THE MAKING OF EXILE

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  …a complete breakdown, or rather reversal, of the ordinary moral values. To kill a Sikh had become almost a duty; to kill a Hindu was hardly a crime. To rob them was an innocent pleasure, carrying no moral stigma; to refrain was a mark not of virtue but of lack of enterprise. On the other hand to try to stop these things was at best folly, at worst a crime.32

  Moon’s description of this perversion of values in Bahawalpur could equally apply to Hindus and Sikhs in places where Muslims were in a minority. This perception of lawlessness or anarchy – internalised by many victims as well as perpetrators of violence – possibly contributed to the violence, as well as helped both parties to rationalise it subsequently.

  There were a few factors that contributed to this ‘lawlessness’. Firstly, there was a time lag between the termination of the relatively smoothly functioning British rule and the firm establishment of indigenous rule, especially in the partitioned provinces of Bengal and Punjab. There are also many reports of outgoing British administrators who, faced with the imminent end of their postings, reacted with indifference or laziness at times of great social tension. This only contributed to a sense of uncertainty and loss of the public’s faith in the administration.33

  At the end of June 1947, central government servants were given the option to choose which dominion they wished to work for. Since many Hindu, Sikh and Muslim government servants chose on the basis of their religion, some held the view that this fed the sense of insecurity among the minorities in many parts of Northern India.34

  The Radcliffe Award, delineating the borders between India and Pakistan, had been prepared by 13 August 1947. Mountbatten, however, chose to hand over the Radcliffe Award to leaders of both dominions only on 16 August, after Independence. The Radcliffe Award was published only on 17 August. Consequently, the great confusion that prevailed until then, as to where exactly the border lines would be drawn, also added to the sense of anarchy.

  Yet the Sindh government had the foresight to prevent large-scale violence from occurring, precisely through the strict maintenance of law and order. (Penderel Moon also points out that in Multan, where the local authorities ‘acted vigorously and by arranging prompt dispatch of military forces to the affected areas’, the quantum of casualties was not as high as in the Rawalpindi and Attock districts, where there was a delay of over a week before any serious action was taken by the government.35) The Muslim League leadership in Sindh had regretted their experiment with communal violence over the issue of Masjid Manzilgah and was determined to avoid further bloodshed. Khuhro and his government were also keen on maintaining Sindh’s reputation as a peaceful province. This further gave them a sense of moral superiority vis-à-vis India, after the anti-Muslim violence in its capital.

  Even though curfew had been withdrawn in Karachi, the Sindh government issued the Sind Public Safety Ordinance on 21 September, which was enforced in Karachi city and the districts of Sukkur, Nawabshah, Tharparkar and Hyderabad on 4 October. Meant to restrain communal violence, the ordinance gave the government arbitrary and sweeping powers to detain persons suspected of disturbing the peace for six months without trial, and to provide capital punishment or transportation for life for causing hurt by stabbing. It also provided for the punishment of individuals for the possession of illegal weapons and allowed for the censorship of the press. Although the drastic measures of the Sind Public Safety Ordinance were intended to act as strong deterrents for any would-be trouble-makers, they only served to unsettle the Hindus even more, who perceived themselves to be at risk for arbitrary arrests and, with limited or no arms, unable to defend themselves against communal violence.

  In addition to pre-empting anti-minority violence as far as possible, the Sindh government had also made some attempts to accommodate Hindu interests. It had set up the Sind Minorities Association, headed by Dr Hemandas Wadhwani. Two seats in the Sind cabinet were reserved for minority representatives. The newly established Sindh University had set up separate boards of studies for Hindu culture and religion, Gujarati, Sanskrit and Marathi. In addition, the university had formed advisory committees for matters concerning Hindus, Parsis and Christians. The Sindh government had also set up a committee to investigate cases of a phenomenon new to Sindh: the forcible occupation of Hindu offices, shops and houses by Muslim refugees from India.

  Notes

  1.The term spiv was used for black-market dealers during the Second World War and in the post-war rationing period.

  2.It is likely that Russel is mistaken about the date; Pakistan became independent on August 14.

  3.Wilfrid Russell, Indian Summer, pp 123-125.

  4.Roger Pearce, Once a Happy Valley, pp 468-469.

