[…] most of the trainees from the Government Vocational Training Centre have preferred to open their own shops and engage local labour to execute orders rather than do the job themselves. There is a marked preference for the occupation they are accustomed to viz. trade. They feel it below their dignity to take orders from any body. They feel it a blow to their sense of initiative and enterprise. They have a dislike for ‘dirty-hand’ jobs. It is considered below their social status to do manual work. The D.P.s prefer to take doles from Government rather than do scavenging work of the camp. That is done by the village untouchables.9
Government policy with regard to employment suffers from excess of zeal. There is no attempt at understanding the culture pattern of the group that Government wishes to help. This is evident from the establishment of the Vocational Training Centre for a community very trade-minded. Government thereby hoped to change the accustomed livelihood pattern of the group. It has not met with much success so far.
[…] Many Sindhis today are employed as unskilled hands in the docks and in the building industry. While during the pre-partition period, dock-workers in Karachi were mostly non-Hindu Sindhis and non-Sindhis. The Sindhi Hindus still think it below their dignity to follow such occupations. A very well-known leader of the Sindhis, while discussing with the authors the condition of his countrymen mentioned this point and stated he felt the future dark and bleak if Sindhi Hindus had to stoop to such work for their existence.10
In the summer of 1948, the Bombay government offered some Sindhi refugees tracts of agricultural land in Karwar district and near Bhusawal. But these offers were also turned down, because agricultural labour, like manual labour, was considered demeaning by Sindhi Hindus. Almost all the Sindhi Hindus who migrated to India belonged to the tertiary sector – they were engaged in business, small trades or professions. In Sindh, agricultural labour – as distinct from landowning – was associated with the Muslim haaris, and was looked down upon.
Yet, in the early years after Partition, in the desperate struggle to rehabilitate themselves, many Sindhi Hindus actually did take on manual labour in order to support themselves, akin to other refugees the world over. Some Sindhis living in Kalyan camp (including the writer Mohan ‘Kalpana’) took on jobs as unskilled labourers in factories in nearby Ambarnath.
Hassaram Ramchand had been taught to earn money at an early age. When he was a schoolboy of 12 in the village of Bhadro near Larkana, his father had helped him set up a small kiosk outside his school, where he sold snacks and stationery to the schoolchildren. After Partition, in India, the burden of providing for the family fell on Hassaram’s young shoulders: His father was old and ailing, and his two younger brothers were small children. At this time Hassaram himself was only a 17-year-old. He recounts the hard work of the early years of rehabilitation.
When we reached India, we stayed for 15 to 20 days in Marwar, in tents. My brothers were small at that time, three or four years of age.
What first struck me in Marwar was the heat: It was the month of April or May. It was very hot in Rajasthan. And there were water problems. However, the railways tried to address this by sending a tanker; everyone would line up to fill water.
Until it was possible for the government to send us to another camp, till new arrangements could be made, we had to find means and ways of feeding ourselves. A lot of us began hawking wares in the trains.
From Marwar, I used to buy biscuits or nankhatais and sell them in trains. ‘Two for an anna, two for an anna, nankhatais, biscuits,’ I’d shout. I used to take a couple of rotis with me from home, made by my mother, for my lunch. In the evening, when I would come home and place that pile of coins in front of my mother and father, they would feel happy; they were proud that their child could shoulder this burden at a young age.
From Marwar, we shifted to Katni camp, near Jabalpur. I started seeking other means of income. We had to walk a lot in order to take the train to go to Jabalpur. I used to go to Jabalpur to the market to buy fruits: bananas, apples, oranges, sweet limes. In front of the house, I would spread a cloth and pile these items up for interested customers.
Returning from Jabalpur, we had to walk back from the station to Katni camp. I would get tired walking. I would bend and place the basket on the culvert, sit down, and wait for my fatigue to pass. Then I would bend again, place the basket back on my head and reach home. This was my condition.
