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Wednesday 31 August 2011

Karachi: Queen of the East

Karachi: Queen of the East






ONCE THE DUST of Miani and Dabo had settled down, Prime Minister Peel and Leader of the Opposition Lord John Russell joined hands to accord Napier a unanimous Vote of Thanks in the British Parliament. Napier was also pleased to get a cash prize of 70,000 pound sterling. He now settled down for five years to implement Ellenborough's wish that ``in Scinde we must do all for futurity, we have to create an Egypt''. Said Napier: ``if any civilized man were asked, if you were a ruler of Scinde, what would you do, his answer would be, I would abolish the tolls on the river, make Karachi a free port, make Sukkur a mart on the Indus. I would make a truckway along its banks. I would get steam-boats.'' And that is precisely what he started out to do, beginning with the abolition of the river tolls.


He promptly called the Baluchi jagirdars, returned them their swords, and confirmed their jagirs. As a special favour, some of them were allowed to salute the picture of Queen Victoria, which was otherwise kept covered with a curtain from the gaze of commoners and retainers. He told them: ``Obey me! Do what you like --- rob, murder, anything I have not forbidden --- all things unless I have said `No'.'' And this is what they did --- obeying the British and, for the rest, being quite a law unto themselves.


The common Sindhi also promptly fell in line. For him the ``Laat Saheb'' (the Lord) and the ``Lendy Saheba ` (the Lady) soon became the ultimate in authority. When summoned to the presence, they would leave their shoes outside. The first question that an Englishman would generally ask of his visitor, was: ``Are you a badmash (bad character)?'' And the visitor would sheepishly admit both, his rascality and his obedience, by saying: ``We are sarkari badmashes.'' The ``Wadera'' --- the biggish zamindar --- the Bania, the Pir, and the ``Saheb'', white or brown, between them constituted the quadrangle of authority in Sindh.


Napier had promised mock-heroically to call engineers from all the three Presidencies to let the Indus waters flow into the Hindu area of Kutch via the Eastern Nara. But he soon realized that the fate of Kutch had been decided by an earthquake followed by the westward flow of the Indus --- and not by the Kalhoras' ``Allah Bund''. He, therefore, promptly set up a Canals Department to improve old canals and to dig new ones.


In another bid to impress the Hindus, the main gate of Jama Masjid in Ghazni was brought to India as ``the looted gate of Somnath''. However, the Hindu experts soon pronounced it as not genuine.


Napier had written off all the pre-1843 dues of the peasantry. He set up Sindh Police, which became a model for all other provinces.


Napier was particularly good in the administration of justice. His instructions were: ``Take what the people call justice, not what the laws call justice.'' He once heard the case of the Manchhar lake fishermen for three days and then decided that they shall give only three per cent of the catch as tax. He once recalled: ``Kardars and policemen, I smash by dozens. Against all evidence, I decide in favour of the poor.''


The only two discontented sections in the new set-up were the former Talpur rulers and their Hindu Amil (Kayasth) employees. The Talpurs had lost their power and the Amils, their top administrative jobs to the British. However, the Talpurs soon reconciled themselves to their jagirs and their pensions. And with the expansion of the administration and the economy, the Amils soon more than came into their own. (After Partition, Sir Patrick Cadell, a former Commissioner of Sindh, wrote to Pir Ali Mohammed Rashdi, the Pakistan, Minister of Information and Broadcasting that he considered the Amils of Sindh the best of administrators, who shone in all fields. No wonder, of the fourteen Sindhis --- all Hindus --- who entered the ICS, twelve were Amils.)


All this impressed --- and was meant to impress --- the Punjab, which was now going to piece under ``Sikha-shahi'' --- and getting ripe to fall into the British lap.


However, Napier was much more than the first British ruler of Sindh. He was an empire-builder with a great vision. ``What the Kohinoor is among diamonds, India is among nations Were I emperor of India for twelve years, she should be traversed by railroads and have her rivers bridged; her seat of government at Delhi or Meerut or Simla or Allahabad. No Indian Prince should exist. The Nizam should be no more heard of. Nepaul should be ours and an ague fit should become the courtly imperial (Turkish) sickness at Constantinople, while the emperor of Russia and he of China should never get their pulses below 100 !


``Would that I were King of India, I should make Muscowa and Pekin shake. Were I King of England, T would, from the Palace of Delhi, thrust forth a clenched fist in the teeth of Russia and France. England's fleet should be all in the West and the Indian Army all in the East.''


However, with all his qualities, Napier was more a warrior than an administrator or a builder. After he left in 1850, Sindh was attached to the Bombay Presidency, with Sir Bartle Frere as its first Commissioner. Frere was shocked to find ``not a mile of bridged or metalled road, not a masonry bridge of any kind not five miles of any cleared road, not a single Dak Bungalow, Serai, Dharamsala or district Kutchery, not a courthouse, lock- up, police station or office of any kind, no district boundaries not even a list of villages, no survey, no settlement''.


Though only 35 at the time, Frere turned out to be the best administrator of Sindh during the British century. In nine brief years, 1850--1859, he quite changed the face of Sindh. In 1853 he gave Sindh its first English school. In 1858 he saw the Sindd Railway Co. start work on the Karachi-Hyderabad railway track He got Lt. Fife, an engineer, to submit a plan that eventually found consummation in the great Sukkur Barrage, turning Sindh into a surplus province. The Barrage hurt the old inundation canals. But the general prosperity even reduced the crime rate in the province.


