In Nehru’s view, and this was typical of the Congress High Command, conditions in East Bengal did not constitute a grave and permanent danger to its Hindu minorities. It was convenient for Delhi to regard their flight westwards as the product of fears, mainly imaginary, and of baseless rumours, rather than the consequence of palpable threats to life, limb and property.19
Only those who could prove that they had fled communal violence directed against themselves personally were regarded as ‘genuine’ victims of Partition and therefore as proper refugees entitled to protection (in however small measure) from the Indian state.20
According to Kamla Hiranand, although her uncle J. B. Kripalani had told Hindus to stay on in August 1947, he found the level of communal discrimination in Sindh worse when he returned in December, the same year. Now he acknowledged that it would be difficult for Hindus to live in Sindh, and promised to talk to Gandhi to garner Congress support for their evacuation to India. Dr Choithram Gidwani, who was then in Delhi, sent a telegram to Ghanshyamdas Jethanand asking him to join him there. A deputation of these Sindhi Congress leaders visited Gandhi and apprised him of the circumstances in Sindh, and requested him to prevail upon Nehru to arrange for the evacuation of Hindus.21
It was only after this crucial meeting with Gandhi at the end of December 1947, with sustained and strong lobbying by the Sindhi Congress leaders – and after the Hyderabad pogrom – that the Congress high command in Delhi began to reconsider its stance on the migration of Hindus from Sindh. On 30 December 1947, Gandhi remarked in his post-prayer speech that ‘no Hindu or for that matter any non-Muslim could today remain in Sindh, and feel safe.’ According to him, the only way to retain or regain the confidence of the minorities was for the Pakistan government to lift its restrictions placed on the emigration of non-Muslims. A few days later, on 4 January 1948, Vallabhbhai Patel asserted: ‘We have to take out Hindus and Sikhs from Sind, for despite all assurances of protection they cannot remain there for a day. Those assurances are empty words.’22
The change in the Congress’ stance would be underscored in a matter of days by events in Karachi.
Muhajir Unrest
The numbers of muhajirs entering Sindh had swelled to a torrent. In mid-September 1947 there had been 500 refugees entering Karachi every day; by the end of November, this number had increased to 1,000 or 2,000.
By December 1947, Karachi, which had been a Hindu-dominated city for the last two centuries, had become completely dominated by Muslims in the span of merely four months. Many of them, as refugees, had undertaken gruelling journeys to reach their beloved Pakistan. Trains coming to Sindh from the north were completely packed with barely any standing room in the compartments, and muhajirs sitting on the roofs of the carriages. Given the carnage on the trains in Punjab, some muhajirs often preferred to take long and circuitous voyages by ship. The Pakistani politician, diplomat and author, Shaista Ikramullah tells us that she took nearly one week to sail from Calcutta to Karachi in September 1947, because the violence in Punjab had brought train traffic to a temporary halt in northwest India.23 Here is an excerpt from Mozaffer Hussain Naqvi’s account of his ‘nightmarish voyage’ from Bombay to Karachi:
Unpromising Journey
Of late distances have increased and travelling difficulties multiplied in India. The straight route is now the last route to be taken. A man coming from Bihar, for instance, has to travel three hundred and odd miles east before his journey to the west commences. Patna to Calcutta, Calcutta to Bombay (via Nagpur), Bombay to Karachi by sea is the only route left for Muslims migrating from Eastern India. Food and coolie rates are higher than they were during the war, but with the fleeing Muslims money is no consideration, so long as there is a coin left in the bottom of the purse. I met a man on the Bombay platform who had spent all that he had and was still at a distance of over four hundred miles from Karachi.
The Bombay station platform is a refugee camp with a difference; refugee and transit camps are organised whereas this one was man-and-God forsaken. There were men and women of all classes who had been lying there for days, and some for weeks, without a bath, without change and without privacy. The only thing that sustained them was the hope that someday they might get passage to Karachi.
The sale of ship’s ticket [sic] is a regular scandal. Boats leave Bombay almost every alternate day but the scarcity of tickets is always the same. You would expect a booking office somewhere, but it is simply not there. There is an open place in a corner of the station building where two men sit on the floor and issue tickets on permits. There are no chairs, no tables, and I am not sure that they do not use their own pens.