When we were in the Katni camp, prior to venturing into the business of selling fruits, I carried stones on my head. Four rupees a day. Four rupees for one day. The contractors, you see, built roads; the potholes in the road had to be filled – with mud, stones, concrete. The men in trucks would deposit a pile of stones, whether it was concrete or sand or mud. These had to be taken in bowls and brought to the area that needed repair. Four rupees a day. I have done even that.11
Later, after Hassaram Ramchand shifted to Kalyan camp, he worked at the vocational training centre for a while, learning how to make exercise books. In 1955, the Central Railways advertised in the newspapers, calling for more staff for their printing press. Hassaram was then a 24-year-old; he had gotten married in the interim and his father had died. When he heard about this vacancy, his first response was eagerness; he was prepared for any job in the railways:
I thought that I would tell them: ‘Sir, you have advertised for a job in the press, but I am ready to even wash trains!’ I was ready to do anything they asked of me – stand on the platform and wave a flag as a porter, or ring a bell, or clean trains, or fill water in toilets or in the overhead tanks. After all, I had two small brothers, my mother and my wife.12
Ultimately, Hassaram Ramchand did get a job with the Central Railways printing press, where he worked until he retired at the age of 60.
Partition blurred the once-clear distinction between Bhaibands, the businessmen, and Amils, the professionals. Compelled by their circumstances, some businessmen took up jobs, while some Amils who could not find jobs, turned to small businesses. Yet, once they resettled, many Bhaibands either returned to doing business for themselves or did business part-time along with their office employment. Conforming to the Sindhi culture of business, they considered it below their dignity to work for another, to sell their labour.13
However, not all the measures employed by Sindhi Hindu businessmen to get ahead were above board. Sindhi Hindus, a business community living for centuries as a minority under Muslim rule (a relationship which could, on occasion, turn hostile), had a history of street-smartness in business, which was essential for survival. In their dealings with the Muslim elite, they found that the latter would sometimes arbitrarily deprive them of their wealth, and this high-risk factor was accordingly built into their profit calculations and business transactions.
Thomas Postans, a captain with the Bombay Native Infantry, travelled extensively in Sindh, with his wife, Marianne Postans, between 1840 and 1843. He continued to serve in Sindh, even after the British conquest of the province. In 1843, he wrote of the position of Sindhi Hindus:
The Hindús in Sindh… [are] a highly valuable portion of the community, commanding by their commercial activity, habits of business, and energy, a certain respect despite the most unmeasured bigotry. They are still but a tolerated class, however, and nothing short of extreme cunning and perseverance could enable them to exist in such a country as Sindh, where their wealth is the constant object of Mahommedan rapacity, and where they are only considered as dogs in the eyes of the true believers […] The whole of the trade of Sindh, from the extensive mercantile and banking transactions of Shikarpúr, to the smallest supplier of the ordinary wants of life, are in the hands of the Hindús. Their command over ready money gives them also a certain power over the rulers, who, looking only to the revenue of the country as a means of present gratification, are too happy to farm its resources to these Soucars (as the Hindú traders are called) for any sum which may be immediately commanded. In these transactions the Hindú always runs the greatest risk of bein
g called upon to disgorge any profits he may amass, and he knows that his bonds and contracts with Mahommedan chiefs are so much waste paper; but he makes his calculations accordingly, and, despite power and despotism, never fails to accumulate wealth at the expense of the profligacy of the rulers […] In dealing with the chiefs and government of Sindh, he is obliged to defeat indirect oppression by duplicity and double-dealing as his only chance of success or safeguard against violence; but this is by no means a fair criterion of his claims to a higher character for business under different situations. It is proverbial and a great proof of the honour of the Sindhian Soucars that their bills are always considered as cash in every part of the vast countries to the north-west, and are recognised as such all over India.14
