On the part of the Sindhi refugees, there was tremendous insecurity regarding their immediate future, anger about their past, and a certain degree of ambivalence about the assistance offered by others. On the part of the hosts, there was, as Makhijani described it, a fear of the refugee-guest becoming a greater burden than they had bargained for, in terms of time, effort or expense.
All these factors, combined with the day-to-day irritations of living in a house over-crowded with guests, and in an atmosphere of acute financial insecurity, often resulted in escalating friction and rifts within families.38
Notes
1.Arjan ‘Shad’ Mirchandani, Dharti-a jo Dard, pp 46-47. My translation.
2.The Times of India, Bombay, 19 January 1948.
3.Kewalsingh Dohit, interview, December 2012.
4.The Times of India, Bombay, 28 February 1948.
5.S. K. Kirpalani, Fifty Years with the British, pp 357-359.
6.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, p 219.
7.A similar situation was observed among Hindu refugees from East Bengal; many migrated to India after the communal violence of 1950. According to Pia Oberoi, the number of refugees who migrated in 1950 nearly equalled that of refugees who had migrated in the preceding three years. In Oberoi’s words, ‘the vast majority of refugees that entered the country between 1946-9 were urban and relatively wealthy.’ Pia Oberoi, Exile and Belonging, pp 62-63.
8.Rochiram Godhwani, interview, October 1997.
9.Kodandas Gopalani, interview, November 1997.
10.Nathurmal Chotrani, interview, August 2000.
11.Rita Kothari, The Burden of Refuge, p 135.
12.U. T. Thakur, Sindhi Culture, pp 42-43. Similarly, a profile of 150 families from Bairagarh showed that 93 per cent of them came from neither big cities nor villages but from small towns in Sindh.
13.Papan Panjabi, interview, July 2011.
14.The Times of India, Bombay, 16 March 1948.
15.Atmaram Kulkarni, The Advent of Advani, pp 38-39.
16.Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, ‘Partition and Gujarat’, p 475.
17.Purusharthi means industrious in Hindi; here it is used deliberately in place of sharanarthi, refugee, which came to be considered a derogatory term by the Sindhis.
18.Motilal Jotwani, Atamkatha je Naale Mein, p 60. My translation.
19.Arjan ‘Shad’ Mirchandani, interview, October 1997.
20.Mohan ‘Kalpana’, Jalavatni, pp 16-17. My translation.
21.Sardar Nihalsingh Ailsinghani, interviews, December 1997, January 1998 and February 1998.
22.The following paragraphs draw heavily upon the research of Vakil and Cabinetmaker titled Government and the Displaced Persons: A Study in Social Tensions.
23.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, p 42.
24.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, p 43.
25.Floor Space Index (FSI) denotes the legally permissible area for construction on the plot.
26.According to one account, though, it appears that the refugee camps in Baroda state were in a far better condition. See Metharam Gidumal’s letter to the editor, The Times of India, Bombay, 19 June 1948.
27.As quoted in Lata Jagtiani, Sindhi Reflections, p 389.
28.Sardar Nihalsingh Ailsinghani, interviews, December 1997, January 1998 and February 1998.
29.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, pp 104-105.
30.See Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, p 124 and Horace Alexander, New Citizens of India, p 64.
31.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, p 12.
32.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, p 105.
33.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, pp 105-106, and 97. Victor Barnouw also affirms the founding of several regional panchayats in the Pimpri camp, the excessive power exercised by the panchayat mukhis, as well as the resentment that the abuse of this power engendered. See Victor Barnouw, ‘The Social Structure of a Sindhi Refugee Community’, pp 146-147.
34.Vakil and Cabinetmaker, ibid, p 25.
35.Motilal Jotwani, ibid, p 61.
36.Mohan Makhijani, interview, April 2009.
37.See Stephen Keller, Uprooting and Social Change, pp 71-72.
38.This held true for refugees from East Bengal as well, where a ‘high degree of tension and conflict… [was] found to be the norm inside refugee families.’ See Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition, p 152, Note 150.