  5.M. J. Akbar, Nehru: The Making of India, p 419.

  6.Jawaharlal Nehru to Sardar Patel, 30 September 1947, in Durga Das, ed, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945-50, vol 4, pp 297-299, as quoted in Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi, p 19.

  7.According to one account, the failure of this plot to assassinate Jinnah is attributed to the last-minute loss of nerve of the RSS worker who was to throw the first grenade.

  8.Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan, p 342 and Alex Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, pp 238-240.

  9.Hamida Khuhro, ‘The Capital of Pakistan’ in Hamida Khuhro and Anwer Mooraj, eds, Karachi: Megacity of our Times, pp 96-97.

  10.Syed Hashim Raza went on to be appointed the chief secretary in several ministries of the Pakistan central government, as well as the chief secretary and governor of East Pakistan. Syed Hashim Raza, Hamari Manzil, p 84.

  11.According to Vishnu Sharma, the official count of casualties was highly understated. Vishnu Sharma, Dr. Choithram Partabrai Gidwani ji Jeevani, p 233. The dead numbered more than 1,000 according to the Free Press Journal, Bombay, 6 September 1947.

  12.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 6 September 1947.

  13.The Mohattas were wealthy businessmen and philanthropists who had migrated to Karachi from Rajasthan. They were partners in a firm by the name of Herman & Mohatta.

  14.Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, pp 470-473.

  15.Sonu Kripalani, interview, January 2013.

  16.Lata Jagtiani, ibid, pp 351-353.

  17.The Chachnamah, Sindh’s first historical text, reports that in the early eighth century, King Dahir, the ruler of Sindh, was unable to control pirates operating off the coast of Sindh. Medieval accounts also mention dacoities and pillaging of caravans. One interesting narrative is that of Nicholas Withington, a British visitor to Sindh in the early 17th century, whose caravan was attacked several times, and who made his way back to Ahmedabad wearing only his breeches. Tribes from neighbouring Baluchistan and Rajasthan had a hoary history of making pillaging forays into Sindh, and later even the British had unpleasant experiences with pirates on the Indus. Cattle-lifting was a ‘regular industry’ in Sindh (See David Cheesman, Landlord Power & Rural Indebtedness in Colonial Sind, p 89.) and dacoities and house-breaking followed closely. As a result, Sindhi society evolved its own response: pagis, men trained to track individual thieves and dacoits, by following their passage and footprints, even over stony ground, over great distances.

  18.This was abetted by a highly flawed system of justice, in which waderos, who often were involved in crimes at some level, would use their social status and power to influence the outcome of legal cases. The police too, were infamous for their barbaric methods of torture to induce innocent men to confess to crimes simply so that a scapegoat could be found.

  19.See Hamida Khuhro, ibid, pp 320-321, as also Khadim Hussain Soomro, The Path Not Taken, p 151 and p 167.

  20.Free Press Journal, Bombay, 13 September 1947.

  21.Ibid, 6 September 1947.

  22.See Hamida Khuhro, Mohammed Ayub Khuhro: A Life of Courage in Politics, p 320, and Free Press Journal, Bombay, 3 September 1947.

  23.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, ibid, pp 218-219.

  24.T
he Times of India, Bombay, 15 September 1947.

  25.See Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Partition and Independence in Delhi: 1947- 48’, pp 2264 and 2266, and Vazira Zamindar, The Long Partition, pp 25 and 32-33. Anis Kidwai also makes several references to the ‘callous and partisan conduct of the official machinery’ in Delhi in her memoir, In Freedom’s Shade.

  26.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom, pp 210-211 and Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 21.

  27.As quoted in Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 27.

  28.Vazira Zamindar, ibid, p 37.

  29.Shahid Ahmad Dehlavi, as quoted in Gyanendra Pandey, ibid, p 2271. See also In Freedom’s Shade by Anis Kidwai. Many writers, including Shahid Ahmad Dehlavi, Ibadat Barelvi and Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, have attested to the chilling ‘period of horror’ that the Muslims of Delhi went through.

  30.Gyanendra Pandey, ibid, pp 2262-2264.

  31.Ashis Nandy, ‘Coming Home’, p 145.

  32.Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit, p 217.

  33.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, ibid, p 182.

