Written for wire.in for Independence Day 2022

For Sindhis, Partition Meant Loss of a Homeland, of a Culture and a Language

Saaz Aggarwal

19/Aug/2022

5 min read

The community however turned hardship into success and thrived by assimilating into the host society.

Image courtesy Murli Melwani (left). taken in the family store after a fire in the neighbourhood caused calamity. His father Herkishendas Sobrajmal Melwani is seen on the right.

As the country waves flags and celebrates the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, it is also time to take stock. What did India’s founders and citizens dream of, how has India fared, what have been our challenges and successes?

Sometime in mid-2012, I asked Niranjan Gidwani to tell me his family’s Partition story.

Till then, I’d only known Niranjan as my husband’s friend, a good guy, and never thought about him as a Sindhi or anything like that. But I’d just started working on a book about Sindhis and it was amazing how all kinds of unexpected sources were popping up. Niranjan told me some interesting things, including how his grandfather, a fairly well-off and influential person in Sindh, went missing in the turmoil before Partition. His younger son was general manager of the Great Indian Peninsular Railways, and arranged for a private bogey for the family to move their things as they left Sindh. However, the labour bringing their furniture and personal belongings never reached the station. Later, his grandfather's body was found cut up in pieces in a sack, under a railway bridge. “Till today,” Niranjan said, “no one really talks about this.”

This was the first example I’d heard of barbaric atrocity coming out of Sindh, and over ten years and many interviews, it is still one of very few. Even with no one really talking about such things, the extent of violence in Sindh is of a completely different scale to what happened in Punjab where there was no family without its own horror story. This is one of the big differences between what happened in Sindh and what happened in Punjab, and it’s the main reason why people who left Sindh always considered themselves the lucky ones and did not feel they had a story to tell.

What somehow slipped out of this broad context was that while Punjab and Bengal were split in two, Sindh was given intact to Pakistan. And when the minority community Sindhis were forced out by ominous threats and pointed discrimination, they had to start afresh in unfamiliar places among unfamiliar people, where the food, clothes, habits were different from what they were accustomed to – and the language was written in the opposite direction.

Many Sindhis settled in centres of employment and trade – Bombay, nearby Pune, Delhi, and places easily accessed from the border including Ahmedabad and Ajmer. Aruna Jethwani, 13 when Partition took place, remembers that neighbours in Ahmedabad and Nadiad were good and helpful. However, before renting an apartment, her father had to sign a declaration that no meat would be cooked or eaten on the premises. Reaching out to touch laundry flapping on a line one day, she knew what it meant to be an inauspicious omen when a woman screamed, “Nirvasi chho – you are homeless!”

The taint of disdain was felt all over.

In Gibraltar in October 2013, Suresh Nagrani stood up to speak after my talk. “When I was young,” he started, “I thought all Indians were Sindhi.” Everybody laughed. The thing is, though, the Indians native to Gibraltar are indeed all Sindhi. They form part of the trade diaspora that originated in the 1850s, soon established itself in ports around the world, and was documented as recently as 1999 by Claude Markovits. Suresh went on to describe the jolt he got at university in England where he met Indians from different parts of India – and one of them said to him, “Oh, so you are a Sindhi. Let me ask you a riddle. If you meet a Sindhi and a snake, which one should you kill?”

Perhaps the prejudice Sindhis faced began after Partition when many of the homeless ones took to trading at low margins, creating resentment among established traders. Perhaps this was reinforced by negative characters in Hindi films who had Sindhi names and said nasty, exploitative things in Sindhi accents – even until the 1990s.

Beneath that public perception lies a gentler reality. Reyhaan Datta who grew up in Calcutta remembers a Sindhi sari seller from whom her mother bought beautiful saris – a softspoken person whom her mother would offer tea. One day he told them that it would be his last visit. He had been a skin specialist and had left Sindh with his wife and mother with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Selling saris from door to door and living simply, he had now saved enough to buy a practice with a leading Calcutta skin specialist.

It is stories of this type that pervade every family that left Sindh.