CHAPTER 10
A New Geography
Bombay
Bombay, the city as well as the province (which then also included portions of present-day Gujarat and Karnataka) was the preferred destination for many Sindhi Hindus, for it was relatively easy to access, being a few days’ journey away by sea. Moreover, unlike trains, sea voyages were relatively safe from attack. Passage by steamer also enabled the migrants to carry more luggage with them.
Bombay was also of deep psychological significance for Sindhi Hindus. During the colonial period, Sindh had been part of the Bombay Presidency for close to a century, and Sindhis felt a strong connection with the city. Several Sindhi Hindu businessmen also had office branches in Bombay city, and often had relatives settled there who could be relied upon for accommodation. Moreover, since Sindhi colleges were still affiliated to Bombay University, the educational transfer of Sindhi students was comparatively easier in the province.
For those who had neither family nor friends in Bombay, this city of opportunity had its own allure. Bombay was a port and a commercial city, a modern metropolis comparable with Karachi. Many Karachi-ites identified with the urbane atmosphere of Bombay; they could not imagine living in other, smaller Indian towns. Even those businessmen who did not have a branch office in Bombay had faith in the city’s business prospects; professionals believed that their chances of employment were far greater in Bombay than elsewhere. Finally, several people chose the metropolis simply because their relatives and friends had chosen to migrate there, creating a multiplier effect. Many Sindhis living in South Bombay recall congregating at Marine Drive in the evenings where, in an era when telephones were not ubiquitous, they could catch up on each other’s news and meet those who had recently arrived from Sindh.
Kishu Mansukhani was a 10-year-old boy when Partition became a reality. His father had arranged to send all the children and other members of the extended family to Bombay. Kishu Mansukhani recalls:
I clearly remember that we travelled in a ship named Ekma.
There were about 25 of us who landed in Mumbai. But where do we go from here? For a few days we stayed at my father’s Gujarati friend’s place. As I was young and the surroundings were new to me, I was quite enjoying myself as I had never seen trains without engines or double-decker buses.
With the help of these good Samaritans and my father’s influence, we managed to get an apartment. It was about 1,200 square feet, where all 25 of us used to stay. It had just one hall, one bedroom and one bathroom and on top of it all the apartment was on the fifth floor. All were family members, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. All of them were quite young. We had come with our uncle Karamyogi Gangaram, while my parents stayed back in Sindh as they wanted to wind up everything and sell our properties etc.
[…] There were about four to five beds in the house, which were called khatu or charpai. The elders would sleep on the bed and the children would sleep under the bed. My aunt used to wake us up, one by one, from 5:00 in the morning as there was only one bathroom, so that by 7:00 we could all be ready to leave for school. Only after we had left, would the adults get a chance to use the bathroom.1
Lachhiram Kirpalani was a well-to-do paper and printing merchant who had settled in Bombay well before Partition, and had married a Maharashtrian woman. They lived on Forjett Street, off Gowalia Tank. After Partition, Lachhiram Kirpalani not only helped his Sindhi relatives when they came to Bombay, but also helped found Jai Hind College. His son, Heeru Kirpalani recalls:
When Partition occurred, all my father’s relatives a
rrived in Bombay and at one point we had about 30 people ‘billeted’ with us. We held their ration cards and they had their meals at our flat. At night they were taken in by our friends, neighbours and my mother’s relatives who lived in Forjett Street. Cooking started at six in the morning and continued throughout the day with people having designated shifts for their meals. Progressively, my father’s relatives found jobs and homes, and gradually built their own lives.2
By the middle of January 1948, according to one estimate, at least 2,90,000 Sindhi refugees had reached India; out of these, 2,50,000 were in Bombay Province (which then included parts of present-day Gujarat as well), and 1,00,000 were in Bombay city itself,3 despite various steps taken to prevent the concentration of Sindhi refugees in Bombay. By the end of March 1948, there were 18 refugee camps in Bombay Province, as well as three to four transit camps set up by private organisations. According to another source, by 1952-53, there were approximately 3,41,000 refugees in Bombay Province, including 2,00,000 in Bombay city and 1,00,000 in Kalyan camp.4
The attraction that the city of Bombay held out to Sindhi Hindus became a self-fulfilling prophecy: The large numbers of Sindhi Hindus that had migrated there, including a large section of the upper class, the writers and intelligentsia, as well as political leaders, ensured that Bombay became the post-Partition cultural capital of the Sindhi Hindus in India, which it remains even today.