Frere organized a trade fair in Karachi that attracted not only all India but also Central Asia. Frere also persuaded the Viceroy to get ships coming from England to halt at Karachi, before they reached Bombay --- something the British East India Company bad refused. With this, Karachi, described by Napier as ``the Queen of the East'', blossomed into a really great metropolis of the world. Today one of the Sindhi grouses against refugees in Sindh is that they do not even know how to pronounce the name of the great city. They call it ``Kaaraachi'' or ``Kirainchi'' --- anything but good old ``Karachi''.


General Jacob disciplined and developed the northern-most Sindh so well that the area was named after him as the Jacobabad district. Likewise, Parker did so well in south-east Sindh that the district of Thar was renamed Thar Parker.


Frere also decided on a script for Sindhi --- and then recognized it as the language of administration at the lower levels. Why, he even gave Sindh the honour of the first postage stamp in all India, the ``Scinde District Dawk'', 1852.


When the 1857 Great Revolt erupted, Sher Mohammed Khan of Mirpur Khas did give the British a good fight --- and he was blown from cannon-mouth at Rambagh in Karachi. Next Darya Khan Jakhrani, whom Napier had tried to win over with a jagir, was expelled to Aden for his role in the Great Revolt. But, for the rest, Sindh was so peaceful that Frere had sent all the British troops to help in the north.


Frere later rose to be governor of Bombay and, later still, member of the Viceroy's Executive Council. In that capacity he contributed to the formulation of high policy. Lord Lawrence's Punjab School wished to consolidate India into a homogeneous unitary state. Their slogan was: ``Back to the Indus''. Sir Frere's Sindh School of thought appreciated the diversity of India. They favoured a loosely knit system that could be advantageously extended to Central Asia, at any rate until India obtained a sound strategic frontier. While the Punjab School was for caution, the Sindh School favoured a Forward Policy. In 1876, Frere ordered the occupation of Quetta and posted Agents in Herat and Kandhar in Afghanistan.


Not all Commissioners were as good as Frere. One of them, G.A. Thomas, was so stiff-necked that the Sind Observer dubbed him as ``God Almighty'' Thomas. However, the British rule was institutional and not personal. And there was no doubt about its general direction. In the hundred-odd years the British ruled Sindh, they gave it roads and railways, canals and bridges, schools and hospitals, ideas and ideals that changed the face of the province from medieval to modern.


Napier had said: ``Karachi, you will yet be the glory of the East! Would that I could come alive again to see you. Karachi, in your grandeur!'' Napier would indeed have been delighted to see the glory of Karachi in just another fifty years. The first college in Sindh was set up in Karachi, though most of the students came from Hyderabad because, as Rishi Dayaram put it: ``Karachi is more important than Sindh.''


Sadhbela Island Temple

Rabindranath Tagore described Hyderabad as ``the most fashionable city in India''. Shikarpur became the banker of Central Asia --- and when revolution overtook Russia, it became the banker of southern India. The sight of the Sindhu at Sukkur --- with the island of Zindah Pir above, the island of Bakhar supporting the Lansdowne Bridge, in the middle, the Sadhbela island-temple, and the Sukkur Barrage with its seven canals below --- is one of the great sights of natural and man-made beauty in the world. Pax Britannica, with all its faults, helped the businessmen of Hyderabad and Shikarpur to bring 2.5 crore rupees annually to Sindh --- at a time when the province's annual budget was only five crores. In the words of Pir Ali Mohammed Rashdi, ``But for Naoomal's treachery, the Sindhi Muslims would still be riding horses and camels, and the Sindhi Hindus, donkeys and mules.''


However, perhaps the greatest gifts of the British were modern education and equality for all, whether Hindu or Muslim. Under the Muslim rule, the Hindus had been forbidden to ride horses, to hold land, or to join the army. In 1843, the Hindus, who were 25 per cent of the population, did not hold even one acre of land; in 1947 they held 40 per cent of the land. Even the son of a milk-vender in Shikarpur, one Mathuradas, could become ``Mathrani, ICS''. When the first Sindhi --- H. K. Kripalani --- was selected for ICS, his primary school-teachers turned out to pull his carriage out of sheer joy.


However, it was not the British system by itself that produced these results. It was the excellent local response that made real what otherwise was only potential.


Among the Muslims, the Agha Khan and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, born in Sindh, made themselves famous in politics. Mirza Kalich Beg became a pillar of education, administration and literature. Hassan Ali Effendi started the madrassa in Karachi that produced what little the Sindhi Muslim middle class there was. G. M. Bhurgri became the first Sindhi barrister.


