THE MAKING OF EXILE

by NANDITA BHAVNANI

  Some people got off at Nasarpur on the road to Tando Allahyar, and that left us; we returned to Tando Allahyar and heaved a sigh of relief.

  Hats off to the heroic taxi driver who didn’t ask us for any money. If he had wanted, he could have demanded a princely sum. But he did not do so. Whatever anyone gave him, he accepted quietly. Nevertheless, I wrote a letter to my family, and told the driver that if he informed them of my well-being, they would give him a gift of Rs 25.

  Once I reached Tando Allahyar, I informed the mukhtiarkar [revenue official] about the riots, and he called the police inspector, Mr Sharif Khan over and put the town under curfew.

  A couple of other Hindu civil servants and I went and stayed with the chief officer of Tando Allahyar, Shri Gulabrai Kripalani. I made many attempts to send a message via telephone to my family in Hyderabad, but this was all in vain, because the rioters had cut the phone lines and had disabled the system. Finally after five days, my friend Rasulbaksh Talpur came in his car from Hyderabad to Tando Allahyar. He was a captain in the [Muslim] National Guard. He had a revolver with him and he had a permit to move around during curfew. When we passed through the Phulaili area, the police were checking houses; they had made stockpiles of several sticks, cudgels and brickbats and had kept them outside! It was obvious that the riots had been pre-planned and that the news of the train from Ajmer filled with Muslim corpses was just a false rumour. […]

  The day I reached Hyderabad was the same day that Maulabaksh came to my house to deliver the good news of my safety. He had been unable to come earlier due to the curfew. But alas! At that time there was not even a rupee in the house. From among the friends and relatives who were leaving Sindh and going to India (and who had been staying in our house), an ungrateful person had stolen the entire sum of Rs 3,000 that was kept in the house. Even then, my mother didn’t lose her patience. I went and took a loan of Rs 25 from Dadi Gomi who used to live behind our house, and gave it to Maulabaksh with thanks.

  Even today when the memory of this incident comes to mind, I feel that there are good and bad people in every community. A Muslim who saved my life, and a Hindu who looted our house in exchange for a good turn. Humanity is still alive. If Maulabaksh had wanted to, he could have taken advantage of the opportunity and taken a hefty sum from us on the spot. But this man of Allah did not do so, he had some humanity in him, he did his duty.

  Maulabaksh! My namaskar to you. Sir! Wherever you may be, may you be happy, may you be joyful, may you be prosperous! By your act, you have shown that He is truly Rab al-Aalmeen, god of all the worlds, and not just Rab al-Suleman, god of the Muslims.3

  Other Sindhi Hindus from Hyderabad and its environs also recall the violence clearly. Lakhmichand Bahirwani was then a young boy of 15, living in Tando Jam, a small town quite close to Hyderabad. According to Lakhmichand Bahirwani, it was common practice for people living in Tando Jam to visit Hyderabad daily. On 17 December, Bahirwani’s cousin Tarachand was returning from Hyderabad to Tando Jam in the car of his relative, Naraindas Rupani, the president of the Tando Jam municipality. With them was Rupani’s brother-in-law, dressed in a dhoti, and the Hindu driver, wearing a Pathani salwar-kurta. On the outskirts of Hyderabad, the car had to stop at the Phulaili railway crossing, where it was surrounded by muhajirs. When questioned, the driver claimed that they were all Muslims, and the crowd believed him because of his Pathani attire. Then they noticed the man in the dhoti. Although Naraindas Rupani was carrying a revolver with him, he was so terror-stricken that he simply froze. He, his brother-in-law and Tarachand Bahirwani were dragged out of the car and beaten to death with sticks from a cart of firewood nearby. Their bodies were taken in a taxi to the hospital, where they were declared dead on arrival. The Hindu driver continued to masquerade as a Muslim and so lived to tell the tale.4

  Violence had also spread to the city of Hyderabad. Pritam Varyani was then a youth of 19, very active in the local Rashtra Seva Dal, the youth wing of the Congress. Pritam Varyani recalls the fateful day of the Hyderabad violence:

  When the trouble started, I had gone to Chodki Ghitti to buy curd. Suddenly, I heard people shouting, ‘Chal gayi, chal gayi, chal gayi! It’s started, it’s started, it’s started!’ I could not understand what ‘chal gayi’ meant. Immediately the shutters of all the shops came down and everybody vanished. The curd vendor also disappeared. I could not comprehend what was happening. Now, violence erupted. Some muhajirs and extremist Sindhi Muslims came together and ordered me to join them.