In that crowd of dissatisfied and grumbling emigrants there were officials on transfer to Pakistan too. For a while, when they alighted from the train, they felt superior to others. They came expecting better treatment. But the first hour on the platform convinced them that no one knew what to do with them. Then like everyone else they receded into the crowd and settled down to wait patiently for their turn; and then there were more new-comers.
On the first floor of the station building there is a rest room which was being used as an office by the officers deputed by the Pakistan Government to supervise the distribution of tickets. Most of them were stolid and indifferent men who seemed pleased with themselves and with life. The only officer who was helpful was a Hindu.
The room was mobbed twice in an hour.
I started for Karachi on the second day of my arrival in Bombay, leaving the crowd behind. Their existence seemed a pity.
In the Bowels of the Ship
The next morning I was in another crowd, and the most dreadful stage of the journey began. Nothing but insecurity of life could justify such a voyage and absolutely nothing can justify a repetition of it.
The [Alexandra] dock presented a sight which made one’s heart sink. For hours on end the surging crowd that had reached the dock at about sunrise was kept back from the ship. In the increasing heat children fainted, women fainted and men shouted angrily, but the gangplank was still barred. It was criminal, the way they treated the passengers on the quay that day. At two in the afternoon, the gangplank was at last opened, and there was more crying and more misery.
Like ants, the crowd spread out on the deck, and the rest went to the lower decks. Another two hours of avoidable misery passed, while human beings stewed in the bowels of the ship.
I think it was a BISN ship, the Shirala, which has been doing unusually brisk business during the recent months. I was told that the normal capacity of the ship is a thousand passengers whereas we were four thousand, at least. Literally every inch of space was occupied. You could not move, there was no room, you could not stretch yourself, there was not room; you could only sit and wonder for two days and two nights what that mass of humanity had done to deserve so much suffering. As for the women, the less said the better. From that point of view the voyage was a thorough disgrace.
Everyone was annoyed with himself and with everyone else. Tempers were constantly high; everyone behaved like a wedding guest.
After full sixty hours, instead of the usual forty, Karachi was sighted on the third day. The air resounded with shouts of ‘Allah o Akbar’ as the Pakistan flag went up the ship’s mast, and the last ounce of energy was spent. Four hours later the last passenger left the deck. After a nightmarish voyage we reached Karachi, more dead than alive. We had come ashore ‘from the sea,’ but ‘home’ was eighteen hundred miles behind.24
If voyages to Pakistan by sea were ‘nightmarish’, muhajirs travelling by train, by the safer route via Jodhpur, were also subjected to ordeals. Many muhajirs – including central government employees who had opted for Pakistan – languished at the Victoria Terminus railway station in Bombay, squatting on the platforms, for want of tickets. Bribes were paid to get tickets out of turn, and those with some influence managed to get tickets issued secretly at midnight.25 On arrival in Karachi, their troubles did not cease. With nowhere to go, they squ
atted on the railway platform again, and were likely to be turned out onto the streets.26
Even the illegal practice of forcible occupation of Hindu houses by muhajirs was no guarantee for their future. As Vazira Zamindar reports, these muhajirs were then obliged to submit an application for that house to be allotted to them. However, if another muhajir had already made an application for that very house, he would be allotted the house, and the muhajir who had forcibly occupied the house would shortly be evicted by the first applicant.27
Life in the refugee camps was also extremely difficult, and continued to be so for several years. Baqar Mehdi was a boy of nine when he came to Karachi from Agra in September 1947. Initially, he and his family lived at the Haji Camp for a few months before they were able to move to a rented flat. In this congested camp, seven to eight muhajirs were crammed into each tent. They were only provided accommodation; they had to fend for themselves for food. In Baqar Mehdi’s words, ‘There were about 1,000 or 1,500 people in a place meant for 300 or 400 people so you can imagine what it was like.’28