The Hindus of course produced a whole galaxy of great men, in the tradition of Gidumal, Awatrai and Naoomal. Those were the days when it took four months to sail from Karachi to Bombay. (This was hardly to be wondered at in the pre-steamship days; why, even Clive, on two of his three trips to India, had his ship drift away all the way to South America!) The first four matric students --- Chuharmal Punjabi, Navalrai Advani, Dayaram Jethmal and Kauromal Khilnani --- found it so trying that only the first one passed the examination. However, the British were understanding. They encouraged even the non-matriculates with employment. And what a name they made! Dayaram Jethmal became a leading lawyer. He helped finance D.J. Sind College --- which bears his name --- with many Hindus contributing a month's salary for the college. Navalrai founded the great school that today bears his and his brother Hiranand's name --- N.H. Academy. Kauromal (1844 --- 1916) discovered Sami's Shlokas that made the latter the third great poet of Sindh --- along with Shah and Sachal. Kauromal also presided over teachers' training and put new life in Sahiti in central Sindh.


Rishi Dayaram

Chuharmal became the first Sindhi graduate, and Tarachand, the first Sindhi doctor. Sadhu Hiranand edited the first Sindhi magazines, Sind Times and Sind Sudhar. And Kanwal Singh brought out the first Sindhi daily paper, Sindhvasi (1914). However, the greatest Sindhi of the British period --- if we leave out politics --- was Rishi Dayaram. Dayaram, son of Gidumal Shahani (not to be confused with Gidumal of Kalhora-Talpur days, who gave his name to Gidvanis) was varily the Yuga Purush of Sindh. He represented the brightest and the best of Sindh during the British period.


Dayaram (1857--1927) rose to he a great district and sessions judge But his real work lay outside the court. In addition to helping set up D.J. Sind College, he got his brother Metharam to donate one thousand guineas to construct the huge Metharam Hostel in Karachi. His Trust donated one lakh rupees to set up D.G. National College, Hyderabad.


Dayaram helped set up the Nari Shala, where widows could spend their time reading Guru Granth Saheb and doing social work. He campaigned against the ``Seven Sins against our Girls''. These were: piercing their arms and face with needles for tatoo marks; not letting them go to school or play games; burdening them with long rows of ivory bangles; childhood marriage; mothers-in-law's harassment; child-motherhood; death in delivery -- followed by quick re-marriage of the man. He waged a war on dowry system (Deti-Leti), got the panchayat to fix 500 rupees as the maximum. He himself set an example when, at his daughter Rukmani's wedding feast he served only papad and sherbet (The Radha Swamis of Agra persuaded the Sindhi women to replace armfuls of ivory bangles by just one or more gold bangles.) Dayaram took three months' leave to serve the plague victims. He saved 800 orphans from the clutches of missionaries. during the same period.


D J Sind College

His father, Gidumal, spent seven years in Hardwar, studying Sanskrit. He came back and taught it to Brahmin boys in Sindh When the boys argued that, as Brahmins, they should be seated at a higher plane than himself, a mere Amil (Kayasth), he smiled and gave them higher seats. He even gave them stipends. Son Dayaram put up a nice building for this Sanskrit Pathshala in Hyderabad.


Dayaram got 1120 rupees a month, of which he spent only 150 rupees, giving the rest in charity. He would not so much as spend a few annas on a mirror; he tied his turban before his window glass-pane. He even set up an insurance company and a provident fund and studied and encouraged homeopathy.


As a judge, Dayaram was superb. When a businessman, Seth Mewaldas of Shikarpur, committed rape, he sentenced him to seven years in jail, even though the Seth was a very popular man. Another famous case he decided was that of Huzuri. This ``religious'' leader was accused of murder. His defence was that he murdered his victim on Allah s orders (Alhaam). Dayaram sentenced him for life, the accused's ``Alhaam'' notwithstanding.


However, the most important case he decided was that of Jama Masjid of Ahmedabad. The trustees of the mosque were selling bits of land belonging to the mosque and pocketing the money. The Imam went to court. The case had gone on for 12 years. When, however, Dayaram was appointed district judge, he heard the case continuously for twelve days, studied all the Persian documents and ordered all alienated lands restored to the mosque. He had his order written, not on paper, but on cloth, for long life. Said the Imam years later: ``The way Dayaram conducted the case, I felt as if the Prophet himself was sitting in the judge's chair.'' When Lord Curzon met Dayaram he greeted him thus: ``Learned Judge, we know your abilities.''


Dayaram's Life of Bahramji, Malabari, the well-known Parsi social reformer and philanthropist, carried a Foreword by no less a person than Florence Nightingale.


A deeply religious man, Dayaram spent his evenings with Bhai Kalachand and Bhai Moolchand Giani, two saintly personages. Another friend of his was Bawa Gurpat Saheb of the Gur Mandir in Hyderabad. Dayaram could read the Gita in Sanskrit the Koran in Arabic, and the Bible in Hebrew.


At this time --- 1878 --- a great controversy rocked Sindh. Tharoo, a Hindu young man with wife and children fell in love with a Muslim girl and embraced Islam to marry her. When ``Sheikh Tharoo'' lost his Muslim wife, he wished to return to his family and became a Hindu.


A Shuddhi ceremony was accordingly performed. But Showkiram Advani (father of Navalrai and Hiranand), who had succeeded Awatrai as Mukhi, refused. In vain did Awatrai, Gidumal, Bawa Gurpat Saheb argue with him. As a result the Hyderabad panchayat split. The two sides even gave themselves separate shmashans (burning ghats). The whole thing dismayed all thinking Hindus. Showkiram had four sons. Three of them died childless. The fourth, Hiranand, had three daughters, two of whom died in childhood, and the third, Lachhmi, died childless. People attributed the withering away of Showkiram's family to the displeasure of Bawa Gurpat Saheb over the ``Sheikh Tharoo'' case.