  Oddly enough, I had a hunch that day that I ought to wear a Jinnah cap. It is why I am still alive today, to tell this tale. In the meanwhile, my brother had come to Chodki Ghitti to call me back home. The mob thought that he was Hindu but that I was Muslim.

  ‘Maaro saale ko, maaro kaafir ko! Kill the wretch, kill the infidel!’ they shouted. My brother ran, and I ran behind him. They thought I was chasing him, and shouted at me, ‘Catch him, catch him!’ Somehow, both of us managed to get home and lock the door.

  At night, the same people came to our lane to make trouble. We were saved, but many Hindus were killed.

  My father had been ready to migrate for a while. But each time he’d broach the issue, I would start crying, ‘I will not leave my country.’ My father and I had fought over this several times.

  Now, my father became adamant: ‘If we stay on here, either we will have to become Muslims or we will be killed.’ Circumstances had altered. Since I had witnessed violence myself, I agreed to migrate.5

  Iqbal Mirza is the grandson of Mirza Kalichbeg, the renowned Sindhi scholar and writer. His family had always been part of Sindh’s elite: Kalichbeg’s father, Mirza Faredoonbeg, was a minister to the Talpur Mirs, and Mirza Kalichbeg himself was a deputy collector, apart from being a prolific writer. The Mirzas had their own mohalla, their neighbourhood, consisting of several interlinked houses within an old fort at Tando Thoro, a suburb of Hyderabad. Outside the fort was a small bazaar where several Hindus lived. The Hindu children went to the same school as the Mirzas. Iqbal Mirza, then a young boy of about 14, recalls that several Hindus took shelter in the Mirza mohalla, some in the main houses, and some in the otaqs or guest houses. Since Tando Thoro was outside the purview of the curfew immediately installed in Hyderabad, the mohalla was soon surrounded by muhajirs, who had realised that Hindus were being harboured inside. Several of the Mirzas were shikar aficionados and possessed guns. Some of them came up to their terrace and fired shots in the air. One of Iqbal Mirza’s cousins, who was a public prosecutor, made a telephone call, calling the army to Tando Thoro to disperse the rioters.6

  What happened in Hyderabad during December 1947 was not new in many respects; this was only the latest chapter in the long saga of Partition-related ‘revenge’. In the words of J. B. Kripalani:

  It is not that many innocent lives are lost. What has affected me is the sight that our religions are being degraded. Both the communities have borrowed from each other the worst instrument of violence, so that in the latest communal frenzy more cruel and heartless things have been done than at any previous time. In every fresh communal fight the most brutal and degraded acts of the previous fight are the norm. Thus we keep on degrading each other, and all in the name of religion.7

  The violence on Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946 resulted in more Muslim than Hindu casualties in Calcutta. The notion of ‘retaliation’ or ‘reprisal’ had triggered off violence against Hindus in Dacca and other parts of Bengal from August through October, as well as massacres of Hindus in Noakhali and Tippera (in East Bengal) in October. These had in turn elicited ‘retaliatory’ violence against Muslims in Bihar and the United Provinces shortly after. Even in Punjab, there had been numerous instances of retaliatory attacks and, as Kripalani put it, the nadir of the previous communal violence became the norm for the next.

  Yet, this notion of ‘retaliation’ was only an ostensible reason for communal violence; at best it was merely a trigger which inflamed existing local communal animosities
and resentments. In Hyderabad, there was a high degree of discontent among many of the newly arrived muhajirs, in sore need of housing and livelihood, and this discontent was vented on the Hindus of the city.

  In all, 19 Hindus were injured in the Hyderabad violence, and at least 37 were killed. K. R. Malkani, the RSS worker, was in Hyderabad at the time and visited the civil hospital morgue, where he found 37 corpses.8 There was also at least one case of arson.

