Although India and Pakistan became separate dominions on 14/15 August 1947, it was only on 28 February 1948 that India declared Pakistan a foreign country. Till then a Standstill Agreement had been in force, which maintained the status quo in many ways. Only after March 1948 were customs duties charged on goods traded between the two dominions. On the one hand, hostilities raged in Kashmir, and on the other hand, the two dominions continued to trade with each other, with India exporting coal and steel to Pakistan, and importing rice and cotton in exchange. Twenty pounds of paan were flown daily from Bombay to Karachi.
In 1948, the daily weather report in The Times of India, Bombay, continued to report temperatures in cities including Colombo, Hyderabad (Sindh), Karachi and Lahore, under the rubric of ‘All India Weather’. Karachi cotton prices continued to be quoted in its business pages.
While India had inherited the entire state apparatus from the outgoing British Raj, Pakistan had had to start from scratch. Initially, Indian bank notes, inscribed as Pakistan currency, were used as legal tender in Pakistan till September 1948. New Pakistan-minted coins started circulation only from April 1948. The Reserve Bank of India, too, continued to operate in Pakistan till June 1948, at the request of the Pakistan government.
Given the backdrop of these contradictory developments, and the confusion that prevailed about the notion of citizenship, the status of Partition refugees in newly Independent India was also, initially, under a cloud. On the one hand, the refugees themselves considered that they had made the supreme ‘sacrifice’ – of their homes and homelands – for independence, and felt that not only should they be welcomed as Indian citizens, but also given preferential treatment. On the other hand, the central and provincial governments in India, beleaguered with the strain of the post-war economy and still trying to cope with independence, were clearly reluctant to take on the responsibility of resettling and rehabilitating vast numbers of indigent and traumatised immigrants.
Although the Congress high command had recognised the need to evacuate Sindhi Hindus and Sikhs from Sindh, anecdotal accounts point to the possibility that the Sindhis were not expected to stay on permanently, and be rehabilitated by the state. Gandhi had gone on his last fast in mid-January 1948, with the intention of bringing about a communal rapprochement. He had agreed to break his fast on the condition that all communities – including those who had recently migrated from Pakistan – sign a declaration that they would strive for communal harmony, and also that India pay Rs 55 crores to Pakistan. According to some accounts,3 when this declaration was brought to Dr Choithram Gidwani for his signature, he refused to sign unless senior Congress leaders, such as Nehru and Patel, first agreed to make a commitment to the full rehabilitation of Sindhi refugees, with full rights of citizenship, in India. Only when Patel gave him this assurance did Gidwani sign the declaration.
Even while Hindus and Sikhs were being evacuated from Sindh in the early months of 1948, a debate on the Indian government’s role vis-à-vis Sindhi Hindus ensued in the Constituent Assembly.4 According to Vazira Zamindar, there were debates on ‘whether the fears of Sind Hindus are real or wholly imaginary’.5 In March 1948, the governments of India and Pakistan were still requesting minority communities not to migrate. Nehru articulated this sense of confusion when he stated in the Legislative Assembly in April 1948:
Nobody quite knows who is a Pakistani national and who is an Indian national… Those who are moving from one side to another are for the moment nationals of both or neither… All that you can say is that it is for the individual himself to say what he considers himself to be. 6
By this time, the term ‘refugee’, with its connotations of helplessness and dependency, was perceived as derogatory, and many immigrants disliked it. Many Hindus and Sikhs from areas now in Pakistan felt that they had been born in pre-Independent India and had always identified with India; they did not feel as though they were coming to another country. A more bland term – ‘displaced person’ or ‘DP’ – came into circulation. Refugee camps were referred to as relief camps. Muslims migrating from India to Pakistan were also not called refugees; given the communal prejudices that raged at the time, they were referred to as evacuees, sometimes even if they had no intention to migrate.