Nor did Dayaram confine his public work to Sindh. He got 100 acres of land in Dharampur near Simla and set up a T.B. sanatorium there. Lord Hardinge praised the effort. He established Seva Sadan at Bandra in Bombay. He also set up Shanti Ashram Library in Amritsar in 1925 and handed it over to the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, which, in its wisdom, renamed it as Guru Ramdas Library.


Dayaram toured the country and exchanged notes with Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Devendranath Tagore, Col. Olcott of the Theosophical Society, and Mahatma Hansraj and Dyal Singh Majithia in Lahore. He regularly sent financial aid to Tagore's Santiniketan and to Jagdis Chandra Bose for his research. He set up Metharam Dharmada Trust for all his properties, in the name of his elder brother. Towards the end he observed a year of maun, (absolute) silence. During this period Gandhiji went to see him, but he begged to be excused --- and to be helped to maintain his maun vrat. He wrote to his son Kewalram Shahani on 11 October, 1927 that his diary was an experiment with truth. Three years later, when Gandhiji wrote his autobiography at the instance of Jairamdas he also titled it My Experiments with Truth. Dayaram now came to be known as a Rishi.


It was men such as these who made a small province like Sindh great --- and prepared the ground for the cultural revival and the freedom movement in Sindh.


The Sindh Story Thrown to the Wolves

INDIA BECAME FREE; but it was a fissured freedom. In the churning of Indian humanity we had got not only the nectar of freedom but also the poison of partition. Was Pakistan inevitable? It was --- and it was not.


The over-all all-lndia causes of partition are well enough known. At the root of it all was history. The Hindus had an acute sense of grievance over the Muslim mayhem in India. But the Muslims on the other hand were dismayed that Islam, which had prevailed everywhere else, had been checkmated in India. In the celebrated words of poet Hali:


Woh deene Hejazi ka bebak beda

Nishan jiska aqsai alam mein pahuncha

Kiye passipar jisne saton samandar

Woh dooba dahane mein Ganga kay aakar.


(The fearless flotilla of Islam, whose flag fluttered over all the world, the ship that crossed the seven seas, came here and sank in the Ganga.)


In the eighteenth century, Hindu society stood up triumphant from Attock to Cuttack and Delhi to Deccan --- having contained the poison of the preceding centuries like a `Nilakantha'. Islam stood tamed --- and Indianized. And then came 1761 and the defeat of the sovereign power of the Mahrattas in the Third Battle of Panipat, which opened the way to British rule in India. It also revived the Wahabis and the Waliullahs, who took Islam back to fundamentalism and greater fanaticism in hopes of an Islamic revival.


On top of all this came Gandhiji's Khilafat movement for the restoration of the Khalifa, the deposed Sultan of Turkey, as the spiritual leader of the Muslims of the world. It communalised politics and turned religious leaders into political leaders. Overnight, the mullahs became Netas (leaders). Jethmal Parasram of Sindh was only too right when he said: ``Khilafat aahay aafat'' (``Khilafat movement is a disaster''). By whipping up the fanaticism and extra-territoriality of Muslim Indians, the Khilafat agitation greatly widened the gulf between Hindus and Muslims.


Gandhiji did not help matters when he appealed to the religious sentiments of the Hindus also. His talk of satya (truth) and ahimsa, brahmacharya and Ramarajya struck a responsive note in the Hindu heart, but it left the Muslim cold. Many Congress meetings in Sindh ended with distribution of `Kanah Prasad' from the neighbourhood gurdwara. After the Khilafat movement had petered out, the Congress discovered that it had only one active Muslim worker, Maulvi Mohammed Sadiq of Karachi. Later Comrade Taj Mohammed joined the Congress in Shikarpur. The Congress had only one Muslim MLA Khoso of Jacobabad, an AMU graduate. But the Jacobabad District Congress Committee office had a separate water pot (surahi) for him! No wonder they all felt that ``the Congress is a Hindu movement.''


Tilak was, if anything, a profounder Hindu than Gandhiji. But he had kept the struggle political, secular --- and moved the Hindus and the Muslims alike. Gandhiji heightened the struggle -- but he also divided it.


And then there was a third factor the British presence. It worked both ways.


During the Muslim rule the Hindu was kept down. When the Muslim hand was replaced by a neutral hand, things changed dramatically. The Hindu came into his own. By and large, Brahmins and Vaishyas had not converted to Islam. Their traditions of learning and trading blossomed forth into higher education and big business. Large sections of the Hindu society forged ahead, leaving the Muslims far behind.


As a perceptive observer in Sindh noted: ``The offices are full of Hindus and the jails are full of Muslims.'' The Muslim mind, rooted in mediaevalism, and still basking in the sunset of the Mughal empire, could not comprehend the dynamics of modernity. It reacted to the new situation by staging a riot or throwing a spanner in the freedom movement.


On the other hand, when the Hindu asked for Independence, the British booked Muslim support with many favours and then used the Muslim dissent as a veto to stall Indian independence. The Hindu now saw the Muslim as a stooge and a traitor.


This was the all-India context in which partition took place. But it also had a local Sindhi context, which only made matters worse.