House-Hunting
Some of these Sindhi Hindu refugees lived with friends and relatives who had settled in Bombay in the years prior to Partition; there are many narratives which describe the houses of these Sindhi Hindus as being filled with refugees after Partition, with living rooms turning into dormitories and floors turning white with mattresses and bedsheets. Those who could afford to do so, bought or rented accommodation for themselves, sometimes paying high rates of pugree.5
However, Bombay had been grappling with a housing shortage for some months, and in June 1947, well before Sindhi refugees had begun streaming into the city, the city’s municipal corporation advocated taking urgent steps to address the problem. The issue of pugree was also publicly decried. Although high rates of pugree were paid by many persons from various communities desperate to rent houses, the pugree payments made by some Sindhi Hindus inspired resentment from the local public. These Sindhi Hindus – who were middle class or upper middle class, and had some means for providing for their own rehabilitation in Bombay – didn’t fit the stereotype of the needy, dependent refugee. An anonymous letter to the press from ‘A Sufferer’ said:
It does not help the cause of these poor destitute refugees if large numbers of the not so destitute among them are willing to break the law and upset the local market by paying anything from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000 pugree for a three or four room flat, and even more for shops which they fill with magnificent merchandise and which in their destitution they have managed somehow to bring into Bombay. Local market prices and even those of kerb sweetmeat sellers have soared up against the local poor owing to the superior buying power of hordes of these ‘destitutes’.6
The influx of so many refugees, and the resulting spike in pugree rates led to the Bombay government passing the Bombay Land Requisition Ordinance in 1947, which evolved into the Bombay Land Requisition Act, 1948. Applications for the allotment of vacancies were invited from the general public. Landlords and tenants were expected to give notice of vacancies, in terms of rented apartments, as and when they arose, so that the Bombay government could then arrange for a new tenant for the empty premises. But it was found that landlords preferred to keep the vacancy a secret, so that they could charge a high pugree to the tenant of their choosing – these were called ‘suppressed vacancies’. To combat this, the Bombay government decided to allot the vacant premises to whoever first informed the government about the ‘suppressed vacancy’ in question, provided he or she genuinely needed accommodation.
Another source of accommodation was the property left behind by Muslims migrating to Pakistan: evacuee property. In Bombay, as in Delhi and elsewhere in India, the custodian of evacuee property took over this property and allotted it to incoming refugees. In India, however, not all Muslims migrated to Pakistan, but given the atmosphere of communal discrimination, even those who had no intentions of migrating were assumed to be Pakistan-bound; these were India’s ‘intending evacuees’, and the term was a convenient excuse for the state to take over Muslim property and redistribute it. Thus some Sindhis, like muhajirs in Karachi, who were desperate for a place to live, also acted as ‘informers’ for the rent controller’s office or the custodian of evacuee property.7
In 1947, Mohan Shahani was a young man of 19 who had completed the first year of his Bachelor of Engineering course at NED Engineering College, Karachi. In June 1947, he opted to study further at the College of Engineering, Poona. Mohan Shahani recalls:
Soon after Partition, in September or October 1947, my mother and three older sisters, Susheila, Ratna and Baby, fled Karachi and came to Bombay by steamer. In Bombay, they lived in a Gujarati merchant’s shack on the beach at Seven Bungalows in Versova. The family was allowed to live in a large enclosed veranda by one side of the bungalow.
