took refuge with her Muslim neighbours who made her wear a burqa to hide her Hindu identity. The night was passed with Kala and other Hindus reciting from the Bhagavad Gita and singing bhajans, and the Muslim neighbours reciting from the Quran Sharif.12 In some cases, such as Thakur Chawla’s, Sindhi Muslims did watch the violence as passive spectators. It is possible that they did not have the courage to intervene in the presence of a large mob and incur its wrath in the bargain.

  In a few instances, where ministers of the Sindh government or the Pakistan government – such as Pir Ilahi Baksh, Ghulam Muhammad, Ikramullah, Zahid Hussain – happened to be travelling through the city, they themselves intervened to stop the brutality and arrest the perpetrators. When Premier Khuhro heard of the violence, he personally went into the city, armed with a gun, which he fired to scare the rioters away. Khuhro, despite his public statements, had several close Hindu friends, including Dingomal Ramchandani, a well-known lawyer. Dingomal’s son, Percy Ramchandani, then a teenage student of the D. J. Sind College, recalls that Pir Ilahi Baksh personally came to the college that day to take him home safely. He also recalls that Khuhro came to his home every day for the next few days to check on the family.13

  By around 6 pm on 6 January, a 24-hour curfew was announced in the city (via loudspeakers on trucks) as well as orders to shoot at sight anyone breaking the curfew. The military which had reached Akal Bhunga by 2 pm, now patrolled the rest of the city. About 190 arrests were made. Hundreds of wounded were taken to various hospitals.

  On the next day, 7 January, there was another bout of looting of Hindu shops and houses in the morning. At 2 pm, curfew was lifted for two hours to enable people to obtain their daily provisions; at 4 pm curfew was reinstated till the next morning. The police and the military continued to patrol the city, shooting at the looters and arresting about 600 people; this figure would rise to 900 over the next few days. Fazlur Rahman, Pakistan’s minister for the interior, toured the riot-affected areas of the city, along deserted streets. Sobho Gianchandani recalls:

  Anyway, my body was freed from the cage of that house at eight o’clock the next day; Kazi Mujtaba (who was the parliamentary secretary in the Sindh government and also the labour representative in the Sindh Assembly) arrived with a police van equipped with loudspeakers, and said, ‘Come, let us go through the whole city and call for peace.’

  So on 7 January, we made speeches calling for peace and brotherhood at different times across half the city, under police protection. I still remember that we said, ‘Brothers! Jinnah sahib has proclaimed that minorities shall not only be treated justly, but with generosity. Don’t take the law into your own hands. Soon searches will be carried out. Therefore, whatever you have taken, return it to your neighbours.’

  Touring the city, on the roads around Artillery Maidan, Burns Road, Bunder Road and Idgah Maidan, we could see clothes and belongings that had fallen out of thrown suitcases were being chewed by cows. In some places, we could also see corpses in nooks and corners, which perhaps the police had not been able to remove on the night of 6 January. […]

  The 72-hour long curfew was lifted for a break of two hours. During this time, I walked down to the [Communist] Party and trade union headquarters. I saw that on Burns Road and on the road coming towards Pakistan Chowk and on Kutchery Road till Light House Cinema, shops had been broken into, looted and burnt, and people, taking advantage of the opportunity, had gathered around the shops to loot them again.

  The second curfew lasted approximately 45 hours. During this time we toured all of Karachi in a police lorry. We heard stories of the barbarity of human beings. We heard about brutality and barbarity and we also heard about the angelic conduct of heroes who endangered themselves by giving refuge to their neighbours.14

  There are no accurate and reliable figures for the casualties of the Karachi violence. According to Gianchandani’s estimate, the violence left about 1,100 dead and hundreds injured (including some Muslims who had been casualties of police firing), although the Sindh government claimed that the official figures were 122 dead and 219 injured. Seventeen refugee camps were set up, given military protection and supplied with food rations. The largest refugee camps were at the Hindu bastions of the D. J. Sind College and the Swaminarayan Temple. These camps were guarded, first by the military, and later by Muslim college students who were members of the University Training Corps (the forerunner of the National Cadet Corps).15 Hindus living in predominantly Muslim areas were brought to these camps by military trucks. Predominantly Hindu areas were given police protection. Hundreds of Hindus also went to take shelter at the Indian High Commission; Sri Prakasa was obliged to make arrangements to feed them all. At 10 pm, Jamshed Mehta took Sri Prakasa to the well-known shop of Chandu Halwai, where they able to get a full meal for 300 to 400 people at very short notice. According to Sri Prakasa, when he offered to pay for the food, even explaining that the expense would be borne by the Government of India, Chandu Halwai declined to accept any payment.16

  On 7 January, Khuhro made a public statement in which he laid the blame for the violence at the door of the Indian high commissioner, Sri Prakasa, who, he said, was responsible for their evacuation and so should have arranged a police escort for the Sikhs before their arrival in the city. He claimed that he had been against the departure of the Sikhs in the first place; he had only agreed to it reluctantly and that too on condition that they arrive in Karachi at night and be taken immediately to the docks. Also, the Karachi authorities were supposed to have been given due notice of their arrival, so as to arrange for adequate police protection. V. Vishwanathan, the deputy high commissioner, claimed in turn that there were pockets of Sikhs in Karachi district, and facilities for their evacuation had been stalled by the Sindh government on several occasions, ‘on pretexts succeeding one after the other’.17 Sri Prakasa later explained that a telegram had arrived at his office some days earlier, informing him of the arrival of the Sikhs, but since he had been travelling in India at the time, the junior attaché who received the telegram did not attach much importance to it and so had ignored it.