The biggest single factor in Hindu-Muslim tension in Sindh was the conversions which continued even under the British rule. These incidents rocked the province and poisoned relations between the communities. The most sensational in this genre was what came to be known --- and published --- as ``The Great Sheikh Case''. In 1891, Moorajmal Advani, a cousin of Showkiram Advani, the mukhi of Hyderabad Hindus, became Muslim His three sons also became Muslim. One of them, Mewaram, invited his wife Mithi Bai with her four children --- Khushali, Nihali, Parmanand, and Hemi --- to join her. She refused. Mewaram moved the sessions judge of Hyderabad, an Englishman, under the Guardians and Wards Act, to secure the custody of the two elder children. The Hindus took it as a challenge. Showkiram's sons Navalrai and Tarachand, collected a sum of 25,000 rupees to fight the case. The Muslims reportedly collected 40,000 rupees. The Hindu case was argued by Jairamdas's father, Daulatram. The Muslims engaged Effendi, the founder of the Karachi madrassa. The fat was in the fire.


Khushali, who was only eight at the time, told the court that, for her, father had died the moment he changed his faith. She said that if the court must hand her over to her father, it must first do her the favour of hanging her. The court ruled that it would be a crime to hand over the two girls to Mewaram. Mewaram moved the higher court but meanwhile the two girls had been married off and the court dismissed the appeal. Mewaram then brought forty camel-loads of armed Muslims to physically seize the two younger children, but the latter escaped through a back-door. Mithi Bai and her children then moved to the security of Amritsar, since the Muslims were scared of the Sikhs. Her son P.M. Advani made name as Principal of the Blind School in Karachi.


Soon after, Deoomal, elder brother of Acharya Kripalani, became Sheikh Abdul Rahman. Since he did not dare become Muslim while his eldest brother, Thakurdas, was alive, he took him for a swim to the Phuleli canal with Muslim friends and had him drowned. Some time later when the widowed sister-in-law wanted to visit her mother, he escorted her out and took her to a Muslim locality. She was never heard of again. Soon after, Deoomal himself became Muslim. Later he kidnapped his 12-year young brother Nanak from the school, got him converted, sent him to the Frontier. Nanak died fighting for the Turks against the Italians in 1911.


The problem with these new Muslims was that they did not like to inter-marry with the old Muslims; they therefore tried to convert more Hindus to enlarge their endogamous circle.


In 1908, Jethanand Lilaram of Thatta became Sheikh Abdul Majid. Since he was twenty plus at the time, he won the case. But advocacy of his case by Bhurgri made the latter a leader.


Maulana Taj Mohammed of Amraot near Larkana, a top Khilafat leader, converted seven thousand Hindus in the countryside. To this day Amraot preserves the list of those converts.


In 1927, Karima of Larkana with her four kids eloped with a Hindu and became Hindu. She won the case. The Muslims looted shops. The Hindus held 80 Muslims responsible --- including Khuhro, who later rose to be Premier of Sindh. All of them were acquitted. But the bitterness grew.


Bawa Harnamdas of Sadhbela, Sukkur, described the Situation aptly to Mr. Jinnah when the latter called on him at that island temple in 1930 and made an offering of Rs. 100. Mr. Jinnah asked him why there was communal tension in Sindh. And the Bawa said in Sindhi: ``Shaikh putt shaitan jo; na Hindu, na Musalman'' (the new convert Sheikh is the son of satan; he is neither Hindu nor Muslim).


Tension further grew with polemics. One Nathuram wrote Islam jo itihas (History of Islam) in reply to the mulla attacks on Hindudharma. He was sentenced to eighteen months jail and 1,000 rupees fine. He appealed to the Chief Court of Sindh. Some Muslims feared he might be acquitted. And so, one Abdul Qayum stabbed him to death in open court. When Judge O'Sullivan asked Qayum why he had done it, the later said that punishment for insulting Islam must be death, not just jail. Qayum was hanged. The Government refused to hand over his body to the Muslims who, nevertheless, dug it up and took it out in procession. Those were the times --- 1934 --- when the British did not tolerate any trifling with authority. And so the outraged Commissioner of Sindh, Gibson, ordered machine- gun fire, killing sixty-four Muslims, further souring Hindu- Muslim relations.


Another complicating factor was the status of Sindh. It was part of Bombay Presidency. In those days there were only a few huge provinces. But being a distinct geographical and linguistic unit, Sindh felt neglected as a remote area. In 1913, Harchandrai Vishindas, as chairman of the Reception Committee to the Karachi session of the Congress, first raised the issue of separation of Sindh.' But when the issue was raised at the Aligarh session of the Muslim League in 1925, it was transformed from a Sindhi demand into a Muslim demand. When, however, it was suggested that the Muslim-majority Sindh may be separated from the distant Hindu-majority Bombay, and then attached to the adjoining Muslim-majority Punjab, even the Sindhi Muslims refused; they had no intention of living under the shadow of a ``big brother''.


The majority of the Muslims --- led by Sheikh Abdul Majid --- favoured separation. But important leaders such as Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto (father of Z.A. Bhutto) and Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah opposed it. And so, for long, did the Sindh Muslim Association, representing the Muslim elite. They were not sure of the solvency of the province; the area had a deficit of two crore rupees. And they liked being part of a big and prosperous Bombay Presidency.