From the ‘refugee camps’ in which the new Government of India accommodated the masses displaced by Partition came many schools, colleges, other institutions that continue to serve the community. Being homeless, the Sindhis built homes for themselves; in time, they would change the skyline of these cities. Scattered over the globe with a few pockets of some density, the Sindhis rebuilt their lives of comfort and dignity by integrating into the communities where they settled. For a community that lost all their material possessions, they were able to regain a remarkable degree of prosperity in time. And, just as this heterogenous community had behaved as one when leaving their ancestral homeland without looking back – most families spontaneously stopped talking to their children in their mother tongue.

The languages we grow up with, the words and expressions used around us, influence our thoughts and behaviour. And the Sindhi of 1947 was a language packed thick with phrases and concepts from the region’s philosopher poets of the previous few hundred years.

Herkishendas Melwani left Sindh in 1939 to work in the global retail chain of Lalchand Dhalamal, was never able to return when exiled by Partition, and settled in Shillong. Anglicized due to his social station and education, Herkishendas valued his Sindhiness and quoted and lived by his Sindhi pahakas (sayings). One day a fire on GS Road burnt down six shops and he too suffered great losses. When asked, “Saba mey bhali – there is good in everything – really?” He replied, “Yes, now even more than before. “Hikri lati sau pati – when one door closes, another 100 open.” His son, Murli Melwani (PhD in English Literature and a professor at Sankerdeb College until he too fell prey to political forces and left his hometown Shillong, becoming a businessman in Taiwan and later the USA, acknowledged recently by Sahitya Akademi as a Sindhi writer who contributes to languages other than Sindhi) wrote about his father’s classic Sindhi response here: systematically restoring and recouping, adjusting losses against goodwill, ensuring that credit lines remained open.

The Sindhi pahakas – shaped by and reinforcing the multi-faith harmony of the land – defined the mindset of a people who chose to accept their fate, protect their womenfolk, adapt to lives in other places. They continue to pervade the Sindhi identity. Somewhat. Because there is no place the community has access to where their language is spoken on the streets. Sindhi is a language that you only hear in the homes of relatives, it’s the language of intimacy, of the lost country. It is the language you hear your grandparents speak to each other and to those of their children who knew Sindh – never to you. Because you had never known Sindh, and it would be impossible to explain anything as important, as essential, and as complicated as that.

First appeared here on 19 Aug 2022

Foreword to REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY by Sunayna Pal

Foreword 

The extent of pain and trauma that took place during Partition – the massacres, destruction of families, material loss, displacement of communities and other ordeals – covered such a wide spectrum that it took decades for the subject to even be approached. The process of unravelling and trying to make sense of what happened continues, but the far-reaching consequences may never be fully comprehended. With the silence of decades, our understanding will always be based on conjecture or extrapolation.

It took fifty years for Urvashi Butalia to begin the process of documenting the experiences women had during Partition. An entire half of the displaced, denuded and dismembered population had such a dramatically different story than what had been previously recorded!  The fact that it had been completely ignored for fifty years carries its own message.

Ten years later, when Nandita Bhavnani started exploring the Sindh story – so very different from what had happened in Punjab or Bengal – it was still seen as inconsequential.

Unlike Punjab and Bengal, Sindh was never partitioned. Hindus were a comfortable minority, well integrated in the province for centuries. It was believed that this would continue after Partition. However, 1947 onwards, they faced continuous threats, communal violence and discrimination. As time passed, the situation deteriorated and the naively anticipated ‘normal’ became a chimera.

Here was a population that had not seen dead bodies on the streets. Not too many heaps of them, that is. There were neither drama nor loud retellings. All they wanted was to resume their lives of comfort and dignity. And so they worked hard, used their enterprise and their historical advantages – and quietly integrated.

At first, what was lost was seen as merely material. What was not seen was that, along with the material loss – hugely significant material loss – so much else was also lost. Relationships. A way of life. Familiarity and connection with the land. Families once tightly connected were abruptly scattered. Elders died of broken hearts. The trauma which enveloped the community would continue to manifest in different ways for generations to come. Parents stopped speaking to their children in their mother tongue. Old customs gave way to new ones. The violent severing caused huge chunks of history to vanish, especially recent history. To resurrect it would be a long and perilous task.