The conditions of the refugee camps did not improve with time. The Bengali leader, H. S. Suhrawardy, describes the ‘appalling’ state of a camp for muhajirs at a disused locomotive workshop in Sukkur in 1950, where at the peak of summer, muhajirs were lying in the open, in the absence of any shade. Covered locomotive sheds were like ovens even after sundown. There was a grand total of two water taps for 2,000 refugees, but one of these was not working. Several muhajirs, mostly children and infants, died every day.29
Muhajirs came from not only different parts of India, but also different backgrounds. While some were central government employees who had opted for Pakistan, others were affluent, notably the Muslim elite of cities like Delhi and Lucknow. However, there were also a large number of destitute muhajirs, who needed to be accommodated and rehabilitated. The Sindh government had set up a cabinet sub-committee and appointed two officers to supervise their rehabilitation. The Bengali statesman, Fazlur Rahman, was appointed as refugee minister by the Pakistan government. With Karachi stretched beyond its capacity – the city had already been reported as ‘saturated’ by late July 1947 – the government now seriously considered the resettlement of muhajirs in tented camps outside Karachi, such as Landhi. Refugees were also sent further afield, to areas such as Hyderabad, Nawabshah and Mirpur Khas. The government was aware that it would not be possible to find employment for such a large number of refugees. It was expected that a large number of livelihoods would be generated only in 1954, when the lower Sindh Barrage was due to come into operation.
The general mood among the refugees worsened as the weeks went by. As mentioned earlier, Pakistan had been idealised – especially among the Muslims living as minorities in regions in Independent India – as a country where Muslims could expect a good standard of living as well as social justice and equality. In Shaista Ikramullah’s words, Pakistan was ‘the land of promise, the land of hope, the land for which thousands had sacrificed their lives and were still doing so.’30 But after coming to Pakistan, these refugees soon discovered this ideal to be a myth. Moreover, they found themselves living, often on footpaths, in Hindu-dominated cities, or in predominantly Hindu neighbourhoods, where a high degree of prejudice against both Muslims and non-Sindhis prevailed, and their very presence was frowned upon.
At the time of Partition, Teji Bhojwani was a six-year-old girl living in the small village of Samaro, not far from Mirpur Khas, in the south of Sindh. She recalls, from a child’s perspective, Hindu suspiciousness towards muhajirs in the smaller towns and villages in Sindh:
In our neighbourhood, there were these people who had come, we used to call them panaahgir, meaning those Muslims who had migrated from Hindustan.
We were scared of them. The panaahgirs would say, ‘Come, we are just like you, come and talk to us.’ They used to tell us children to come.
‘Panaahgir means they will take you children away,’ our mother used to scare us. ‘Avoid them.’
Now their houses were right next to ours; how could we avoid them? If we had to go to the shop, we had to pass through that same lane.
But the panaahgirs, mostly men who had come without their families, they were so nice, they used to shut their doors and sit inside.31
As mentioned earlier, the Sind Public Safety Ordinance had been passed in late September 1947 in Karachi city and the entire districts of Sukkur, Nawabshah, Tharparkar and Hyderabad, where large numbers of refugees were accommodated, with the specific intention of controlling refugee aggression. In October 1947, at least 52 muhajirs ‘suspected of a breach of peace in Karachi’ were deported from Sindh.32
Prices of consumer goods and essential commodities in Karachi – already in short supply due to World War II – had soared, nearly doubling and tripling their previous rates. Accommodation became more and more difficult, and forcible occupation of Hindu property continued unabated. In October 1947, the Sindh government appointed a special additional district magistrate to prevent the unauthorised occupation of houses. Refugees seeking accommodation flocked to the rent controller’s office, where the impoverished Sindh government imposed a stamp duty of Rs 2 on every application for housing.
The Sindh government, which had earlier given the muhajirs a warm welcome, had also become somewhat disenchanted with its role of hospitable host. For one, the sheer numbers of refugees had quite overwhelmed the Sindh government, which was in any case also struggling to establish the Pakistan government in Karachi.