Hindus were, if anything, even more divided --- with Jethmal always favouring separation, Jairamdas always opposing it, and others changing sides with time and circumstance. A separate Sindh would mean full provincial set-up and a consequential job increase, most of which would inevitably go to the Hindus because of their education. An autonomous Sindh would come into its own --- economically, culturally, and otherwise. But they were also afraid of the Muslim majority --- and what that might mean for their security.


Interestingly enough, the rest of Bombay was also in two minds on the subject: they liked it bigger --- from Jacobabad to Hubli-Dharwar; but they thoroughly disliked the block of Sindhi Muslim MLAs who always danced to the British official tune. The Nehru report of 1928 favoured separation.


After much argument, thirty leaders from both sides signed the Sindh Hindu-Muslim pact in 1928. It laid down:


1. Sindh shall be separated.

2. Hindus will have 10 per cent weightage.

3. There will be joint electorates in Sindh.

4. There will be justice and equality for all.


It is sad to say that the Sindh Hindu Conference in Sukkur failed to ratify the Agreement. Bawa Harnamdas of Sadhbela Mandir of Sukkur was too apprehensive of Muslim aggressiveness to agree to a separate Sindh. (Had the Conference met in Karachi or Hyderabad, it would very probably have confirmed the Pact.) The Hindus now said they would accept separate Sindh only if joint electorates were introduced all over the country --- which was very high-minded, but hardly realistic.


This going back of the Hindus on their word was a disaster. In the Simon Commission there was a tie on this issue, but the chairman cast his vote for separation in 1930. At the Ottawa Imperial Trade Conference in 1932, Sir Abdullah Haroon of Sindh went along with the British business interests --- and the latter promised to separate Sindh. And so Sindh was born as a separate province on I April, 1936 as an act of favour to the Muslims by the British.


Even so, things were quiet enough. And everybody looked to the new dispensation with hope, not unmixed with fear. Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, in his message to the ``Azad Sindh'' issue of Al-Wahid (16 June, 1936), a leading organ of Muslim opinion, said: ``The communal situation in Sindh, Punjab and Bengal threatens to assume ugly forms. I want Sindh to have the glory of solving the Hindu-Muslim problem for the rest of India to follow.'' But the ensuing assembly elections dashed those hopes. The elections returned 24 of Bhutto's Ittehad Party, 6 of Ghulam Hussain's Muslim Political Party, 5 of Majid's Azad Party --- all Muslims, 9 Congressmen, 3 Europeans, I Labour representative (Naraindas), I women's representative (Jethi Sipahimalani) 11 independent Hindus.


But Sir S. N. Bhutto himself was defeated by Sheikh Abdul Majid of the Azad Party, who campaigned with the Koran on his head as proof that he was a better Muslim! The governor did not invite Khuhro, the new leader of the Ittehad Party, to form the government; he invited the old British favourite, Sir Ghulam Hussain (1878--1948), though he had the support of only five members. Once in the saddle, Sir Ghulam Hussain was able to put together the majority, like any Bhajan Lal of present-day Haryana. He won over independent Hindu MLAs by making one of them Speaker. However, early in 1938, the government fell. Meanwhile Khuhro had joined the Muslim League and the new Ittehad Party leader, Allah Bux Soomro, 38, became Premier.


Allah Bux (1900--43) was the finest Premier Sindh ever had. Though a zamindar and government contractor, he habitually wore Khadi. Immediately on entering office, he lifted the externment orders on Obaidullah Sindhi (1872--1944), a Sialkot Sikh who had become a Muslim, a leading revolutionary who had been vegetating in West Asia. (The Muslim League gave a reception in honour of Obaidullah. But when they started to chant: ``Muslim ho, to Muslim League mein aao'' --- If you are a Muslim, then join the Muslim League --- he walked out in protest; he was thinking in terms of a''Sindhu Narbada Party''.) He withdrew the magisterial powers from the Waderas. He followed the Congress line and fixed 500 rupees as minister's salary. Nominations to local bodies were ended. The unassuming Allah Bux sat by the side of the driver, never used the official flag on the car bonnet, never accepted any receptions or parties. In the train he would use the upper berth -and let others use the more convenient lower berth. On one occasion when flood-waters threatened Shikarpur, he breached the canal to flood his own lands --- and saved the city. But above all he was non-communal and nationalist.


That was reason enough for the communal Muslims to try to topple him. A huge League conference was held in Karachi in October 1938. Here the League stalwarts roared against the Hindus, the Congress, and Allah Bux. The conference set-up was comic-opera, complete with Arab sands, date trees and horsemen in the Arab head-dress, Iqaal. They even adopted a resolution which talked of self-determination for the ``two nations'' of Hindus and Muslims. Pir Ali Mohammed Rashdi felt that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was indifferent to this resolution. ``He just allowed us to use it as a hint, a threat, a political stunt.'' The real object was to topple Allah Bux somehow, anyhow. They got 29 Muslim MLAs to join the League. With the help of 3 European MLAs, they could have formed a government of their own. When, however, a no-confidence motion was moved, only 7 of them voted for it. And the League leader Hidayatullah himself quit the party and joined the Allah Bux ministry.