The eruptions of Partition caused sparks to fly and scatter. Amidst the agony and trauma, amazingly, instances of beauty arose too. There were the personal sacrifices made to protect members of the other community. There were the sagas of the heroic rebuilding of lives. There were the remarkable, indomitable, institutions that arose from the refugee camps. Many Sindhi writers produced outstanding works of Partition-related literature and some of it has been translated into English by writers like Rita Kothari, Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani.

The case of Sunayna Pal and her delightful Partition Poetry is unique.

First, she herself is from a generation quite far removed from Partition. Even her parents were born in the 1950s. She grew up in a Sindhi family, but not immersed in a Sindhi community. Like very many Sindhis of her generation raised in urban, cosmopolitan India, Sunayna’s representation of her ethnic identity remained nebulous and sometimes defensive. “I have played a game all my life,” she says. “When anyone asks me where I am from, I reply, ‘guess’.” The answers come, naming states of India, south, east, north. “Further north,” she encourages the smiling questioner to go on. By the time they conclude that she is Sindhi, the connection to Pakistan, she observes ruefully, has caused the smile to disappear.

Second, the influences upon her were limited. Partition was never the focus of specific conversations around her as she grew up. She did not have continued or intense interactions with her grandparents. All she knew was that they had escaped from Sindh across the new border, and found solace in refugee camps set up by the new government of the newly-independent and newly-severed nation. When an English teacher – Sunayna was her favourite – mentioned her admiration for the Sindhis who had lost everything to Partition but worked hard and established themselves, she rushed home to excitedly share this lovely affirmative observation. Her mother agreed, but in a noncommittal way.

Sunayna’s father’s eldest brother took care of Sunayna and her sister when their parents were away at work. Ram Chacha was their link to the old country, and his reminisces appear to have awakened a latent poetic talent. When Sunayna’s mother complained of dust in their Mumbai home, Ram Chacha spoke wistfully of the abundance of sand in his home in Sindh. When she applied henna on her hands, he described how women in Sindh plucked henna and rubbed the crushed leaves on their hands. Thirteen years old when he left his home in Nasarpur for a new home in a new India, he told Sunayna that he had sat in the ship, petrified that the building on water would sink. And he occasionally told her of his deep desire to visit his home in Sindh. As Sunayna grew up, she began to feel like going there too. Interviews with other Sindhi grandmothers and grandfathers gave Sunayna glimpses into life in Sindh during Partition. Somehow the fragmented impressions came together to create in her a visceral reaction which filled her with the passion to describe the wonders of Sindh to the world.

Third, Sunayna does not have a strong literary background. She loves to read but doesn’t read much. Her writing uses American spellings and her structures are grounded in Indian English. Her verses make an impact even though she is yet to master the range of short poetic forms. “They came to me,” she says of them; they could be considered ‘ayat’ – inspired verses (as were those of Shah Abdul Latif). Each captures, in a few well-chosen words, core, iconic issues of the experience of Partition. Coming from a third-generation survivor, a young mother who lives in the US with her scientist non-Sindhi husband and their two little sons, Sunayna’s verses are uncannily close to the bone. 75 verses, on the 75th anniversary of Partition, they form a primer for anyone, across generations, interested in an encounter with syncretic human cultural experience.

 

Saaz Aggarwal
July 2022

The Pain of Partition, as Seen in the Literature of Many Languages

Novels, stories, poetry – there were many ways that authors expressed what they saw during that harrowing time and after: a contribution to a piece in wire.in about Partition literature.

Sindhi 

Pakhiara Valarakhan Vichriyaa (Birds Separated From Their Flock) by Gobind Malhi

This 1953 book written by Gobind Malhi fresh from his own Partition experience, has hero Sanwal refusing to leave Sindh even when all his family and friends do. The book describes the situation of Partition vividly, and through Sanwal’s dogged determination not to succumb to a political categorisation of religion, the author conveys the Sindhi Sufi ethos which puts humanity above all. Translated into English as The Anguish of Separation by Sindhishaan and published by Shobha Chandnani in 2014.

Yerwada jailajyu kahaaniyoon by Rita Shahani

Written in 1999, Shahani drew on the bedtime stories her husband Vishnu would tell their children about his life as a freedom fighter. This book uses different voices with different perspectives to present an all-round view of the Indian freedom struggle, the RSS, the bitterness at the loss of Sindh – on 15 August 1947, Vishnu ripped up the flag in anguish – and some changes that took place after Independence. Translated into English as Tales from Yerwada Jail by Saaz Aggarwal with the author in 2014.