Meanwhile, the return of a considerable number of Muslims from Pakistan also engaged the Indian government’s attention. Muhajirs began to return to India in 1948 for a variety of reasons: their difficulties in resettling in Pakistan, the Sindh government’s crackdown on muhajirs after the Karachi pogrom, and Gandhi’s fast and subsequent assassination which cooled down communal tempers to some extent in India, and also resulted in the banning of the RSS. According to Vazira Zamindar, ‘Between July 19 and August 5, 1948, the Indian High Commission in Karachi reportedly issued 300 temporary permits daily to Muslim refugees.’7 Yet this was mostly one-way traffic, since most Hindus and Sikhs did not feel secure enough to return to Pakistan.
Consequently, India took the unilateral step of establishing a permit system on 14 July 1948 – the Influx from Pakistan (Control) Ordinance, under which no Pakistani resident could enter India without a permit. Pakistan followed suit on 15 October 1948, by promulgating the Pakistan (Control of Entry) Ordinance 1948. (This was replaced by the passport system in 1952.) Citizenship provisions were brought into effect in India on 26 November 1949, two months ahead of the Indian Constitution.
In mid-August 1949 – around the second anniversary of Independence – Nehru finally asserted in the Constituent Assembly:
Our general rule in regard to the consequences of Partition is that we accept practically without demur or inquiry that great wave of migration which came from Pakistan to India. We accept them as citizens.8
The Role of the State
While Sindhi Hindus had come to Bombay even before Partition, many of these had done so as a temporary measure, and intended to return once ‘things settled down’. The first Sindhi refugees to come to Bombay were those who had fled the Quetta violence; they arrived in September 1947. The Bombay government began to provide assistance to the Sindhi Hindu refugees who had come into Bombay Province, and the city of Bombay. Refugee camps were set up, mainly on the outskirts of the city, where free rations were distributed to the refugees. Around the beginning of October 1947, it was expected that Bombay would absorb about 30,000 refugees from Sindh.9
By mid-January 1948, however, there were about 2,50,000 Sindhi refugees in Bombay Province. Due to a combination of various factors – the Karachi pogrom, the Congress high command’s decision to coordinate the evacuation of Hindus and Sikhs from Sindh and to coordinate relief and rehabilitation efforts in India, the steamer traffic between Karachi and Bombay, and the preference of many Sindhis for Bombay – it became apparent that the Bombay government would have an exponentially greater responsibility to shoulder. Consequently, the central government took over the responsibility for these Sindhi refugees from the Bombay government. The Directorate-General of Evacuation, which had been originally set up in the middle of January for the evacuation of Hindu refugees, from Pakistan in general and Sindh in particular, was subsequently assigned the duty of organising reception points and refugee camps across the wide swath of Bombay Province, Central Provinces, and the princely states of Rajputana, Kutch, Kathiawar, and Central India.
This meant that the administrative machinery overseeing the evacuation, relief and rehabilitation efforts was set up anew and often staffed by Sindhi refugees themselves. This latter step had two supposed advantages: First, it gave the newly employed refugees an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves, and second, the fact that the Sindhi administrative staff could speak the language of the refugees, and more importantly, could understand their circumstances, and thus smoothen the process of evacuation and rehabilitation. However, the transfer of responsibility did not prove to be very efficacious and in June 1948, the central government returned the responsibility for the refugees to the individual states, when new Departments of Relief and Rehab
ilitation were set up in Bombay and other states.
Apart from setting up refugee camps, the Bombay government as well as the central government undertook a slew of measures and concessions which were meant to contribute to the relief and rehabilitation of displaced persons. In late October 1947, the mayor of Bombay, A. P. Sabavala set up ‘The Mayor’s Refugees and Evacuees Relief Fund’. A few concerts and plays were also held in the city in aid of the refugees. Soon after, the Bombay government announced that it would relax rules pertaining to admission to schools so as to enable refugee students to continue their education; in February 1948, rules regarding eligibility to appear for examinations were relaxed in a similar fashion. Freeships and stipends were given to students.