Second, the Sindh government believed – and resented – that a certain section of the refugee population were ‘idlers’ who expected to receive free food and accommodation without having to work towards their keep; there were even pauper ‘refugees’ who had come to Sindh from West Punjab. In late October 1947, the Sindh government issued a warning to these refugees, directing them to work for their living or face the consequences – expulsion from Sindh. Simultaneously, all district collectors were instructed to stop giving free food to refugees. This announcement was received very badly by the general Muslim public, and the Sindh government was forced to clarify that they would continue to feed those refugees who were physically incapacitated, women and children with no adult male relatives, and orphans.
In addition, the Sindh government, perceiving an air of simmering disquiet, warned the muhajirs that they would be arrested if they attempted any communal bloodshed. A section of the lower class muhajirs were keenly aware that their accommodation problem would be solved to a great extent if the Sindhi Hindus chose to migrate to India and vacate their houses. These muhajirs now began to share the resentment, largely economic, that prevailed among the lower class Sindhi Muslims against the Sindhi Hindus. But these muhajirs also began to resent Sindhi Muslims, who were perceived as being ‘too soft’ on the Sindhi Hindus. They felt that if the Sindhi Muslims had been more aggressive and more vocally anti-Hindu, the Sindhi Hindus would have left in larger numbers much earlier, thus solving the muhajir housing problem.
By extension, this resentment was also projected onto the Sindh government, which was not only taking steps to curb their outbursts, but also making efforts to retain the Hindu community; this was perceived as ‘the Hindu-appeasing policy’ of the government, and Hindus became ‘the focus of both anger and suspicion.’33 Consequently, the muhajir press – including prominent newspapers such as Dawn (in English) and Jang (in Urdu), both of which had moved from Delhi to Karachi – played a major role in stirring up sentiments among the incoming refugees against the Sindh government.
In early November, there was a flare-up at the rent controller’s office, where some dissatisfied muhajirs tore office records, broke glass panes and attempted to attack the staff. According to Vazira Zamindar:
The Rent Controller’s Office became the focus of a great deal of dissatisfaction, since some felt it had become corrupt in the face of a demand for houses that exceeded supply. There were charges that only ‘those who bribe get a house’, and t
hat in return for payoffs several allotment orders were being issued for a single house.34
Later in November, there were several incidents of policemen being attacked, when they tried to prevent the unauthorised occupation of Hindu property. When refugees turned violent once more at the rent controller’s office in late November 1947, the Sindh government took immediate steps to avert further violence: Refugees were directed to submit their housing applications to the office of the Muslim National Guards, who would forward them to the rent controller. A ban on carrying of weapons was imposed again in Karachi up to 31 December 1947.
On 5 December 1947, a conference was held by Pir Ilahi Baksh, the minister for refugee rehabilitation, N. A. Faruqui, Karachi’s district magistrate, and officials from the rent control office in order to discuss the accommodation of muhajirs in a super-saturated Karachi. It was decided that the refugees be sent to other towns in Sindh such as Sukkur, Shikarpur and Mirpur Khas, which could more easily absorb them. However, when lorries arrived at the Haji Camp to convey 4,500 muhajirs to Mirpur Khas, they were sent back empty. The muhajirs had no interest in being dispersed and settling in small obscure Sindhi towns. As Sri Prakasa tells us:
The Muslim refugees who came to Sind presented a difficult problem inasmuch as they all wanted to be rehabilitated in cities. For Karachi, the situation was particularly annoying. The then Chief Minister of Sind told me that there were plenty of villages and small townlets which were lying vacant after the departure of Hindus. The Muslims who had come from India did not like to go there. They all wanted to be in Karachi itself. How could Karachi accommodate them all?35
A week later, on 12 December, about 500 muhajirs went on a rampage, attempting to forcibly occupy houses in Karachi, and attacking the house owners; the police made a handful of arrests and restored some houses to their lawful occupants.
Arrests of muhajirs were now commonly made, and there were reports that these prisoners were being flogged.36 Even muhajir women, many of whom had been hitherto accustomed to purdah, were venturing out to forcibly occupy houses; the Karachi police were obliged to enrol women police to deal with these women refugees.
THE MAKING OF EXILE Page 18