Why Do We Reject Our Past?

#202
Jaipuri,

I will take a few minutes of Sunday morning to explain a few things to you and DM. DM being DM has never backed up a story with facts on the ground. He wears thick glasses and assumes too much. The story he copied from Cowasji clearly state that no one died and Cowasjis were able to send those guys away safely. This story was repeated in numerous towns across India during that volatile period. Lots of Hindus and Muslims came forward to save their neighbors.

The story also showed that most of the Hindus in Sindh left in 1948 after the pressure from the refugees from UP. CP and Rajputna begin to mount. In the late 1947 and early 1948, there were some incidents of stabbing in Karachi. These incidents took place around Jamshed Road and Amil Colony areas. Those were upper middleclass Sindhis Hindu neighborhoods. Right behind those neighborhoods, there were some barrack with tin roofs. The refugees from Delhi and Meerut were sent to those areas.

Some of them had suffered in Delhi and perhaps meerut too. On finding out that all big residential buildings belonged to Hindus, refugees began to harass them for revange and the stabbings were part of that. They were individual acts and no mob attacks took place anywhere in Sindh.

The other area where tensions were high was around Bandar Road where all buildings were owned by the Hindus* and the Refugees were sleeping on the sidewalks or in camps nearby.

The refugees were mostly peaceful and never mob targeted Hindus but it was clear that if the Hindus continued to live in Karachi and the other cities of Sindh, the situation could (and did as Coawasji wrote) get out of hand. Most of the Hindu who left were businessmen or govt servants and they left with all the possessions (gold, cash and some with Linen also) they could possibly take with them in trains, steamers and busses.

*laxmi building on Bander road was the largest building in Karachi at that time. Do you remember the song by Ahmed Rushdi…

Bandar road say kemaari meri challi ray ghori gari,
babu ho janna footpath per.
Yey Ai laxmi building kabhi ki sab say bari building,
Bandar road say dekho nazar aati thi yahi building.

Salim:

I do not know much about what happened in Karachi, except that my Mamu did have to leave Karachi in 1947. So, I tried to search something from a Karachite of that time. This is what I found from Cowasji, still living an writing from Karachi.

[from dawn: http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/20031116.htm]

``This last message took me back to January 1948 - to the day of the tragic killing of Hindus of Karachi and the looting of their homes and properties. From early in the evening, many of our Hindu friends, together with their friends, and their meagre belongings, trickled into my father`s house seeking refuge. By dusk the number had swelled to around 40. Our sole chowkidar, a Pathan armed with a lathi, assured us that as long as he was alive no harm would befall any Hindu in Variawa Chambers. (He had a lengthy and unpronounceable name - and used to tell us that he wished to be addressed merely as `Khan`.) By nightfall the entire household was occupied in finding them all places to doss down and to procuring sufficient food to feed them.

During the late evening, the telephone rang and an unknown man said he wished to talk to my father. In an ominous tone, he informed my father that he and others were at the moment very close to our house, that they knew that we had given shelter to many Hindus, and that if he did not throw them all out on to the roads for him and his mates to deal with, the house would be set afire.

My father`s immediate reaction was to phone the nearest police stations and summon help, but there was no help forthcoming as the entire police force was occupied with the rioting. He decided to arouse old Ghulam Mohammad, Jinnah`s finance minister, whom he had known in Bombay when he (GM) was working for the Tatas and who lived in a nearby street. He rang, was told that the minister was asleep, and requested that he be awoken as the matter was urgent. The minister was awakened. Let me sleep, he pleaded. No, said my father. And he told him why. Ghulam Mohammad, shaken and fully awake, immediately said he would send over to my father`s house his personal police guards. In a few minutes, three policemen armed with Lee Enfields arrived - and that was all it took in those far gone days for us all to feel completely safe, relaxed and fall asleep peacefully.

Early the next morning mayor of Karachi Jamshed Nusserwanjee called at our house. The previous evening six Sikhs had sought refuge at his home. As he had no family, when he left his home that morning, rather than leave them there alone, he had sent them off in his car to the Clifton beach to hide in the dunes until some other arrangement could be made for them.

To cut a long story short, eventually, our Hindus and Jamshed`s Sikhs were all sent off to India on a Bombay Steam vessel (BS vessels were then known as `Haji Kassim`s ships`).``

Dost-Mittar #199, {``Salim Saheb, why do you become so defensive about Mohajirs? Nobody is singling them out. We were all victims of crimes as well as perpetrators of crime. We all did terrible things to each other in those days when Insaan became hevaan.

