The Burden of Refuge: Partition Experience of the Sindhis of Gujarat by Rita Kothari

Author:Rita Kothari [Kothari, Rita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
Published: 2009-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Udhavdas Makhija

Udhavdas Makhija is my uncle, my father’s brother. He is a retired businessman. Along with my father, he had started a small hosiery workshop in Ahmedabad in the 1950s. We call him ‘dada’. I had always found Dada a foppish person; his passion for Hindi cinema, his compulsive habit of comparing every young woman with a Bollywood heroine—basically, his treatment of real life as an echo of Bollywood both irritated and amused me. Prior to this project, I had not known that he had been an active RSS trainer or that he held an irrational dislike for Muslims. While these were surprising elements in my interview with him, there was also a recognisable element of Hindi cinema even in his Partition account.

I was born in 1926 in Shikarpur. My father died when I was hardly ten. I have no memory of playing anything or with anyone. I would come back from school and leave to earn money. By the time of Partition I had begun to earn Rs. 40 a month. My mother was very particular about that. She said boys have to be constantly earning. I used to study in a school meant only for Hindu boys. There was no question of having Muslim companions. I have never liked Muslims. Good that we came here during Partition. They would have made life miserable for us. They used to say, “All this belongs to us. We will take everything from you.” We used to call them Hurs. They used to abduct our women.

For about four years I lived in Karachi. My maternal uncle took me there and I used to work in a grocery store. I gave up studies at the age of twelve, I think. Once again I came to Shikarpur and lived there up to the age of seventeen. My father had left us a big house but hardly any money. He was in the money-lending business in Afghanistan. He would go to Tashkent and Bukhara, but after the Russian Revolution he had to give up that business. He had put by enough money to lend to Muslim neighbours who would mortgage their jewels and precious things with him. I remember an occasion when my father had a very bitter fight with my eldest brother who then walked out of the house. But he also took with him small knick- knacks and precious things that Muslims had left with my father as mortgage. My father was quite worried. I don’t know what happened then. Perhaps it was because of this that my father gave up the money-lending business (we used to call it soodkhori). But he was a much-respected man. Ours was a Muslim locality and each time my father left home by a horse-cart they would do salaam to him. Muslim haaris used to keep coming to our house to give small agricultural gifts like watermelons or vegetables. My father used to tell us that they had such respect for him because he was helpful to them.

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