  On 9 January, an ailing Jinnah and his sister Fatima, accompanied by Khuhro and Kazim Raza, the inspector-general of police in Sindh, made a tour of the riot-affected localities, as also the muhajir refugee camps. Curfew was lifted at 9 am on 10 January. Barring several short breaks of two to four hours, this was the longest curfew – 90 hours – in Karachi’s history. Curfew continued to be imposed every night though, from 6 pm to 9 am for the next six days.

  The violence of 6 Janua
ry was denounced publicly by employees of the Pakistan government as well as religious leaders, such as Major Yusuf Ismail, president of the Pakistan Islamic Council, Maulana Abdul Hamid Badayuni, Maulana Ahtishamul Haq and Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, who called for peace and abstinence from violence. Yet, there was also widespread public sympathy for the rioters, sympathy which went up to the highest echelons of government and did not always remain tacit. This was combined with continued animosity towards the Hindus remaining in Sindh.

  The police and the military continued to patrol the streets, perhaps unwillingly, since many among them were also not free from anti-Hindu sentiment. There are also accounts of policemen doing their duty in a perfunctory manner on 6 January, of conniving in the loot, and even passively abetting the violence. According to one report, ‘the gate of the [Ratan Talao] Gurudwara had been broken open with the help of the Muslim police and Baluch military.’18 Another report tells us:

  At about 1.30 p.m., when this bloodshed was going on inside the Gurdwara, the police officials tried to remove the Sikhs in two trucks but the goondas did not allow the trucks to go and broke open the doors and windows and started killing them in the trucks under the very nose of the police.19

  According to another account, the employees of the Sindh High Court also joined in the violence.20 Brigadier K. M. Sheikh, commander of the 51st Infantry Brigade, which was called out to assist the police on 6 January, claimed that his troops ‘have had an unpleasant job to do, but they have performed their duties in an unbiased manner and with a high sense of discipline.’21 It should be remembered that the local police also abetted several other instances of Partition-related violence elsewhere, such as in Delhi and the Punjab. As Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh point out:

  The involvement of the police in violence is a constant feature throughout the period surrounding 1946. […] It flows from the depth of communal animosity in situations of endemic conflict, lack of professionalism and the skewed ethnic composition of forces.22

  On 10 January, the police carried out extensive searches in the tents at Jacob Lines and the hutments at Bunder Road Extension, which were occupied by Pakistan government servants; this led to the recovery of looted property of all sorts, valued at about Rs 2,50,000. These searches, however, engendered great resentment among these government servants, who sent a deputation to Syed Hashim Raza, the district magistrate and his brother Syed Kazim Raza, the additional inspector-general of police, urging them to stop these searches forthwith as they were ‘considerably damaging the reputation of the bureaucracy’.23 Simultaneously, they were also resentful about the fact that no searches had been made of the houses of the secretaries and assistant secretaries of the Pakistan government, some of whom were said to also be in possession of looted property. The brothers Raza (who hailed from the United Provinces themselves), however, stuck to their principles of justice and sent the delegation away empty-handed. Several days later there were arrests of about 14 Pakistan government servants.

  When the drive to recover looted property was launched, articles of all kinds hidden in houses in the affected areas were recovered – sewing machines, typewriters, radio sets, harmoniums, pieces of furniture, crockery, silk and woollen clothes, etc. Senior ministers like Khuhro, I. I. Chundrigar, Ghulam Mohammad, Pirzada Abdus Sattar and Fazlur Rahman toured the city, appealing to the people to give up looted property if they had any. They also visited the Mauledina Musafirkhana where they addressed the muhajirs. A total of about Rs 4,50,000 worth of looted property was then piled up in police stations for restoration to their rightful owners after identification.

  During the period of violence, a large number of shops, houses and flats belonging to Hindus were forcibly occupied by muhajirs, who continued to stay there. The Sindh government now announced that this would not be tolerated. Under the Sind Economic Rehabilitation Ordinance, the usurpers would be evicted, and not be given any assistance in finding residential or business accommodation in Sindh. These properties would be restored to their Hindu owners if the latter so desired, or would be in the control of the rehabilitation officer. Also, sales of property – which had once been at exorbitant rates – had now become distress sales. The government announced that these sales would be rendered invalid if they were found to be far below the market rate. (But at the same time, it announced that sales would also be considered invalid if the property in question was required for the rehabilitation of muhajirs.)