One of the most prolific, original and vibrant Sindhi writers of recent times, a feminist role model, was Popati Hiranandani. Her autobiography and selected stories, The Pages of My Life, was translated from Sindhi by Jyoti Panjwani in 2010. Popati writes about her life in Hyderabad as a young girl, and her mother’s struggles to take care of the family after her father died. She describes the escape from violence and the traumatic resettlement, followed by her life as a writer in independent India. The stories are a fictionalised extension of the autobiography and their main themes are gender, Partition and social injustice.

Sindhi novels about Partition are few, but there was a huge outpouring of short stories and poetry in the anguished aftermath of separation, loss and struggle. Unbordered Memories, a collection of short stories, was translated by Rita Kothari in 2009. Freedom and Fissures, an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry was translated by Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani with the poet Arjan ‘Shad’ Mirchandani in 1998.

Hem’s father is the mukhi of Tharushah. Away at Shantiniketan when Partition takes place, he becomes a successful and well-paid journalist in independent India. However, the feeling of being lost and not fitting in persists. This book is about his anguish, his conviction that he needs Sindh as much as Sindh needs him. He wanders through Kachchh, crosses the salt desert towards the border, and is never seen again. Tarandara Badal (clouds transgress borders) was written in the late 1990s by Krishin Khatwani, himself a student at Shantiniketan when Partition took place

Contributions by Kuldeep Kumar, Sakoon Singh, Mahtab Alam, Sanjay Sipahimalani, Shikha Mukherjee and Saaz Aggarwal.

First appeared in wire.in on 14 August 2022

You can read the rest of the article on this link

How refugees from Sindh rebuilt their lives – and India – after Partition in scroll.in

The community’s many losses and the distortion of their history is only now being acknowledged.

by Saaz Aggarwal

Bhai Pratap looks on as Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurates Kandla Port, 1952. Image courtesy Pratap Kriplaney, grandson of Bhai Pratap

What happened in Sindh during Partition was not considered consequential until quite recently. In comparison with the grisly violence and graphic images associated with the process, the Sindhi side of the story paled into insignificance. I Will and I Can, the story of Jai Hind College by Nandita Bhavnani was among the first mainstream publications that gave a glimpse into this “refugee” community and its many contributions – in 2012. With this and her subsequent work, a rich and complex tapestry began to emerge.

In these ten years, a growing swell of voices have shown that the dominating images of Partition – the trains filled with dead bodies and the women forced to jump into wells to save the family “honour” – are only elements of the picture.

There are many factors which make the Sindh story different. Originally a Hindu and then Buddhist land – as was the rest of India – Islam came to Sindh as early as CE 711. It grew steadily and peacefully with Sufi values of tolerance, integration. Fluid belief systems dominated all forms of worship. This ecosystem endures among Sindhis even today, in locations around the world.[S1] 

Through centuries of paying tribute to Delhi and Kabul, indigenous prince of Sindh ruled largely undisturbed. Non-Muslims migrated from neighbouring provinces confident of a relatively non-discriminatory environment – Nankapanthis from Punjab, and worshippers of various Hindu deities from other parts. Over time, they evolved into a comfortable, prosperous minority with an eclectic belief system.

Hindu temple in Malaga, Spain, Saaz Aggarwal, 2013

One group served in the courts of the princes, rising to positions of responsibility and even power, and came to be known as the Amils of Sindh. The larger part of the community were traders, from the omnipresent village grocer and moneylender to those with a larger reach and empires that stretched inland all the way to Russia, China and Japan and Iran on the other side.

The British occupied Sindh in 1843 – in gross violation of treaties of eternal friendship with the princes – their descriptions of the barbarism a transparent and rather weak defence of the annexation. They also wrote of the sad plight of the Hindus, but a closer look at indigenous accounts of the time reinforces the “comfortable, prosperous minority” version.

