It was Madhuri Sheth (1934-2022) who first told me about Hemu Kalani. My first book on Sindh, Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland, was ready for the printer but I went to see her because a friend insisted. The meeting changed the book; I held the pages back and updated them with Madhuri’s story. It changed me, too.
Who would imagine that Sindhis had been involved in the struggle for Indian independence? Weren’t Sindhis a peculiar, money-obsessed, exploitative and uncultured lot? But Madhuri remembered her childhood in Sukkur, on the banks of the Sindhu River, and opened a startling new window:
“Influenced by a prominent Sukkur freedom fighter, Dadi Parpati, my elder sister Shantoo joined the Congress Dal and was learning how to use the lathi. The principal of our PPCM Girls’ High School, Sarla Narsian, was a well-known freedom fighter too, and our idol. When Hemu Kalani was hanged at midnight, we sat up in wait until the body was cremated.”
Dadi Parpati? Sarla Narsian? What was this about a 19-year-old Sindhi martyr named Hemu Kalani?
Over the years I have learnt of the long and solid history of Sindhi participation in the freedom struggle. KR Malkani wrote in The Sindh Story:
“Nadir Shah looted the country only once. But the British loot us every day. Every year wealth to the tune of 4.5 million dollars is being drained out, sucking our very blood. Britain should immediately quit India. This appeared in Sindh Times, May 20, 1884, a year before the Indian National Congress was formed, and a full 58 years before Gandhi declared the Quit India Movement.”
By the 1940s, men, women, and children were out on the streets, protesting. Writers printed and distributed literature to create awareness of the importance of freedom from British rule. Activists courted arrest circulating it surreptitiously. Many names and incidents emerged through oral history interviews in which people related family stories (as Independence Day approaches, I have been posting them on my sindhstories blog and social media handles), but also occasionally through random sources.
One of the people interviewed in Anand Patwardhan’s recent film The World is Family tells of how as a child, Manjari Kriplaney (Patwardhan’s maternal aunt), braved the rage of school authorities by racing up to a portrait of King George and flinging off the garland.
The people of Sindh clearly loved Gandhi. His meetings were thronged with eager devotees. When, at the end of the talk he called for funds, which he always did, especially in prosperous Sindh, women of all ages would stand up and pull off their gold jewellery and toss them into the growing pile. Sindh’s global businessmen were Gandhi’s top supporters and it’s no wonder that Gandhi was referring to Sindhis as “world citizens” – long before anyone could imagine what was to come.
Clearly, participating in the freedom movement was a mainstream activity in Sindh in the 1940s – as it was for other parts of India. Sadly, however, when the goal of freedom was achieved, Sindhis were exiled from their own homeland for good.
The valourous Hemu
Hemu Kalani was arrested in the process of sabotaging railway tracks in Sukkur, preceding the arrival of a British troop train, during the 1942 Quit India movement. He was put on trial and sentenced to death. The people of Sindh petitioned for mercy, and it was granted – on condition that he divulge the identities of his co-conspirators. He refused. Hemu Kalani was hanged in Sukkur jail on January 21, 1943. He was 19.
Yes, there is a postage stamp, a statue in parliament, lanes and squares named after the valourous Hemu Kalani. But I find that, even today, after writing and speaking about him for a decade and more, when I ask an audience – even an audience of nearly-all Sindhis – most have never heard of him.
In India, the shallow stereotyping of Sindhis has prevented Kalani from receiving mainstream recognition as a national hero.
In Pakistan, is it possible to celebrate a Hindu? In March 2023, Kalani’s birth centenary, Dawn carried a tribute. Soon after, it became clear that the piece was a rip-off from an article by Riaz Sohail in August 2020. The publication appended his name to the piece and blacklisted the plagiarist permanently.
The story about a little-known hero had been beautifully captured for BBC Urdu readers in August 2020 by Sohail. However, it has not been translated into other languages too, so that people across India – across the world – would also know of Kalani.
The BBC has of course done stellar work documenting Partition. But its photographs, news articles, documentary films, all of exceptional quality, do not have a single mention of Sindh or what happened to the Sindhis. Why could that be? Not because they were an insignificant minority. Though the actual numbers will never be known, it is believed that nearly a million non-Muslims were displaced from Sindh; around 2.5 million from Bengal; around 5 million from Punjab. The Sindh story is huge.
It’s complicated
In February 2013, when my family and I visited Sindh for the launch of my first book at the Karachi Literature Festival, we learnt to our amazement that Partition had been a time of turmoil and trauma for the majority community of Sindhis as well. Who could ever imagine that the Muslim Sindhis yearned deeply for contact with the ones who were hounded out and never looked back?
It became clear that, because the positions of power in Sindh before Partition had been occupied by Hindus, and the Hindus had left – the Muslims of Sindh were trampled under by settlers from other parts of India. They had been colonised, their language and customs mocked. “They told us that we were people only fit for feeding grass to the donkeys,” my friend Dr Gul Metlo said.
Over time, I learnt that the Muslims of Sindh also called on smallpox Mata; that Hindu babies were buried in Muslim graveyards all around Sindh. That Holi and Diwali were once festivals celebrated by all Sindhis regardless of their religion, and the festivities were recalled with a nostalgia depicted with great skill in this short story by the thinker and writer Amar Jaleel.
The dawn of a new awareness
Restoring heritage has become important in Pakistan. Some of the institutions established by Hindus and abandoned when they were forced to leave, were revived in the decades following Partition. Some years ago, the phrase “Hindu architecture” was coined to describe the dilapidated mansions that were once-grand family homes in Hyderabad and other places in Sindh, a nod to those who built but lost them. Social media offers soulful glimpses.
There is an explosion of “I’m proud to be a Sindhi” handles on both sides of the border. These range from aspiring “influencers” to young people grappling with issues of identity, dismayed by prevailing rightwing interpretations and on to earnest aunties like yours truly who wish to propagate good-quality information missing from the mainstream.
Most of the posts coming out of India celebrate food, ritual, and Sindhi peccadilloes – housework, penny pinching, the searing cries of the young man whose soul yearns for freedom from the chains of the family dukaan. Sindh, for its part, provides a far more eclectic, sophisticated output, with an impressive outpouring of visual and performing arts.
These new expressions gradually unfold in the dense history of wariness, prejudice, suppression, colonisation, and other negatives that Sindhis experienced on both sides of the border after Partition; salves that may one day heal the breach.
The heroes of the past remain unacknowledged.
Saaz Aggarwal is a writer and artist who lives in Pune.