Employment exchanges were set up for the refugees, first at the head police office, and later at various refugee camps. The Bombay government appealed to private businessmen and professionals to employ refugees wherever possible (but also urged that preference be given to those Maharashtrians, Gujaratis and Kutchis who had been living in Sindh and Punjab before Partition, since these communities were ‘native’ to Bombay). Similarly, vocational training centres were also set up at refugee camps such as Kalyan, Kandla and Gandhinagar (in Bhopal state). In January 1948, after Dr Choithram Gidwani and J. B. Kripalani had lobbied with the Congress high command, the Bombay government relaxed its rules regarding employment in the provincial services so as to include refugees from Pakistan. Similarly, membership rules were relaxed by the Bombay Bar Council so that advocates from Sindh could also practise in Bombay.
The central government set up the Rehabilitation Finance Administration, to offer loans to refugees so as to enable them to resettle themselves in small trades or professions. (According to Sucheta Kripalani, then the general secretary of the Central Relief Committee, the conditions on which these loans were disbursed were ‘very stringent and harassing’.10) Refugee contractors applying for government contracts were permitted to furnish personal securities in lieu of the usual securities. The central government waived stamp duty on indemnity bonds for missing scrips of stocks and bonds. The far-reaching impact of these various measures can be seen in the narratives of numerous Sindhi Hindus. They speak of receiving vocational training (which continued to help them in their careers), obtaining employment in the government, and being allowed to resume their education despite the great upheaval in their lives.
In September 1948, an Advisory Board, consisting of prominent Sindhis, was set up to advise the Bombay government on the rehabilitation of Sindhis. By mid-1949, according to one report, there were over 70,00,000 Partition refugees in India, and the Government of India had spent Rs 29 crores on them.11 Later, according to the First Five-Year Plan, the Government of India would spend Rs 90 crores, only on the rehabilitation (as distinct from relief) of Partition’s ‘displaced persons’ and proposed to spend Rs 56 crores more over the next two years.12
The Central Relief Committee, a non-governmental organisation was established by the All-India Congress Committee in 1948, with Dr Rajendra Prasad as president, and Sucheta Kripalani as general secretary, and other prominent members such as Jairamdas Daulatram, Deshbandhu Gupta, Bhimsen Sachar and Dr Choithram Gidwani, many of whom came from refugee communities. Subcommittees were formed in various states. Although it was not a governmental organisation, the fact that its founders were members of, or had close ties with, the Congress, which was then in power, gave it a quasi-governmental image in public perception. The Central Relief Committee had various activities: starting an industrial centre for women, setting up employment exchanges, helping hawkers and stall-holders to get licences, assisting students to obtain admission in colleges, etc.13
While Congress workers all over India, who had earlier been preoccupied with the freedom struggle, began participating in Congress-led governments in their native states, Congress workers from Sindh who migrated to India did not have the same opportunities. Instead, many of them – such as Dr Choithram Gidwani, Ghanshyamdas Jethanand, Jivanlal Jairamdas and Rochiram Thawani – became deeply involved in the rehabilitation of Sindhi refugees in India. Many mid-level workers were appointed to oversee refugee camps, while junior workers worked as camp staff. The senior Congress workers from Sindh performed the important role of acting as intermediaries between the Sindhi refugee community and the Congress high command – the upper echelons of government. It was they who intervened with the central or state governments on important issues such as education and employment, as well as issues of conflict. They also helped ordinary Sindhis get jobs, or houses, or their claims approved.
Some of these Sindhi Congress workers – such as Ghanshyamdas Jethanand, Hiranand Karamchand, Dr Choithram Gidwani, Kikibehn Lalwani, and Jairamdas Daulatram – came together in Bombay to form the Lok Seva Mandal. This organisation helped refugees find housing and jobs, and also helped them settle their property claims.
Disenchantment, Disillusionment
Yet the Bombay provincial government and the central government as well as the general public had limited sympathy for the Sindhi refugees. Their departure from Sindh was viewed as unwarranted and cowardly, especially before the pogroms in Hyderabad and Karachi occurred. In September 1947, despite the violence in Quetta and Nawabshah, Sri Prakasa, the Indian high commissioner to Pakistan reportedly commented that he, ‘could understand the anxiety of non-Sindhi Hindus like Cutchies and Marwaris returning home, but he could not appreciate Sind Hindus longing to quit their own province and migrate to India.’14
This limited sympathy on the part of the government was largely due to its failure to understand, or even register, the considerable impact of a variety of small and subtle forms of communal discrimination on the lives of minorities in Pakistan – what Gandhi termed as ‘killing by inches’.15 It also gave government officials – already overwhelmed with the responsibility of Punjabi refugees – a ready excuse to not deal with the daunting problem of relief and rehabilitation for refugees from regions other than the Punjab.