Please tell me who occupied the empty houses and shops left by Hindus who, I believe, were a majority in Karachi at the time of the partition. ...I am sure that you know a lot about what happened on the other side in Delhi. There, too, a number of colonies were built by the Punjabi refugees - .... But still, refugees did occupy houses in Karol Bagh and Pahar Ganj from where Muslims were forced to leave for Pakistan.``}

DM Sahib,
No, I don`t call it being defensive. Sir, I say I get incensed when people start comparing apples and oranges to justify their own viewpoints or to equate their rivers of blood to others` drops of blood. You cannot compare Delhi of 1947 with Karachi of 1947 - not in magnitude, not in scale of slaughter, not in rapes, no not even in looting and arson. Collins and Lapierre, in their very objective description of the massacres of 1947 in the chapter ``Our People Have Gone Mad`` of their excellent book, ``Freedom at Midnight,`` rarely mention Karachi. The main event in Karachi appeared to have been the alleged assassination attempt on the life of Mr. Jinnah by the Hindu right-winger Madanlal Pahwa. I don`t know who exactly occupied all the formerly-Hindu residences in Karachi, but the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs were living in tent camps and make-shift shelters by the summer of 1947. I am surprised that, as HP as stated, there were hardly any Sindhi Muslims in Sindh`s larget city at the time of partition. Maybe the discipline and order of the British Indian administration was all targeted at Karachi rather than Lahore, Delhi, Calcutta, Amritsar, Noakhali, Patiala, Panipat, Kasur, or Okala.

g moulvi sahab..

kya dhuwaandaar takreer thi waah waah..!!!!!!

Re: # 200

Arabs..might not have introduced the theory and the mathematical concepts but they did..get the idea of a Hukka from some where..

Re-reading your article..one would..be drunken-hallucinated to claim that the formula e=mc square was coined by half-naked pundit and gifted to einstein after taking bath upside down in the Ganges..

Salim-Chauhan#189:

Salim Saheb, why do you become so defensive about Mohajirs? Nobody is singling them out. We were all victims of crimes as well as perpetrators of crime. We all did terrible things to each other in those days when Insaan became hevaan.

Please tell me who occupied the empty houses and shops left by Hindus who, I believe, were a majority in Karachi at the time of the partition. Sure, new colonies came up to accomodate the influx but this does not mean that the refugees left the unoccupied dwellings unoccupied.

I am sure that you know a lot about what happened on the other side in Delhi. There, too, a number of colonies were built by the Punjabi refugees - Moti Bagh, Moti Nagar, Patel Nagar, Kirti Nagar, Rajauri Garden Lajpat Nagar, Defence Coloni, Punjabi Bagh.....one could go on and on. But still, refugees did occupy houses in Karol Bagh and Pahar Ganj from where Muslims were forced to leave for Pakistan. My own family occupied one such house in Karol Bagh, though admittedly a very poor substitute for the one from which we were forced out. Indeed some of the previous owners came back, either from Pakistan or from safer Muslim areas of Delhi where they had temporarily moved but none of them would have the courage to move back into the new ``refugee`` area and simply chose to sell their old homes to the new occupants.

Ahmadzai#190:
My knowledge of what happened in Sindh is quite sketchy and based on a few Sindhi aquaintances and a few people I happened to meet during a visit to India three years ago. My Mamu was in Karachi at the time of the partition and he moved out (unharmed) to India at the same time that we did, namely in August 1947. I interacted with very few Sindhis during my visit to Pakistan, except casually with a few workers at Mohenjodaro.

Dear Friend,

Wow!... And you say I am living in a dream world?

If only things were as you wanted them to be... ah well... what are you going to do.. I`ve already responded to your repetitive comments in post 174, but looks like you ascribe to theory: the more times you repeat a lie- it becomes the truth.

As for whether or not HP ``destroyed`` my theories- perhaps we should ask HP or perhaps Ferozk? Maybe he`d like to comment on this ?

HP sain

(There were hardly any Muslim Sindhi around that time in Karachi city areas so I am not sure who was killing Hindus there. )

Maybe bawajis with long sugarcanes in their hand.

Regards

195

Harimau
It`s hing alright. Funny thing is that asafoetida is used as a spice all the way from the Mediteranean to Central Asia too. That`s why I`m amazed it missed out Pakistan on the way. That is some eradication.
On a more serious note, after a puff of hashish would you care much about hing?-) We must ask Baba_Huka.