Indeed the League was so rootless in Sindh that when they announced a public meeting for Jinnah in Jacobabad, nobody turned up. Rashdi had to request his local friend Hakim Kaimuddin to ask his Hindu friends to produce an audience. The Hindus, as good friends, obliged. They even pocketed their ``Gandhi caps ` to avoid embarrassment to Jinnah; but they refused to shout ``Jinnah Saheb Zindabad'' with any gusto.


However, the League persisted in its mischief. The respected Pir of Lawari, near Badin in the Hyderabad district, had organised a local Haj for those who could not afford to visit Arabia. It had gone on since 1934. The pilgrims gathered on Ziwal-Haj, read namaz while turning to the durgah, went to a local well renamed ``Zam Zam'', addressed the Pir as ``Khuda'' and greeted each other as ``Haji''. It gave these poor people great spiritual satisfaction. But the fanatics denounced it as un- Islamic, agitated violently, and forced Allah Bux to ban it in 1938.


Success here only whetted the League appetite. Meanwhile, under Hindu pressure, the government regularized a small unauthorized Hanuman temple on Artillery Maidan near the Sindh Secretariat and banned the Om Mandali which has since become the Brahma Kumaris organization. All this encouraged the Leaguers' belief that the government could be brow-beaten. They now mounted a big agitation to topple Allah Bux.


Manzilgah was a couple of dilapidated structures on the bank of the Sindhu in Sukkur near the Sadhbela Island Mandir of the Hindus. It had long been used as a government godown. The Muslims now claimed it to be a mosque. The Hindus opposed the claim as fake; they also feared that a mosque near Sadhbela would be used to provoke controversy and tension.


Allah Bux was on the horns of a dilemma. Ghulam Hussain before him had held Manzilgah to be government property and had refused to hand it over to the Muslims. Allah Bux sent Muslim officers to inspect the Manzilgah. They came back and reported that the original Persian inscriptions described it as an inn and that the ``mehrab'' was a later addition. But the Leaguers were determined to create trouble. From 3 October to 19 November, 1939, under the leadership of G.M. Syed, Khuhro and Sir Haroon, they forcibly occupied Manzilgah. On I November, 1939, Bhagat Kanwar Ram, the well-known singer-saint of Sindh, was gunned down at Ruk railway station --- and nobody was arrested. Sukkur district observed complete hartal for fifteen days. When Pamnani, MLA, said that the Pir of Bharchundi had got Kanwar Ram killed (earlier the Pir's son had been beaten for kidnapping Hindu girls) he, too, was gunned down. The Sindh Hindus were stunned.


But worse was to follow. Word went round that killing one Hindu was equal to doing seven Haj pilgrimages. Sixty-four Hindus were killed and property worth several million was looted or burnt in the Sukkur countryside. In this violent atmosphere, G.M. Syed said on the floor of the Assembly that the Hindus shall be driven out of Sindh like the Jews from Germany --- a statement he has very much regretted since. But the damage was done.


It was a tragic situation, in which the Congress should have understood Allah Bux's dilemma. Here was a man who had presided over the All-India Azad Conference in Delhi in 1940 and said: ``The Muslims as a separate nation in India on the basis of their religion, is un-Islamic.'' And the Congress should have understood why he had vacillated on the Manzilgah issue. As Gandhiji rightly pointed out in the Harijan (2 December, 1939), the basic problem was that self-administration was new to Sindh. ``Sindh is nominally autonomous and to that extent less able to protect life and property than the preceding government. For it has never had previous training in the Police or the Military arts.'' But Congress joined hands with Muslim League to topple the Allah Bux ministry! (And when Khoso, the only Congress Muslim MLA, objected, he was expelled from the Party!) It was a great gift made by the Congressmen of Sindh to the Muslim League, two days before that party met in Lahore and adopted the Partition resolution on 25 March, 1940! The Muslim leaders have since freely admitted that the Manzilgah issue was a bogus (``hathradoo'') agitation, staged just to topple Allah Bux.


Responsible Hindus were shocked by the short-sightedness of Sindh Congressmen. Professor N.R. Malkani wrote to Sardar Patel to do something about it. And the Sardar wrote back: ``I have received your distressing letter of the 1st March 1940. Our friends of the Congress Assembly Party in Sindh have acted in a manner which has brought discredit to the organization and to themselves . . . The Hindu Panchayat of Sukkur has, it seems, succeeded in coercing them to a line of action which they would not have taken if they had the choice or the requisite courage to stand by the principles of the Congress . . . They talk of wider interest of the country in relation to their action, while they forget that they are not serving the local, much less the wider interest.''


The League ministry fell the following year and Al]ah Bux came back to power. But the damage had been done. The Muslim League branches in Sindh went up from 30 to 400. During this one League year the British officers covered themselves with infamy, in serving the communal cause.


Justice Weston was appointed to inquire into the Manzilgah riots. When the Muslim Anjuman blamed the Muslim League for the violence, the judge turned on them! When the parties and the judge went to examine the Manzilgah site, Rashdi, the League ``counsel'', picked up Weston's shoes and kept them in the shade. Weston was thrilled. When they came out, Rashdi again took the shoes and placed them before Weston. The judge in his excess of joy forgot even elementary discretion. He now left his car and sat in Rashdi's car, as the party drove to Rohri. Rashdi writes in his memoirs that Weston even asked him that day in the car as to when the Muslims were going to claim Sadhbela. No wonder Weston in his report blamed the Hindus for the riots. This same partisan judge was now appointed lo decide about the Manzilgah. And he decided that it was a mosque! The Manzilgah issue died down --- but not before it had delivered a body-blow to Hindu-Muslim amity in Sindh.