  The Sindh government again took swift action: installing a long curfew in Hyderabad, cancelling trains and arresting about 200 muhajirs. Hindus living in predominantly Muslim areas were shifted out. It was publicly announced that the holy shrine at Ajmer was perfectly safe and had at no time been in danger (but as a precautionary measure, a police picket had been installed at the main gate of the dargah). The inspector-general of police, A. W. Pryde, and Premier Khuhro both rushed to Hyderabad. There, Khuhro held conferences with muhajir leaders and warned them that the police had been issued orders to shoot at sight if trouble were to recommence. Khuhro also met with Hindu leaders in Karachi; he categorically stated that he did not want the remaining Hindus to migrate and assured them that the government would maintain peace in the province at all costs.

  The Congress Rethinks Its Stance

  Although curfew was lifted after a week and Hyderabad returned to normal, the spate of violence had been a rude shock for the Sindhi Hindus of that city. They had considered Hyderabad as their stronghold, a city that they truly dominated, the cultural capital of Sindh, unlike Karachi which, although Hindu-dominated, was more cosmopolitan.

  On 25 December 1947, about a week after the violence, the Sindhi Hindus of Hyderabad held a meeting at the Gursangat Darbar, which included leading Hyderabadis such as Ghanshyamdas Jethanand, Narayandas Malkani and Mukhi Mangharam. It was decided at this meeting that the Hindus of Hyderabad would leave Sindh en masse, and a deputation was appointed to meet the Sindh government to request them to make facilities for evacuation.

  As a result of the steadily deteriorating communal situation in Sindh, Dr Choithram Gidwani and other senior Sindh Congress leaders such as Ghanshyamdas Jethanand paid several visits to the Congress high command in Delhi over the last few months of 1947, and the latter was apprised of circumstances in Sindh. (It should be noted that there was a similar awareness about the simultaneously deteriorating communal situation in the princely state of Bahawalpur, immediately to the north of Sindh.) They tried hard to impress upon the Congress high command that the Hindus in Sindh were being treated as second class citizens and that the Congress government should arrange for their evacuation in a planned fashion.

  J. B. Kripalani had also petitioned Gandhi similarly at the end of September 1947.9 The Sindhi Congress leaders were given a flat refusal at that stage. Although Gandhi had acknowledged that the situation in Sindh was ‘distressing’, he had rebuked the Sindhi Congress leaders for ‘deserting’ the Hindus in Sindh and had instructed them to return to their home province, where he felt there was great need for them, and that they should ‘die if need be’.10

  The Sindhi Congress leaders, however, continued their campaign to convince the Congress high command of the need to evacuate Hindus from Sindh. In November 1947, they also published a pamphlet titled ‘Why the Exodus From Sind?’ authored by Parsram Tahilramani, general secretary of the Sind Assembly Congress Party. This document purportedly outlined the difficult conditions under which Hindus were living in Sindh, and claimed that Hindus were leaving Sindh because the Muslim League-run Sindh government was ‘deliberately and more or less systematically pursuing with breakneck speed a policy of ruthless suppression of the Hindus of Sindh.’11 But, according to one source, this pamphlet was so controversial that it was banned by the Government of India lest it fan communal animosities.12

  Today it is estimated that Partition created at least 15 million refugees; these figures were daunting to both the Indian and the Pakistani governments, who were struggling to find their feet after Independence, that too just two years after World War II. Vast numbers of refugees, who had to be resettled and rehabilitated, were a mammoth problem. Very soon, refugees found that they were not welcome. In the words of the historian Yasmin Khan:

  Overstretched provincial ministries across India and Pakistan dug in their heels and tried to resist taking responsibility for refugees. Across South Asia the provincial governments panicked at the prospect of absorbing trainloads of refugees, especially at a time of endemic food shortages and fragile social peace. They had to be cajoled, bribed and ordered to take responsibility for quotas of displaced. The [United Provinces] government steadfastly resisted the arrival of refugees in 1947 and attempted to seal the state borders. In Gujarat, the government announced that it would not be giving any aid to itinerant Gujarati traders coming ‘home’ from areas that now lay in Pakistan, although many of them had been away from Gujarat for generations.13

  It was not only provincial ministries that baulked at the idea of hosting large numbers of refugees. Princely states, which had initially been extended a warm welcome to Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan, soon found themselves inundated with refugees. By the end of September 1947, the state of Bhopal asserted that if refugees continued to pour in, the government would have to resort to legal measures to block the inflow; around the same time, the state of Mewar also banned the entry of refugees into Udaipur city. (Only a few months later – in early February 1948 – the state of Gwalior would also proclaim, through a press advertisement, that it could not cope with the ‘abnormal influx’ of refugees, and so had ‘taken steps to ban the entry of refugees in its territory.’)14 Both the Indian and Pakistani central governments also actively discouraged mass migration.