  34.S. K. Kirpalani, Fifty Years with the British, pp 314-315, and Kuldip Nayar and Asif Noorani, Tales of Two Cities, p 21.

  35.See Penderel Moon, ibid, pp 78-79.

  CHAPTER 3

  Alienated at Home

  Housing for Muhajirs in Karachi

  The first muhajirs had come to Sindh as early as late 1946. These Muslims were mostly refugees from Bihar. They had fled their homes after Direct Action Day, and the subsequent communal violence in Bihar in October and November 1946. While some muhajirs had found their way to East Bengal, about 1,500 or so had come to Karachi. The Sindh Muslim League had then welcomed them with open arms, in a determined gesture of Muslim solidarity.

  Apart from setting up the Pakistan central government offices and providing living quarters for an estimated 7,000 government officers and their families, the Sindh government also had to find accommodation for these muhajirs. Housing in Karachi, however, was becoming increasingly difficult. Given the housing shortage, hotel tariffs had soared, and an ordinance was passed to control the rates charged by hotels and lodging houses in Karachi.

  The muhajirs had initially been accommodated in Haji Camp (originally meant for Muslims departing on Haj) as well as in schools and hospitals controlled by the Karachi municipal corporation. Landlords in the city had been directed to give the refugees first preference while renting out flats in newly constructed buildings. The Sindh government was also trying to arrange for their accommodation in unoccupied military barracks in Karachi. The long-term plan of the Sindh government was to redistribute these muhajirs among the various districts of the province and rehabilitate them there.

  In June 1947, it was initially proposed to settle the muhajirs on a large plot of land in Bunder Road Extension, a well-heeled suburb of Karachi. This was, however, a residential area dominated by affluent Sindhi Hindus, who became nervous about such a large number of discontented lower class Muslim refugees living in such close proximity to them. Given their influence, the Hindus were able to sway the government into transferring the proposed resettlement site to Lyari, a more congested lower middle class area. Tented camps also came up on the outskirts of the city, and a move to take over houses in the red-light area (which, it was thought, could absorb about 2,000 people) was contemplated.

  However, it had been several months since these refugees had arrived in Sindh. Many muhajirs had suffered violence at the hands of Hindus and Sikhs. They had not only left their homes, or been uprooted, but had also undergone arduous and dangerous journeys in order to reach Pakistan. They had thought they were coming to their imagined Pakistan, an idealised country where many had expected to automatically receive housing, jobs and respect, simply by virtue of being Muslims. Instead they found themselves in difficult conditions in refugee camps in Karachi, a city dominated by Sindhi Hindus. These Hindus were often perceived by the muhajirs as having no reckoning in Pakistan, the proclaimed homeland for the Muslims of South Asia; they were also perceived as fifth-columnists, with greater loyalty to India. According to the historian, Vazira Zamindar:

  By questioning their degree of belonging and rendering [the Hindus] suspicious, an equation emerged in muhajir opinion whereby Hindus were believed to be leaving (sooner or later) and so their houses were there for the taking.1

  With communal violence continuing unabated in other parts of the country, more and more Muslim refugees began arriving in Sindh, and more specifically, Karachi. It had been a difficult summer: There had been heat-waves across Northern India, and it was also the longest summer in 100 years; the monsoon arrived a record one month late in 1947. With temperatures and tempers both rising, desperate to find a home for themselves, some muhajirs began to forcibly occupy property belonging to Hindus in Karachi. The writer Gobind ‘Malhi’ writes of his experience of forcible eviction:

  Three days after my brother-in-law and I saw our families off, I barely opened my office at about nine o’clock in the morning, when a tall, burly Punjabi came in after me. I sat down on my chair, and he advanced towards the desk. He said in Urdu, ‘Hey mister, here, take Rs 100. Give me possession of the office immediately.’

  I don’t know where I got my determination from. I said, ‘I won’t give you possession. The furniture alone is worth Rs 2,000…’ He sat down in front of me. Very arrogantly, he said, ‘Okay, take 500 and get out.’ I said, ‘I won’t get out. I am a Pakistani citizen.’

  He said, ‘Here Muslims rule, not Pakistani citizens.’ He suddenly stood up, and taking my own paperweight from my table, aimed it at me. I shrank within my chair. He lowered his hand, but the paperweight remained in his possession. In a stern voice he said, ‘I will return the day after tomorrow, with my friends. I will take possession. I will beat you up and throw you out. Then you can do what you want.’