Ref swarrier #144

[Asafoetida is grown chiefly in Iran and Afghanistan from where it is exported to the rest of the world. In India it is cultivated in Kashmir.....In March and April, just before flowering, the stalks are cut close to the root. A milky liquid oozes out, which dries to form a resin. This is collected and a fresh cut is made. This procedure lasts for about three months from the first incision, by which time the plant has yielded up to two pounds of resin and the root has dried up.]

Sounds like hashish to me! Are you sure we are talking about hing here? ;)

RE: ahmadzai:
``My family and I don`t subcribe to it, but this is true. Reason is not that they were 200% Muslims, but because their `way of living` reflects way of life in Pakhtoon society.``

This could be the TNT redux circa 2006. There are reports in the news about Taliban`s doing a direct action day for an Islamic Republic of Waziristan.

#192

Why do you lose temper? Every one knew that in 1946 that Sindh would be in Pakistan…there were issues but hardly anyone left in 1946...I have not heard and read abt the dead bodies in 1946 in Karachi. But I will not discount the possibility of some incidents.

There were hardly any Muslim Sindhi around that time in Karachi city areas so I am not sure who was killing Hindus there.

#191..so, you condemn a whole population on an inexplicable basis, and call it a non-issue. OTOH you are stuck on a non-issue of my nick, which is my name. nice going. and a complete wipe-out of a population in the NWFP is hardly some unknowing discrimination.

my relatives tell me that the writing (in karachi at least) was nn the wall in late 1946, there were dead bodies found every day, atmosphere was intimidatory and tense. for those hindus who were professionals (i.e. not shop owners or land-home owners) like teacher and engineers, it was very obvious that its time to leave..they were smart.

dost-mittar:

The only primary research piece I have available on why Hindus may have hated Urdu speaking population suggests ‘Perceived hatred’ and not ‘Real Discrimination’.
It mentions that with the influx of ‘Mohajirs’ from India, Hindus, who were the leading businessmen and educators in urban Sindh faced new competition. They would have fared well if the influx was of normal volume. However, the migration was so strong and competition so stiff that eventually their businesses caved in. The paper does not suggest any element of violence against Hindus on part of Mohajirs.

‘Mohajirs’ who felt on cloud nine immediately after independence had to go through the same ordeal by mid-70s at the hands of Punjabis. At the time of independence, the local population of Pakistan was not educated enough and that left a whole area in the Government and infant private sector to be filled in by Mohajirs. But by 1970s, Sindhi’s began to eat up Mohajir places in the Government organizations due to quota system introduced by Bhutto and Punjabis became educated enough to challenge Mohajirs in both Government and private sectors. This eventually resulted in Mohajirs’ feeling ‘Perceived Bias’ and not ‘Real discrimination’.

Having written all of the above, I must admit that in Pakistan we must have certainly discriminated our minorities unknowingly in the strata that I hail from and very intentionally in others.

When I was at the airport for going to the USA for my studies, I made friends with a Christian boy of my age, who turned out to be a real polite guy. He was headed for Canada where he would join his Christian sister who had worked as a lead role in some 70s Pakistani flicks. We became good friends and chatted till we boarded the plane where we sat next to each other. As soon as the plane became airborne his language changed. He started cursing Pakistan for what its Muslims were doing to the Christian community. It was actually he who pointed out to me that most of the Pakistanis discriminate against Christians unintentionally because we as Muslims take Christians for granted. This may be true for our behavior with Hindus too.

That was an eye-opener for me. I felt ashamed of myself as a Muslim. At least at my individual level I have always tried to love all and treat all equally. (My views against some here are purely Chowk oriented and I do not demonstrate them in real life :-)

Jang at # 184:

Thank you for calling me Abe. My name is Ahmadzai. However, the only Abe I am able to recall is Honest Abe (Abraham Lincoln). Needless to mention, I am flattered.

Otoh, I still insist you change your name/nick. Names influence character. The meanings of your name as big, rusty and war are having negative influences on you. Especially the last meaning is coming out loud and clear. It seems you really want to start a war here on a non-issue.

:-)

#188, Yes, and they went right from the Airport on Drigh Road directly to Ratan Talao to take over the Hindus` belongings. Is that why they had to build all those new colonies out in the desert because they didn`t have any of those nice yellow colored buildings and quarters?