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

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  My father met Morarji. It was a stormy meeting. Morarji said angrily, ‘You Sindhi Hindus have no reason to leave your homeland and come as refugees [to] India. We have full assurances [from] Jinnah that the minorities will be well treated in Sindh. There may have been provocations but you should have had the courage to resist these attacks. You must all go back. There is no place for you here.’

  My father was taken aback at the outburst. He felt that India was letting down its citizens who had gone through an agonizing experience. He gave his reply calmly but in great pain, ‘Morarjibhai, are you aware that the Sindhi Hindus fought for the independence of India like all others? Some were jailed for long periods and some perished. […] I have come here for the students who are streaming in every day by all means that they can locate. They are desperate. No one leaves his ancestral land unless he is obliged to do so.’ Morarji Desai, like the rest of the Congress high command, was unhappy that the Sindhi Hindus were streaming into Bombay which was already filled with refugees. T. M. Advani warned him that the Sindhi students, embittered by the indifference of the government, might become violent. ‘The time may come when you may find a bomb under your seat… The Sindhi youth has lost its moorings. India got its independence on the backs of the Sindhi Hindus and you do not wish to admit this fact and you are searching for excuses. I wish you good luck and I say goodbye.’ Morarji was taken aback at this outburst… Morarji and my father parted in an execrable atmosphere.

  My father was genuinely sad at the turn of events. He had gone through harrowing times at an age when most Indians are already in full fledged retirement. He was full of bounce. What to do?

  […] The following day, at a time when my father was having his afternoon siesta, the telephone rang and my mother got the message about a call from the government secretariat looking for my father. My mother took the telephone to say, ‘Professor Advani is having a nap; please call later.’ My father, on waking up, immediately called Morarji’s secretary and a meeting was fixed for the following day. The atmosphere was totally different. Morarji and my father gave each other [accolades] and they became friends. Their friendship lasted until my father died in 1967.18

  However, in other quarters, public criticism of Sindhis continued. There were also several instances of Sindhi refugees forcibly and illegally occupying private property: at Rajkot, at Malad (a Bombay suburb), and at Deolali, to name a few. In some cases, such as at Rajkot and Deolali, these properties belonged to Muslims. Apart from illegally occupying private property, there were numerous instances of Sindhi refugees camping illegally at docks, railway platforms and pavements.

  This disenchantment was mutual. As mentioned earlier, several Sindhi Hindus held the Congress responsible for allowing Partition to take place. Their subsequent experiences as refugees in India – ruled by a Congress government – only underscored their disillusionment. To a certain extent, their deep disappointment in the Sindhi Congress leaders – for not providing leadership in Sindh, for migrating well before the winter of 1947-48 and, in some cases, for the mismanagement of refugee camps – was also projected onto the entire Congress party. Consequently, they lost faith in the Congress party, and by implication, in the government. According to a survey conducted by Vakil and Cabinetmaker in Kalyan and Sion-Koliwada, ‘Only 27% “liked” the policy of the Congress party. While 32% “hated” the very word Congress.’19

  This change in the Sindhi Hindu perception of the Congress engendered a significant change in their future voting patterns, and Sindhis started voting in large numbers for other parties such as the Jan Sangh, Hindu Mahasabha and Praja Socialist Party.20 This disillusionment with the Congress – and by extension, the government – was then used by some Sindhis as a justification for their illegal activities, such as unauthorised occupation of empty plots, erecting unauthorised structures, and defaulting on payment of rent or electricity bills or repayment of loans to the government. In the words of Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ‘This hostile attitude towards the Government is also expressed in the form of disrespect for law and authority.’21

  On the other hand, the Sindhi refugees (like refugees from West Punjab in India and muhajirs in Pakistan), expected preferential treatment and viewed anything received from the state as merely their due. Vakil and Cabinetmaker’s survey found that 85.9 per cent felt that it was the duty of the government to provide accommodation to the refugees because they perceived the government as playing a quasi-parental role (‘sarkar mai-baap hai’). Yet, out of a sample of 270, only 18 interviewees felt satisfied with the various measures taken by the government for the rehabilitation of the refugees.22