Postans’ observation has been subsequently confirmed by other writers such as Choksey and Shastry, who also note that business probity among Sindhi merchants was rather low. However, they too make a distinction between the petty traders in the hinterland and the bigger businessmen in Shikarpur and Karachi whose ‘absolute integrity was […] proverbial’.15
Anita Raina Thapan, who has done extensive research among Sindhi Hindus in Manila, Hong Kong and Indonesia, also talks about this strain of amorality found in the world of Sindhi business. According to her, ‘irregularities’ in business are not seen by the average Sindhi businessman as harming anyone, but an occupational hazard.16
Possibly, Sindhis, like other minority communities of ‘middleman traders’ like the Jews, the Armenians, the Chinese in Indonesia and the Parsis, had what the sociologist Howard Becker calls a dual ethic: one set of principles for their own community and another for the outside world.17 Stephen Keller adds another dimension to this; he remarks on not only the ‘often noted refugee characteristic of being willing to take risks’ but also, regarding ‘war refugees [who] quickly become “demoralized”, living by their wits to obtain the minimum required for survival.’18
As mentioned earlier, the Sindhis’ hostility towards the government also manifested in the form of disregard for law and authority. This, combined with the exigency of their circumstances, resulted in some Sindhi Hindu refugees bending the law in several ways. One example is Chainrai Nagrani,* who became a cloth merchant in Ahmedabad, and who asserted that he possessed the ability, through sleight of hand, to make a piece of cloth appear to measure any length that he wanted. Clearly, the use of underhand or illegal business practices, while not extolled, were also not necessarily reviled; they were viewed as an amoral necessity, and justified by Sindhi Hindus as measures that they were obliged to take to survive as refugees in an often hostile environment.
Horace Alexander found that the determined Sindhi refugees – ‘more enterprising than many of those who have been born and lived in Madhya Pradesh’ – were likely to prosper, especially by taking over the market share of some of the locals.19 Consequently, the Sindhis’ success in business came at a cost. The accelerated competition that the Sindhi Hindus brought to the local markets in India, combined with their diluted sense of ethics, generated a great deal of resentment among the locals. Sometimes, their very presence in the markets caused conflict. In Daund (near Poona), in Agra, in Gwalior, for example, Sindhi refugee hawkers who spread their wares on the pavement, sometimes obstructing access to shops, faced conflicts with the locals, mostly shopkeepers and sometimes even the police. Given the large number of local Muslims in Agra, this conflict also took on a communal colour and degenerated into violence; 15 were killed on India’s first anniversary of Independence.
According to a survey by Subhadra Anand of 100 Sindhis between 60-80 years in Ulhasnagar and Bombay in 1989, 71 per cent of them stated that they had felt resentment from local businessmen and people.20 This situation was similar to that of Punjabi refugees in Delhi and other parts of North India, and East Bengali refugees in Calcutta, who also became unpopular with the local people partly on account of the heightened business competition they brought with them.
Transplanting Education
Sindhi Hindus, especially the Amils, the professional class, have long valued education highly, and this is what enabled them to possess a lion’s share in senior government positions during the British era, quite disproportionate to their numbers. As a result, Sindhi society greatly valued its teachers, professors and principals.
Sindhi Hindus were loath to abandon their education and their educational institutions; on the contrary, the crisis of Partition had only given urgency and an added importance to the need for education, a highly mobile asset of permanence. Great efforts were undertaken to ensure that students – especially those completing their matriculation, a crucial educational milestone – did not lose an academic year, and managed to sit for their examinations. The government helped the refugees by relaxing the rules of admission as well as the preconditions for qualifying for examinations. The past affiliation of Sindhi schools and colleges with Bombay University helped a great deal in this respect.
Sindhi students, on their part, faced an additional problem in India: Most of them had studied in the Perso-Arabic script, and were not familiar with the Devanagari script. Obtaining admission in local schools was difficult at the best of times. But even if admitted, Sindhi-medium students were at a loss, as far as the script, and sometimes the language (if it was a Hindi-medium school) were concerned. In contrast, English-medium students found the transition relatively easier.
