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THE epic story revolving round Sindh’s separation from the Bombay Presidency in the last century remains unknown to the people of Pakistan. The issue doesn’t concern Sindh alone: it relates to Pakistan because, as it turned out, its secession from the larger Bombay province was a precursor to this country’s creation.
Those who fought for Sindh’s status as a province were makers of Pakistan and had grasped the implications of its separation in the larger South Asian context. They included, besides Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, one of what Jinnah’s biographer Stanley Wolpert calls his “closest deputy”, Haji Sir Abdullah Haroon, who died this day in 1942.
Making Sindh a separate province was a challenge because powerful forces were arrayed against the idea, even though it was administered as a separate unit after the British occupied it in 1843 and later annexed it to the Bombay Presidency.
In the early part of the 20th century, when the move to make Sindh a separate province began, the British adopted a neutral position because they knew ultimately it would turn into a communal question. On a visit to Karachi, and in reply to an address of welcome by the Karachi Chamber of Commerce, the governor of Bombay Lord Willingdon declared that his government was “inspired by one consistent principle — the conviction that the future of Karachi is one of the great assets of the Empire”. Beyond this tribute to Karachi, he wasn’t willing to make a commitment regarding the province’s future.
Very few people in today’s relatively prosperous Sindh know what their province was like in the early part of the last century and why moves were made by their ancestors to give Sindh the status of a separate province. Those of us who today use Sindh’s modern four-way highways and complain of problems at toll plazas and how the behaviour of highway police leaves much to be desired do not know that Sindh virtually had no macadamised roads, and that outside Karachi an animal-drawn vehicle was their only choice.
That a separate Sindh province would have a Muslim majority was obvious, but many Hindu leaders, too, realised that such a move would help the entire population. For that reason, at least initially, many Hindu politicians, besides members of the Parsi community, were at the forefront of the separation movement. For instance, the chairman of the committee formed to study the issue was a Hindu politician, Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas, while Jethmal Parsaram argued in an article in New Times, a Karachi daily, that Hindus stood to gain from Sindh as a separate province. Another non-Muslim leader who supported the ‘Separationists’, as they were called, was Jamshed Mehta, chief of the Karachi Municipality. It was he who suggested in an article in Sind Observer that a committee consisting of people drawn from all communities be formed to study the issue to remove fears among some sections of the Hindu community.
It is amazing that the arguments advanced by Abdullah Haroon bore a remarkable resemblance to what Jinnah would say decades later about the Muslims of India being a nation in their own right. While giving his views on the issue, Haroon told his friend Sir Purshotamdas that geography demanded that Sindh be a distinct province, because its people had their own “life, habits, circumstances and dress”.
Initially, Haroon was known for his philanthropy and education promotion in Sindh, but as his status in national politics grew, Sindh’s separation was among his earliest concerns. In 1925, at the Aligarh session of the Muslim Conference, he raised the issue of separation — a task that he could pursue better when he became a member of the All-India Muslim League high command and was a member of the committee that drafted the historic Pakistan Resolution. His views on Sindh mattered and soon Sindh’s separation became part of Jinnah’s Fourteen Points.
However, communalism raised its ugly head when the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, a right-wing Hindu party, crashed into the debate and spoke of ‘consequences’ if Sindh were subjected to what it called a ‘Muslim raj’. In its imagination, a separate Sindh would mean “a reversion back to good old days of Mirs who had nothing to rule over except Shikargahs (hunting grounds) all round”. It said Sindhi Muslims were largely Jats and “an inflammable material ready to burst like a volcano the moment a fanatical Moulvi appears on the spot”.
At the second Hindu Sammelan at Sukkur in April 1927, the speech by its chairman, Virumal Bagraj, got a good press with a headline that screamed “Sindh Hindus in danger”. Yet all these attempts failed. In 1932, Haroon visited London to present Sindh’s case to British MPs on the eve of the Round Table Conference, and heard the good news that the RTC had in principle accepted Sindh’s separation from the Bombay Presidency.
The writer is Dawn’s External Ombudsman and an author.
Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2022