  He abruptly turned around and left. When he reached the door, he remembered the paperweight in his hand. He returned, put the paperweight on the table and, glaring at me, left quickly.

  I completely lost my nerve. His flaming eyes, his threatening manner, his aiming the paperweight at me, and his glare – I had quite lost my presence of mind. I realised I did not have the strength to get up.2

  After composing himself, Gobind ‘Malhi’ left his office and went straight home, where he packed two sets of clothes in a small bag, and flew to Ahmedabad that very day. He intended to return in a week, after consulting with his family about whether to stay on in Sindh, but ultimately he never returned to his homeland.

  As a result of these instances of forcible occupations of property, Hindus felt extremely insecure, afraid to leave their homes and shops empty even for a few hours lest they be usurped. Even the presence of the owners of the houses was not necessarily enough to deter forcible occupations. Occasionally, there were incidents where muhajirs – even though they did not actually occupy houses forcibly – would stone Hindu houses and heckle the owners inside, pressurising them to leave. Some Sindhi Hindus recall that Hindu homes were marked, either with a sign, or simply with the words: ‘This is a Hindu house’ outside.3

  In mid-September the Sindh government set up a committee to address the problem of the forcible occupation of Hindu houses by muhajirs. However, it primarily had its own interests in mind, given the escalating demand for housing in Karachi. Khuhro announced that where Hindu property was unoccupied (if the Hindu owners or tenants had gone to India, even temporarily), the government would take over such property and allot it to muhajir applicants via the rent controller. This essentially amounted to the forcible occupation of Hindu unoccupied property by the Sindh government. Khuhro announced that the committee would accept applications from homeless muhajirs asking for specified premises found to be vacated by Hindus, and on recommendation of the committee, the rent controller would make allotments. If the premises were locked, and in the absence of the original tenant, the landlord could hand over the vacant property, and the lock would be broken by the police t
o obtain possession.4

  It should be noted that the conflict was not always between Hindus and Muslims; different communities of Muslims also began to clash over property. And as Kamla Hiranand’s narrative below tells us, these forcible occupations continued for several months. Kamla Hiranand (née Devi Kripalani) was a doughty Gandhian and freedom fighter, married to Hiranand Karamchand. In her essay, ‘The Situation in Sindh during Partition’, she describes the efforts of Congress workers to combat the phenomenon of Muslim refugees usurping Hindu homes. Her account also depicts, though tangentially, the travails that muhajirs went through, both in India and in Sindh.

  Many men had sent their families abroad [to India] and were living alone. They had stayed behind because of their jobs, their lands, or other properties. The moment they would step outside their door, the panaahgirs, the Muslim refugees in Karachi, would immediately come and occupy their house. They would do the same thing when shops were left unattended. When a shopkeeper would go home for lunch, he would return and find panaahgirs occupying his shop. They would vacate neither the occupied house nor the shop. They would openly say, ‘Why are you still staying here in Pakistan? Go to Hindustan.’

  After breakfast, our elderly uncle, our late Kaka Pohoomal Mirchandani, would go out into the neighbourhood to find out how the neighbours were doing. If he found that the panaahgirs had forcibly occupied a house, he would immediately come to call me. I used to think that we were still in power, so I would go with Kaka and we would try and persuade the panaahgirs. But why would they listen to us, why would they vacate the place?

  Once, the panaahgirs spread a dhurrie in the compound of someone’s house and sat there, even though the owner of the house was at home. When Kaka found out, he took me along with him. I saw that in the severe December cold about eight to ten people were sitting on the dhurrie outside in the compound, and were cooking something on a lit stove. Their water jar was kept in front of them. A two- or three-month-old infant was lying asleep, covered with a piece of patchwork quilt. I told the panaahgirs in Hindustani, ‘Is this any act of decency, the way you have come and sat down in another’s house?’ I had barely said this when one of them immediately shouted, ‘Who are you to teach us decency?’ He took his sleeping child into his lap and said, ‘See the decency of your Delhi-wallas, who have taken away the clothes from our newborn’s body in the biting cold of Delhi. You go and teach them decency. Now this is our country, we will stay here.’5