  However, the terrible violence in Punjab from March through November 1947 had resulted in a mass exodus of Hindus and Sikhs from West Punjab and of Muslims from East Punjab. These refugees, and their recent ordeal, elicited much sympathy – at least initially – from both the Indian government and the general public. Against this climate of great sympathy for the Hindu and Sikh victims of the violence in Punjab, the Indian government had no choice but to arrange for their organised evacuation, and the two dominions of India and Pakistan finally entered into an agreement for the transfer of population between the two Punjabs in early September.

  Santdas Khushiram Kirpalani, who had been commissioner of the canal colonies in the Punjab prior to Partition, had been elevated to the position of defence secretary in the new Indian government. However, he did not occupy this post for long. At a cabinet meeting held shortly after the first Inter-Dominion Conference at Lahore on 30 August 1947, Nehru appointed Kirpalani as secretary of the ministry of refugees (later relief and rehabilitation), and Kshitish Chandra Neogy as minister. Kirpalani and Neogy were informed that while there were vacant rooms in the North Block of the central government secretariat, they would have to fend for themselves. Kirpalani recalls:

  Mr. Neogy and I walked and walked through the maze of the rambling corridors of the immense block and came upon a row of six vacant rooms without a stick of furniture. One of the adjoining rooms was locked. It contained a lot of tables and chairs. Someone vouchsafed the information that the stuff had been segregated under the award of the Partition Committee for division of office equipment between the two Dominions. Under my instructions, this man forced open the door and I helped lug a dusty table and two chairs to the adjoining room. Mr. Neogy and I sat on opposite sides of the table in this bizarre setting and we shook hands. I said, ‘Sir, I am reporting that the Ministry of Refugees is officially in business.’ At that instant began a heart-breaking assignment and a heart-warming association.15

  Later Kirpalani would expand the ministry to about 200 members in less than a week, most of the staff employed being refugees themselves.

  On 18 November 1947, K. C. Neogy, the minister for relief and rehabilitation, clearly spelt out that the Indian government’s policy was to discourage mass migration from one province (of undivided I
ndia) to another, with the exception of Punjab.16 In Sindh, however, there had been relatively little physical violence against Hindus until the Hyderabad pogrom in December 1947. There was a perception among the Congress high command, which filtered down to various echelons of government, that only those refugees who had suffered from violence were genuine refugees, deserving of sympathy. This is highlighted, for example, in the definition of ‘refugee’ according to the U.P. [United Provinces] Refugee Registration and Movement Act, 1947: ‘a person who has migrated into the state in consequence of communal disturbances from the area which now constitutes Pakistan’.17 As a result, the Indian government was initially reluctant to see refugees from Sindh in the same light, since it was acknowledged that Sindh had not witnessed the same degree of communal violence, and Hindus who had fled from there were perceived as ‘cowards’. According to Meghna Guhathakurta, who works in the area of gender rights and minority rights in South Asia:

  Violence is not always to be measured by outward acts of murder, looting or abduction […] Violence typifies a state where a sense of fear is generated and perpetrated in such a way as to make it systemic, pervasive, and inevitable […] In the many communal riots which both preceded and followed the Partition, it was the fear of being persecuted, dispossessed, not belonging, rather than actual incidents of violence, that caused many to flee. In many cases this fear was deliberately generated, for example by leaflets or newspaper reports, the sources often being rumours or the mere example of seeing your neighbours leave […] Fear is less derived from actual acts of violence than it is from perceptions of violence.18

  Recognising only victims of physical violence as deserving of sympathy was the Congress’ excuse to not look at the Sindhi Hindu predicament squarely in the eye. A similar situation prevailed in East Bengal where, as the historian Joya Chatterji reports: