“I saw the body of the man stabbed, a little distance away I saw another body, and then a third… It was very strange and painful for me, because it was the first time I saw dead bodies lying on the streets.” When 19 year old Lal Krishna Advani, who had gone out to tour Karachi on his motorcycle, saw this scene on the streets of Pakistan’s capital Karachi, he was shocked. This Sindhi youth did not want to have such a picture of Sindh in his mind at all.
But who can stop history from being made? As history was made on 14th August 1947. When Jinnah’s communal politics succeeded in dividing India into two parts. After which the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was formed, whose 78th anniversary this country is celebrating today.
Seeing his birthplace Karachi going to Pakistan, Advani expressed his pain in a few words in his biography ‘My Country, My Life’ and wrote, ‘My destiny is so cursed that I could not even celebrate 15th August, whereas in the last five years, since I became a volunteer, I was not dreaming of anything else except the arrival of this day.’
That day, most of the Hindu localities in Karachi remained disappointed and deserted, although fireworks were definitely going on at some distance.
It was a strange twist of fate that Advani, a proponent of intense nationalism, had to stay for 28 days in Pakistan, whose ideology he was strongly opposed to.
Pakistan was created on 14 August and Advani left Karachi on 12 September 1947. He came to Delhi forever with the stigma of a refugee and the pain of migration. Author Vinay Sitapati writes in his book Jugalbandi, “He was one of the few refugees who were brought in a propeller plane of the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Leaving home and the disintegration of the family hurt Advani deeply. A train carrying Muslims from Delhi to Karachi after Partition (Photo-Getty)
Lal Krishna Advani left Karachi in 1947 but his would-be wife Kamla Jagtiani’s family stayed in Karachi till 1948. That too when rioters started violence in that area. Kamla Jagtiani told one of her friends- I remember that we left Karachi in 1948 and that too when we saw a gurudwara burning in front of our house. Advani married Kamla in 1965.
So what was Advani, born in Karachi in 1927, doing on 14 August 1947? How does Advani, who had become an active member of the Sangh in those days, remember that day? This very question was asked to Advani by American journalist Andrew Whitehead in March 1997. While answering this question, Advani openly expressed his sorrow over the partition. He had said, “Yes, I was there that day, but there was no excitement in my heart, there was no joy that India had become independent. And I remember many Hindu children even refused to take the sweets given in school. We are back, this is not independence, this is not a day of joy.”
Advani writes in My Country-My Life- ‘No, we will not eat these sweets, Hindu children in Karachi schools clearly said so. When children refuse to eat sweets in a group like this, then understand that something is very wrong. There was an atmosphere of fear, apprehension and uncertainty among the people. That day I went to many Hindu colonies one after the other on my motorcycle, the atmosphere was the same everywhere. Everyone had the same question in their mind, what will happen now?’
Let us tell you that on August 14, Jinnah was in Karachi and was going to announce the formation of a separate country of Pakistan while addressing the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in the present Sindh Assembly Building of Karachi.
Did you not go to see Jinnah?
Andrew Whitehead has tried to probe Advani’s mind in this regard during his interview. He asked Advani, did you not go to see Mohammad Ali Jinnah on 14 August?
In response Advani says, “No, no I did not go anywhere, I did not go to see any programme, nowhere. And I think most Hindus had a similar reaction.” Further Andrew Whitehead asked him whether he had ever seen Jinnah. Answering this Advani said that he had never seen Jinnah face to face. Whatever he had seen was in photographs and posters.
It is noteworthy that only 9 days ago, i.e. on 5th August, Karachi Mahanagar Sangh Karyavah Lal Krishna Advani had demonstrated the power of the Sangh in this city. It so happened that RSS Sarsanghchalak Golwalkar came to Karachi to take stock of the situation in the newly formed Pakistan. Serving refugees (Photo-Getty image)
In fact, this Karachi visit of the Sangh chief was to reassure the Hindus who were scared of the possibility of partition. Describing this visit, Vinay Sitapati writes in Jugalbandi, “Advani arrived at the railway station to receive Golwalkar, who was among the one lakh panic-stricken Hindus who had gathered to hear the RSS chief, Advani was accompanied by ten thousand uniformed RSS members.
On 5 August 1947, just 9 days before the formation of Pakistan, a grand procession of the Sangh was held at 5 pm in its future capital Karachi and it happened peacefully in that toxic atmosphere.
Advani here highlights the difference in the atmosphere of Punjab and Sindh. Punjab was burning even before the partition but till 15 August, hatred and animosity were hidden in Sindh.
According to Advani, it started to seem so in early 1947. Things were moving in that direction, and in the months of April, May it became clear that partition was certain. We felt very bad about it, very sad, especially that Sindh should be a part of Pakistan. Even more so that India should be partitioned. Because for most of us, this was a concept that we were not able to accept easily.
He told Andrew Whitefield, “Looking back, I would say there was a sense of uncertainty. Our decision was that we will stay in Karachi because unlike Punjab where riots broke out even before Partition, there were no riots in Sindh even after Partition. The riots happened in January 1948. We did not see anything like what was seen here in Punjab, or the North-West Frontier Provinces or say East Bengal or Bengal. So when Partition was about to happen, there was a sense of uncertainty about what was going to happen? But basically we thought why should we go? We will stay, we will stay here. That was our feeling.”
But Advani’s decision to stay in Pakistan changed after a bomb blast in Karachi. Advani tells Whitefield: ‘Perhaps the thinking of the entire Hindu population of Sindh changed when an explosion took place in Karachi in September and the RSS was wrongly blamed for that explosion. Let us tell you that Advani had become a member of the Sangh by then. Pakistan’s newspaper Dawn had put the headline on this incident – ‘RSS Plot to Blow Up Pakistan Unearthed’. This incident had decided that Advani was now going to leave his birthplace. A few days after this incident, on 12 September 1947, Advani took a flight from Karachi to Delhi. At that time Advani was not even 20 years old.
Jinnah came to Karachi from Delhi on 7 August 1947. He was welcomed like a hero at the airport. Historian Bipin Chandra writes in his book ‘India’s freedom struggle’ Exposing the politics of communalism, he writes that From Jinnah’s example it becomes clear that the path of communalism is a sloping one. If special efforts are not made to block this path, then man keeps on sliding down it.
According to Bipin Chandra ‘Once the basic tenets of communal ideology are accepted, then a person starts being governed by that ideology, whatever his own wishes may be. Otherwise there was no reason why Jinnah, a barrister who returned to India in 1906 and whom Sarojini Naidu called the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, started demanding Pakistan and speaking a language that was possible only for fascist communalism.’
This horror of Partition started an endless series of human suffering in India and Pakistan. Remembering this pain, India today celebrates Partition Horror Day. In this process of partition, about 1.5 crore Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims had to leave their homes and migrate. One crore people became homeless. In West Punjab, Hindus and Sikhs had to leave 27 lakh hectares of land. In East Punjab, Muslims had to lose 19 lakh hectares of land. The number of sexual violence and kidnappings was in thousands on both sides. While the number of people who died was more than 10 lakh.
Even today, 77 years later, when stories of backward people coming together during Partition come to light, we get goosebumps feeling the thrill.
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)