  In December 1952, a meeting was held in Delhi to discuss the status of refugee rehabilitation in various states, under the chairmanship of Sardar Hukum Singh, then a Lok Sabha MP and later the speaker of the Lok Sabha. Various leaders of refugee communities from East Bengal, Punjab, NWFP and Sindh requested the government to take further steps to improve living conditions for the refugees. At this meeting, the government claimed that 90 per cent of the refugees had been rehabilitated; this statement was palpably untrue, and gave rise to a request for an inquiry committee. According to Vishnu Sharma, over time, the government came around to seeing the refugees’ point of view, and Ajit Prasad Jain (who was found in a survey to be the most disliked central government minister in Kalyan camp23) was removed as the minister of rehabilitation. Meharchand Khanna (erstwhile Hindu leader and minister of finance in NWFP) was appointed in his place.24

  The general opinion of the government was that the refugees, having thrown themselves on the mercy of the Indian state, were now not justified in voicing, or acting on, their preferences when it came to matters which pertained to their lives and their future. If there was any ‘lack of understanding and co-operation’, it existed solely on the part of the refugees, who were now seen as irresponsible ingrates, who had ‘overstrained the sympathy of the mother-country’.25 This extremely autocratic approach on the part of the state resulted, not surprisingly, in conflicts with refugees of various ethnicities – for example, refugees from Sindh, NWFP, Baluchistan and Bahawalpur; a similar situation prevailed in West Bengal during this period as well. Given the bloodbath in the Punjab, Punjabi refugees, however, received more sympathy and, therefore, somewhat better treatment than Partition refugees from other regions, in both India and Pakistan.

  Conflicts between the Sindhi refugees and the government, whether state or central, began to increase. Most of these conflicts centred around very basic issues: the refugees’ need for housing and livelihood, for instance. The air of dissent was further fuelled by the state and the camp officials’ autocratic behaviour and lack of sympathy, and the aggressiveness that had been engendered among the refugees by the trauma of Partition.26

  It is important to remember that not all the protests, violent or otherwise, were only for essential needs such as housing, rations or sources of livelihood. In August 1949, the residents of Kalyan camp objected strongly to the naming of the new township as Ulhasnagar – they wanted their new home to be called Sindhunagar, but their protests were in vain.

  There were also other extremely significant protests on the part of the Sindhi refugees, which highlighted their ability to organise themselves as a politicised community, and arrange demonstrations, gheraos and hunger strikes. For instance, the refugees protested against the change of the Sindhi script from Perso-Arabic to Devanagari, which had been put into effect by a handful of Sindhis, mainly Congressmen and Congress sympathisers. This agitation brought about the recognition of both scripts as official in 1951 (which sadly, gave rise to a great deal of confusion, and only contributed to the decline of the language). The most noteworthy protest – which lasted for close to 20 years and so became a full-fledged movement – was the agitation for the inclusion of the Sindhi language in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. This came to fruition in 1968, when Sindhi, despite not being one of India’s regional languages, was finally recognised as one
of the national languages of India.

  Bombay Refugees Act

  The Sindhis also clashed with the Bombay government over the Bombay Refugees Act. In mid-September 1947, faced with the arrival of thousands of Hindus and Sikhs fleeing Sindh and Punjab, the Bombay government had requested the refugees to register themselves at their nearest police station. This requirement applied only to adult male refugees, who were then to be issued identity cards. It is not clear how many refugees complied with this request.