Later my father, Dr Hotchand Shahani, came over in February 1948. He had abruptly resigned from his position as the assistant health officer in Karachi after 24 years of service, due to the unbearable working conditions. He had had to deal with the victims of the Karachi massacre. Handling those corpses and patients had upset him greatly. He let go of all his dues, which could have come to him after one more year of service, and came to India.
Still later, in May 1948, I joined my family, after my second year engineering exam in Poona. In the Versova shack I slept in the open veranda at the back, facing the ocean. There were a lot of palm trees. At that time, the area was very exotic, albeit undeveloped. There were literally only the seven bungalows by the beach.
In those days, just after the war, there was petrol rationing and more often than not, the (overloaded) public buses would offload the passengers in the middle of nowhere, citing engine failure or petrol shortage. There was a huge fishing village a mile further north. The fisher-folk would fill trucks with large baskets of fish, en route to Bombay. They were willing to carry a few passengers to Andheri Station, about three miles away, for between 8 annas to one rupee. We were young enough to stand through the journey by holding on to a number of short ropes fixed to the roof. From Andheri we would all travel by suburban train, third class, to South Bombay.
That period of virtual isolation and hardship lasted 13 months.
Coming from an elite family in Karachi, we were proud people. To live for so long in this shack, to travel in trucks loaded with baskets of fish and take third class journeys daily from Andheri to Churchgate – and back – was not a way of life we were going to accept.
A large number of Sindhis had managed to buy or rent houses in Colaba. While these houses were fairly small, we simply did not have the resources to live in them.
Because of the severe housing shortage, the Bombay government had passed a law which ensured that any rented flat that fell vacant had to be offered to the government by the landlord. If he did not do so, the house would be requisitioned. Thereafter, the ‘first choice’ of tenancy would be given to the person who informed the government about the suppressed vacancy.
My sisters Susheila and Ratna decided that they would not look for jobs, for it was far more important to find a good house to live in. The best housing was in South Bombay. They took on the formidable task of moving daily from one building to the next and checking for flats where people had recently moved in or out. Even after being eligible for a particular house, things did not always work out. To overcome this problem, they tried to contact some honest politicians, through whom they could gain an interview with the minister for housing. After failing to put up a convincing case on a few occasions, with a lot of persistence, they finally got the allotment of a house on the ground floor of a
building called Amarchand Mansions, near the Cooperage football ground.
In November 1948, on the very day we were to proceed along with government officials to remove the illegal occupant and occupy the house, there was the biggest storm ever in Bombay. Many huge palm trees crashed and there was much devastation across Bombay. The open veranda of the Versova house where I used to sleep was also wiped out; it quite literally vanished. All transport facilities came to a halt and we were stuck in Versova for three days.
Finally, we did move into the new wonderful home. The flat was 4,000 square feet in area with a height of 16 feet. The ceiling was ornate and the huge windows had multicoloured Venetian glass. In that house, over a period of the next 25 to 30 years, our doors were always open to all relatives and friends, who could come and rest and stay with us at will.8
Many Sindhis shifted numerous times before they could finally settle down in a permanent home of their own.
My maternal grandfather, Dharamrai Shivdasani, was then the official assignee and official trustee in the Sindh High Court in Karachi; he was also administrator-general of Karachi, before he retired in August 1947. At the end of May 1947, he was privately advised by his well-placed contacts that Partition was round the corner, and that he should see to the safety of his daughters. On 30 May 1947, he sent for Sushila, Ratna and Nirmala, his three younger daughters, and told them to pack their bags with their bare necessities. The very next day they would sail to Bombay, where their eldest married sister lived. Apart from his concern for their safety, he also did not want them to lose an academic year. Colleges in Bombay opened in mid-June and the two older daughters would have enough time to obtain admission. If things settled down, the girls could return in October. By then, however, the situation in Sindh had deteriorated vis-à-vis the minorities, and ultimately it was my grandparents, Dharamrai and Sita Shivdasani, who flew to Bombay in October.
THE MAKING OF EXILE Page 27