  On 11 January, Khuhro addressed a meeting of prominent citizens of Karachi in which he expressed deep regret for the violence and the damage done to the Hindu community. He reiterated his government’s determination to crush lawlessness; he ridiculed rumours that the Pakistan government was showing any sympathy towards the rioters; and he also clarified that although he was against the departure of the Hindus of Sindh – which amounted to playing into the hands of the rioters – his government would ensure that their departure would be smooth, if they still wanted to leave. He also announced the appointment of a deputy rehabilitation officer to help violence-affected Hindus reclaim their homes and business premises. Khuhro stated that the Sindh government was considering a proposal to compensate its non-Muslim officials who had suffered in the violence.

  What had happened in Karachi was, like the violence in Hyderabad, not new. Several Partition-related incidents in Sindh – such as retaliatory pogroms and forcible occupation of houses belonging to the minority community – already had precedents in other parts of newly Independent India and Pakistan. More specifically, there had also been numerous instances of victims of communal violence turning aggressors and planning communal violence, so as to deliberately coerce the minority community, which was otherwise not motivated to uproot itself, to migrate. This had already happened in Panipat, Dharampur and Bahawalpur State, to give only a few examples.24 These forms of violence had not been invented in Sindh but had been ‘borrowed’ by the incoming refugees, from earlier events still fresh in their memory.

  In retrospect, what appears to be remarkable is the fact that communal violence – whether as an act of reprisal in the heat of the moment, or as a calculated and premeditated pogrom – came to Sindh as late as it did, and in a far more diminished way than it did in other provinces such as Punjab and Bengal. It is actually surprising that the pogrom in Karachi did not take place earlier, given the climate of frustration and resentment among the muhajirs that prevailed in Sindh for so many months. It is widely accepted that about 15 million people had been displaced and about a million killed during Partition. Yet in Sindh, the total death toll, even if one takes the highest estimates of casualties, was a few thousand.

  A major factor contributing to the belated initiation of violence and the relatively lower number of casualties in Sindh was the will of the Sindh government to maintain law and order, and to prevent Hindus from migrating en masse. This firm hand of the government resulted in some degree of control – both physical and psychological – over lower middle class muhajirs, who had been unceremoniously dumped in refugee camps. Moreover, unpleasant memories of the atrocities of the communal violence in and around Sukkur at the time of the Manzilgah agitation were still fresh in Sindhi public memory.

  However, the simmering discontent among the muhajirs, combined with economic hunger for Hindu assets and properties,25 had finally boiled over into violence, deliberately planned so as to terrorise the remaining Hindus into migrating to India. The hostility of the public prevailed over the conciliatory efforts of the state. This is what led Suhrawardy to remark shortly after the Karachi violence: ‘These incidents bring home forcibly to one that it is little use the Government’s guaranteeing protection to minorities if the public have not been educated to it.’26

  Delhi and Karachi, the capitals of the two new nations, were practically mirror images of each other, although chronologically separated by a few months. While Delhi and Karachi share many parallels, what occurred in Delhi was in a sense worse than in Karachi. At a more obvious level, th
e magnitude of the casualties in Delhi was of a different order altogether; between 20,000 and 25,000 Muslims were killed in Delhi as compared to 1,100 Hindus and Sikhs in Karachi. At another level, Pakistan was clearly perceived by Muslims (as well as non-Muslims) as being a Muslim nation, notwithstanding Jinnah’s famous speech in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947, in which he claimed that Pakistan was not a theocratic state and would treat non-Muslims on par with Muslims. Delhi, on the other hand, was the capital of India, a nation which professed to be inclusive of all castes and creeds, and which was supposedly committed to secularism.

  In Delhi, the violence was followed by peace, or rather a cessation of violence. In Karachi too, while no major incidents of violence recurred after 7 January, the ‘peace’ that existed in the city was actually akin to what Penderel Moon calls ‘an ominous hush… which I had now learnt to associate with towns in which disturbances had taken place.’27

  Notes

  1.Sobho Gianchandani, ‘Karachi-a Vaaro Qatl-e-Aam [The Karachi Massacre]’ in Tarikh ja Visarial Warq, p 37. My translation. Originally published as an article in the Sindhi daily Awami Awaz, 30 August 1990.

  2.Kamla Hiranand, Bhin Bhin Sugandhi Phool, p 96.

  3.Vazira Zamindar, The Long Partition, p 151.

  4.Sobho Gianchandani, ibid, p 36.

  5.Ganda Singh, ‘A Diary of Partition Days’ in Mushirul Hasan, ed, India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom, p 83.

  6.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, pp 477-478.

  7.Thakur Chawla, ‘6 January 1948’ in Virhango, pp 46-53. My translation.

  8.Yusuf Patel, interview, April 2001.

  9.Mohan ‘Kalpana’, Ishq, Bukh, Adab, p 54. My translation.

  10.Kamla Hiranand, ibid, p 96.