  In February 1948, the Bombay government announced the enactment of the Bombay Refugees Act, which would come into force on 1 June 1948. Earlier, legal definitions of refugees had focused on communal violence, and had not recognised the climate of fear that could be provoked in day-to-day life by strident communal prejudices. In October 1947, a refugee was defined as ‘a person who has migrated into the state in consequence of communal disturbances from the area which now constitutes Pakistan’.27 Now, recognising the situation of the Sindhi refugees, and intending to bring them under the purview of the Bombay Refugees Act, this definition was expanded to:

  […] any person who has, since August 1, 1947, entered the province, having left his place of residence elsewhere on account of civil disturbances in that place, or the fear of such disturbances.28

  The Act provided for the compulsory registration of refugees at various registration centres ‘with a view to maintaining law and order, public health and sanitation, and avoiding a further shortage of accommodation.’29 Now all Sindhi families had to sign up at registration centres, which were set up at refugee camps and other places. The head of the family had the responsibility of submitting various particulars about all the members of the household. Registration was required to be completed within 15 days of the Act coming into effect (that is, by 15 June 1948) or within seven days of entering the province. Earlier, the state had merely requested the refugees to register themselves; now, failure to do so was threatened with punishment for the head of the family. If any refugee changed his place of residence, the relevant registration centre had to be informed. According to the Act, the Bombay government had the power to shift refugees from one camp to another, and even to forcibly remove them from a camp. The Bombay government could also order the vaccination of any refugee.

  While the Act appeared, prima facie, to be a straightforward issue of registration, it stirred up a hornet’s nest in the Sindhi community. The Sindhi refugees objected to the fact that registration was compulsory; that it had to be done within two weeks of the Act coming into force (felt to be humanly impossible for about 4,00,000 refugees to complete in 12 working days); and that all members of the family had to present themselves to the registration officer (which later turned out to be a misapprehension; only the head of the family was required to visit the registration office).

  The Act provided for the registration not only of individual particulars such as the details of various members of the family, but also of the physical characteristics of the family members. Each refugee was obliged to carry his registration papers on his person, wherever he went. These papers were considered the individual’s only valid proof of identification, and the police could ask for them to be produced any time, or arrest the refugee.

  This was still an era when other Acts, which were highly prejudicial to specific communities, such as the Criminal Tribes’ Act were still in force. These factors – the registration of identification marks and the compulsory carrying of registration papers – made the Sindhi Hindus feel akin to the Hurs, a ‘criminal tribe’ in Sindh and, more than the other provisions, gave the Bombay Refugees Act the reek of criminalisation and stigma.

  Belonging to a predominantly middle class community, highly concerned about their public image, many Sindhi refugees felt that the provisions of the Bombay Refugees Act were too much to stomach. They felt that they were being singled out from the rest of the Indian public, in a negative light, which would only hamper the process of their rehabilitation. They likened the Act to legislations that aimed to ‘control’ black South Africans (still in the grip of apartheid) and condemned it accordingly.

  Moreover, the Act applied to not only those Sindhis who were living in refugee camps and who were dependent on state aid, but even those Sindhis who had had the means to arrange for their own accommodation in Bombay, and had managed to obtain some means of livelihood – even these Sindhis were obliged to inform the police any time they shifted their residence. Hiranand Karamchand, the leading Sindhi journalist and Gandhian, protested in a public letter to various newspapers and political leaders in June 1948:

  I am surprised that the Director of Information Bombay in his Press Note, published in your issue of the 15th instant, states that the Refugees were under wrong impression that the presence of every member of the family at the Police Station is required under the Act, for the purpose of registration. But will the Director deny that the authorities of at least some Police Stations, did require every member of the family to be brought before the Police Station, before accepting their registration. If under the Act the presence of women and children is not essential, what steps have been taken against the Police officials responsible for the order that all members of the family must be brought before them, before certificate of Registration could be issued to them. In any case, how are the Refugees to be blamed if they are asked by the Police officials that Registration could be effective only if all members of the families are brought before them.