Mohan Panjabi, elder brother of Papan Panjabi and a Congress worker in Sindh, worked as an assistant to Dr Choithram Gidwani, the senior Congress leader. He was a 21-year-old when Partition occurred. Although he and his socialist friends had decided to stay on in Sindh, he came to Bombay to visit his mother and two brothers who had already migrated to India. When he met Dr Choithram Gidwani, the latter conveyed his annoyance at Panjabi’s plans of returning to Sindh. He requested Panjabi to assist with the various applications for help that were pouring in from Sindhi refugees in Bombay. Panjabi thought he would stay for a short while and help Dr Gidwani and his fellow Sindhis; ultimately, however, he stayed on permanently in India. In a serialised newspaper article, Mohan Panjabi recounts his experiences with Dr Gidwani in the early days of resettlement in India:
People got some sort of accommodation, temporary or permanent. They started running around for livelihoods, businesses and jobs. The question of education for children arose. Schools had begun to open. […] The [matriculation] examination used to be conducted in Sindh in affiliation with Bombay University. Children were scattered all over India. They had no certificates or documents. Several of my old teachers wrote to me especially about this from Rajasthan, UP and Madhya Pradesh. I discussed this with the doctor [Choithram Gidwani]. He said, ‘Find a way out.’
The registrar of Bombay University was one Mr S. R. [Dongerkery]. A good man, who was concerned about the Sindhis. He said, ‘It isn’t possible to organise examinations for Sindhi students all over Bombay Presidency and other provinces without identification and educational papers. I can make all the Sindhi children appear for their examinations in Bombay city. You can give an affidavit to the court on behalf of those who have no papers or proof, as their guardian. I will accept that.’
Thousands of students were to come for the matriculation examination. Where would they stay? Meetings were held with Chief Minister Balasaheb Kher every day. He also held the portfolio for education. He helped us unstintingly in every way. If there had been 10 Congress leaders like him, the country would not be in this condition.
The military barracks in Worli were occupied by the police. Mr Kher issued an order that Sindhi students would stay there for the four days of the examinations, as well as for one day before and one day after. […] The students were also put up in a couple of dharamshalas.
But where were the girls to stay? After making enquiries, we discovered that Wilson College had a splendid hostel on Laburnum Road, in an upper class neighbourhood. The principal made us run around. Countless questions. Finally he agreed, but on one c
ondition. The girls were not to stay for even one extra day. Plus a small amount for rent and expenses for food had to be borne by us. We agreed.
The expenses for such extensive arrangements were great. But the doctor was unperturbed. He said, ‘Don’t worry. We will get the money.’ Arrangements were made to take the children to the examination centres by bus. To meet the expenses for boarding, lodging, buses, etc, we received a lot of help from some [Sindhi] businessmen from Kalbadevi, their managers and the young men in some of their families. They had settled in Bombay before [Partition]. They even arranged milk for the students to drink, morning and evening. They said, ‘They will be studying hard, away from home, they need milk!’
Every day the names of the students [who wished to appear for the examinations] would arrive. After typing the affidavits, I would go to court in the afternoon. Lawyers would peddle their services outside the entrance to the court, opposite Azad Maidan. They would attest the affidavits for a rupee or two. The peon had to be given a rupee.
The registrar there was Mr Pandit. One day he said, ‘You are the guardian for all the refugee students. Henceforth, come straight to me. There is no need for a lawyer.’ He instructed the peons accordingly.
[…] I had to go to the university on a daily basis also. The students were coming from all over India. The registrar said, ‘The PA sits in the room next to my chambers. You can sit at a table there, arrange all your papers and bring them to me at one time.’ The PA sahib was not happy. But what could he do?
[…] It was the [Central Relief Committee] that had met all the expenses for the stamp paper, lawyer’s fees, court fees, etc.
[…] Those students who were studying medicine in Sindh had to face many difficulties: college admissions, high expenses, keeping terms, etc. Many abandoned their studies. Some came to Bombay. A few Gujarati businessmen arranged for them to stay in an office in the cotton market near Cotton Green Station. Even then, they faced a huge problem finding dinner at night. The examinations were some time away. Their families were not yet settled in other cities or in camps. Where was the money to come from? […] With assistance from the government and the universities, they were allowed to keep term. […] After the examinations, they were scattered [all over the world]. Many passed the senior examination and went abroad. Several made a name for themselves. Many years later I met a few of them in Bombay, Poona and America.
THE MAKING OF EXILE: SINDHI HINDUS AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA Page 33