Allah Bux came back to power. But the British were now bent on seeing him out. When the ``Quit India'' movement started, he renounced his old title of Khan Bahadur and the new one of OBE (Order of the British Empire). He also resigned from the National Defence Council. The Governor now declared that he had no confidence in him --- the Assembly's confidence notwithstanding --- and dismissed him! A few months later he was murdered in broad daylight, while going in a tonga in his home-town of Shikarpur. The League minister Khuhro was arraigned --- but he escaped with the benefit of doubt.


Meanwhile British partiality for the League continued. The 1946 Assembly elections returned 28 Leaguers, 22 Congressmen, 7 anti-League Muslims, and 3 Europeans were nominated. The 22 Congressmen and the 7 anti-League Muslims had formed an alliance. They were one more than the League. But the Governor, Sir Francis Mudie, installed a League ministry and asked the 3 nominated Europeans to support it!


Even then, with a Leaguer elected Speaker, the League was reduced to 29 in a house of 60. But the Governor would not call the Assembly session. On top of that, when Mir Bundeh Ali Khan Talpur quit the League, the Governor sent his secretary to him, asking him to rejoin the League on promise of a ministership. When the Assembly had to be called to elect Sindh's representatives to the Constituent Assembly, the Governor adjourned the House on the very day that it was scheduled to take up the no-confidence motion. His excuse was that the Assembly, called to elect members to the Consembly, could not conduct any other business. Interestingly enough, at the same time, the British Governor of the Punjab allowed the Punjab Assembly to take up the motion of no-confidence against the non-League Khizr government, though it, too, had been called for electing representatives to the Consembly.


Later, when the Sindh Assembly session became constitutionally due, the Governor did not summon it --- because the League was by then down to 25; instead, he dissolved the Assembly, called for fresh elections and kept the Leaguers as ``care-taker government''. In the ensuing elections, massive rigging by the Muslim zamindars and officers, at the instance of the British higher-ups, gave the League 35 seats, as against only 2 to Nationalist Muslims. Before the election petitions could be taken up, the rigged Assembly had voted for Pakistan!,Governor Mudie was duly rewarded for his services by being elevated from the governorship of Sindh to that of the Punjab. Pir A.M. Rashdi has aptly described Mudie as ``Katikoo'' (master crook). The fate of Sindh was sealed by ``Quide-e-Azam Mudie'' even more than by the other Quaid, Mr. Jinnah.


The Congress could have at least partly saved Sindh, but it acted like Chamberlain who had abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 with the statement that it was ``a far-away country about which we know little.''


The Thar Parker district had a Hindu majority and the Congress should have claimed it. Indeed it had traditionally been more a part of Marwar than of Sindh. On the eve of Partition, the Sindh government promptly merged Sanghar district wit4 Thar Parker district --- to cancel out its Hindu majority. But even then the case of Thar Parker district was on par with that of Sylhet in Assam, where the Muslim League had demanded --- and got --- part of the district, through a plebiscite.


In 1928, when there was talk of separation of Sindh from Bombay, Jodhpur State had laid claim to the Amarkot (Umarkot) area of Thar Parker district. Jodhpur's case was that Amarkot had traditionally been part of its Marwar area. The Britishers had taken the area from Jodhpur temporarily for defence purposes. However, the Sindh Congress had opposed the move.


Another area India could have got was the native Khairpur state. as big as any district. For years the Mir of Khairpur had been kept confined to a house in Pune. In the Nineteen Forties the Khairpur Dewan was Aijaz Ali of U.P. The Number Two man was Mangharam Wadhwani, Treasury Officer. Aijaz Ali had ousted Mangharam. When the transfer of power was approaching, Mangharam met the Mir in Pune and promised to have him restored to his throne --- on condition that he removed Aijaz Ali and acceded to India. The Mir agreed. Mangharam met Mountbatten and Sardar Patel. The Mir was duly restored to his state; Aijaz Ali was sent away. The Mir was now prepared to accede to India. But Pandit Nehru declined the offer --- even as he had returned the accession papers of the Kalat state in Baluchistan.


Had New Delhi played its cards in Khairpur and Thar Parker, the frontier of India would have touched the mighty Indus. Indeed India could have asked for a plebiscite in the whole of Sindh, for the majority of Sindhis had voted against the League in the 1946 general elections. In these elections, the Muslim League got only 46.3 per cent vote in a province with a 71 per cent Muslim population. For every four votes polled by the League, three were polled by the nationalist Muslims led by G.M. Syed and Maula Bux!


In a house of sixty, ten MLAs were returned unopposed. Only one of them was a Muslim. Had polling taken place in these ten constituencies also, the League percentage of the popular vote would have come down to less than forty!


So there was a clear anti-League majority of the popular vote in Sindh. In failing to avail of all these favourable factors, the Congress did little justice to Sindh and even less to India. The Congress threw not only NWFP to the wolves --- as complained by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan; it threw Sindh also to the wolves.

Thrown to the Wolves