  But how can even the Police Authorities be blamed for putting the interpretation on the Act as it is specifically laid down in the Registration certificate given in the appendix, that identification marks of every person registered are to be noted down in the Registration Certificate, and how can these identification marks be noted down, by the Police officials, without screening every individual concerned. The Director now naively says that the recording of these identification marks is not to be insisted upon, though no such clarification is given in the Act anywhere. It is obvious that the Government has seen fit to modify its attitude with respect to this clause, after realizing the strength of public feeling in the matter. But even instead of gracefully withdrawing the entire clause, it has thought fit to retain the clause, but has only instructed the Police authorities to grant exemption to recording of identification marks of women and children, if the head of the family states that he does not know them. It is absurd to say that the head of the family is not likely to know the identification marks of his wife, children, or ward. But the government wants them to speak untruth, to get exemption from recording the identification marks of women and children. The Refugees, however, object in principle to the very recording of identification marks, as it reduces them to the position of criminals.

  It should not however be understood that these minor modifications make the Act unacceptable to the Refugees. There are still features in the Act, which are offensive to the self-respect of Free Citizens, e.g. reporting to Police station, every time, any change in the address, etc. Those who seem to applaud the Act, will realize its obnoxious nature, if the Act were suddenly applied to the non-refugee population as well.30

  A large public protest meeting of Sindhi refugees was held at the Cowasjee Jehangir Hall in Bombay on 4 June 1948, where Sindhis turned up in large numbers to demonstrate their objection to the Act. Gulab Gidwani, who was then a young man of 20, had also attended the meeting at the Cowasji Jehangir Hall in Mumbai on 4 June. According to Gidwani, the Sindhis who got themselves registered did so to get into the good books of the government. At that time, he wanted to go to England for further studies. He needed a passport, but could not get it without registering. He says, ‘I felt very bad, but I had no choice.’31

  The protests by the Sindhi refugees, and their threat to resort to satyagraha, did not go down well initially, either with the Bombay government or with the general public, although the premier of Bombay, B .G. Kher later promised to amend the Act. According to Gulab Gidwani, the Bombay Refugees Act was
not very effective; the great resentment that it engendered among the Sindhis made them uncooperative, and the state, too, was not rigorous in enforcing the Act’s provisions.

  In 1952, the Bombay government tried to evict one Sanwaldas Gobindram from the Chembur refugee camp (which had now become a colony), by enforcing an order under the Bombay Refugees Act. Sanwaldas Gobindram sued both the state of Bombay and the director of rehabilitation; the lawyer who appeared for him in the Bombay High Court was then a young man of 29 by the name of Ram Jethmalani, representing the firm Nanavati, Tijoriwala & Co. Justice S. R. Tendolkar of the Bombay High Court decided that the Act was ultra vires the Bombay legislature, meaning that the Bombay state had had no jurisdiction to pass the Act in the first place.32 Not only was the order to evict Sanwaldas Gobindram annulled, but the Bombay Refugees Act itself was also struck down. Ram Jethmalani recalls:

  The government thought: Swarms of people have come, they require to be kept in order; they may even hold communal agendas and cause riots. That was the assumption behind the Act. But it was so humiliating; Sindhis felt that they were being treated like animals, like buffaloes and cows.

  Indians have a right under the Constitution of India to settle down in any part of the country. You can’t just remove them arbitrarily.

  Gobindram’s case was my first victory. I was a young boy. I had hardly practised for five or six years in Karachi. I had come to Bombay as a raw junior. I had to argue this case. I argued and won. The whole Act was declared ultra vires.33

  Charity

  As mentioned above, in the initial months after Partition, the government distributed free rations – including foodstuffs and blankets, and sometimes also cooking vessels and clothes – to the refugees. Belonging to a mercantile community, which laid great value on wealth and self-reliance, many Sindhi Hindus viewed the acceptance of relief from the government as charity, a stigmatised form of assistance. To be perceived as unable to provide for oneself and one’s family, to be considered ‘dependent’, was a source of disgrace for able-bodied male Sindhi Hindus.34