However, even the limited sympathy that the state had for the Sindhis did not take long to dissipate, and some Sindhi refugees began to clash with the Bombay government and the public on a variety of issues, minor and major. There were several reasons for this evaporation of sympathy. First, the arrival of vast numbers of Sindhi refugees – especially after the 6 January pogrom – considerably stretched the resources of the state. Second, the Sindhi refugees, being predominantly middle class traders, wanted to be near markets and jobs, and were not interested in getting resettled in remote camps outside the city or in the suburbs. The state, on the other hand, did not consider their preferences as legitimate. There were also instances where the Sindhi refugees turned violent, such as when strict rules were suddenly enforced at the time of disembarkation from the S.S. Ekma, on 12 January.
Moreover, there were also highly impoverished Sindhi refugees who, driven by desperation, resorted to illegal measures, such as forcibly occupying property – much like the muhajirs they had earlier despised in Sindh. This formed a major cause of conflict between Sindhi refugees and the state, as well as the local public. As early as mid-October 1947, about 500 Sindhi Hindu refugees had taken over unused barracks at Sion Hospital in Bombay. Despite public demonstrations by the refugees, their rations and water supply were discontinued as a punishment, and a short while later the government attempted to forcibly transport some of them to distant camps. This incident prompted S. K. Patil, the then president of the Bombay Provincial Congress Committee, to warn the refugees to ‘conduct themselves with restraint lest they should alienate the sympathies of the citizens of Bombay.’16
Tillumal Menghraj Advani, the then acting principal of the D. J. Sind College, Karachi, had migrated to Bombay in February 1948, and almost immediately started the process of setting up a new college in India with some of his colleagues from Karachi. Faced with indifference and callousness from government officals, Advani was able to transform their approach to one of sympathy and assist
ance. Ram Panjwani, also a fellow-professor, accompanied Advani to a meeting with a government official. Panjwani recalls:
Once, when he [T. M. Advani] was making a point with a minister, the latter broke in impatiently and said: ‘Why do you bother me again and again?’ T. M. went red in the face. I did not know exactly how he would react; but his reply made me lift up my head in pride. In a low and contained voice he said: ‘Mr. Minister, you are about the age of my son. Had you been educated in Sindh, you would have been my student. It does not matter very much if you don’t do anything for us; but the impatience you have shown ill becomes you. I have not asked anything for myself, nor am I doing anything for myself, for it won’t be difficult for me to get a suitable job in Bombay. But I am worrying about those unemployed colleagues of mine who have placed their faith in me. We have suffered enough. Surely, we are entitled to some sympathy, and not impatience. However, let it be; the fault is not yours but in our stars that we have become the flotsam and jetsam of Partition. God bless you. Goodbye.’
His words were a kind of electric shock for the minister. Asking T. M. to wait for a while, he picked up the telephone and spoke to his secretary. A little while later, he smiled and said: ‘It shall be as you desire. It may take a little time, but it shall be done – as far as it is in my power to do so.’ And this is precisely what he did do.17
Morarji Desai, then the home minister of Bombay Province, was also initially not sympathetic towards Sindhis, possibly influenced by the turn of events at Sion Hospital. Advani and Panjwani also called upon Desai to request him to allot them temporary premises to start a college. Indru Advani, T. M. Advani’s son, recalls:
My father met Morarji. It was a stormy meeting. Morarji said angrily, ‘You Sindhi Hindus have no reason to leave your homeland and come as refugees [to] India. We have full assurances [from] Jinnah that the minorities will be well treated in Sindh. There may have been provocations but you should have had the courage to resist these attacks. You must all go back. There is no place for you here.’
THE MAKING OF EXILE Page 30