The British occupation was a setback to the traders of Sindh but they soon used the opportunity to expand using the steamship routes and set up retail outlets in ports around the world. In 1999, a French scholar, Claude Markovits, published a detailed account of how this group of South Asian merchants had carved a niche for themselves in a European-dominated world economy. [S2] 

The Amils, meanwhile, had soon been recruited into the British administration and switched quickly from Persian to English. Their commitment to education led to increased opportunities. They began setting up their own schools, and educated their daughters. The Dayaram Jethmal Sind College – Dayaram Jethmal Government Science College [S3] today – one of the finest institutes of higher education in India at the time, was built and funded by the Hindus of Sindh. By the early 20^th century, the Hindus were the backbone of the Sindh administration as well as its economy.

All this while, Sindh had been a part of the Bombay Province and in 1936, it was given provincial autonomy. The separation was not made on communal lines but for more administrative care and focused development. In fact it was a Hindu, Harchandrai Vishindas[S4] , who first expressed this need at a Congress assembly in 1913.

However, the separation made the Hindus a minority in a Muslim province, in a larger political situation with festering differences between the two communities. And so it was in Sindh that the question of Partition was first raised. In the annual session of the Muslim League in Karachi in 1938, Muhammad Ali Jinnah made Pakistan the official demand of the Muslims of India. In 1942, the legislative assembly of Sindh passed a resolution supporting the demand for Pakistan.

The DJ Sind Arts College in Karachi in 1893. Credit: Zainub via Flicker, Public domain.

The Second World War was occupying the British and so was the Indian freedom struggle. When Mohandas Gandhi demanded that the British “Quit India!” the response around the country was tremendous, and no less in Sindh. There are numerous examples, not least being the sound system used by the Indian National Congress which was contributed and personally monitored by Nanik Motwane of Chicago Radio, an electrical business that started in Larkana, Sindh, and with head office in Bombay.

Men, women and children of Sindh participated in the freedom movement, most poignant and heroic being the case of 19-year-old Hemu Kalani. Arrested for his participation in Quit India, he was sentenced to death. The response to mercy petitions was that he would be pardoned if he revealed the names of his co-conspirators. Remembers Madhuri Sheth, 13 years old at the time,

He was hanged at midnight and we sat up in wait until the body was cremated behind the primary school where I studied.

When the line of Partition was drawn, it was believed that, well integrated as a religious minority for centuries, the Hindus – about one-fourth of the population – would continue as such. And Sindh was given in its entirety to Pakistan.

As Partition approached, tension rose and reports of the massacres in other areas caused fear and uncertainty. When an influx of migrants entered Sindh from other parts of India, things began to change dramatically. Dr Mohini Hingorani, 17 years old at the time, was a student at DJ Sind College, Karachi. She remembers:

When the trouble started before Partition, Bunder Road Extension where we lived remained unaffected. But Gadi Khata, where the college was, had severe riots and some of my father’s stepbrothers were caught in the crossfire. One of them was killed.[S5] 

Still, the Sindhi Partition story is marked by less violence than in any other area. Karachi remained calm even in December 1947. Cases of abduction and even decapitation were reported – but they were few. This changed with the January 6, 1948, pogrom.

Thirteen-year-old Khushi Khubchandani stood on the terrace of his home and could see mobs carrying away radios, furniture and valuables. If anyone resisted, they were attacked. People escaped mobs who attacked buses by reciting verses from the Quran. A very large number were saved by Muhajirs who put themselves in danger to protect them.

The exodus began, with fleeing people crowding the docks to escape.

Some tried to stay on. Pribhdas Tolani[S6] , a once well-known landlord of Larkana, had no intention of leaving. In October 1948, he was arrested and imprisoned in Sukkur Jail, accused of being an Indian spy. His eldest son, Gopal Tolani, Sessions Judge in Sukkur at the time, could do nothing but watch, in helplessness and despair. When Pribhdas Tolani was released, it was on condition that he leave Pakistan and never return. So it was not just mobs of the homeless and victimized who wanted the Hindus of Sindh out so that they could claim their property – the government too participated.

Mansharam and Rukmani Wadhwani (Dr Mohini’s uncle and aunt) with three of their children, on the second floor of the family building in Sukkur. The beautiful Sadh Belo temple, accessed by boat, could be seen from this terrace which had cots on which they slept at night in summer.

The newly truncated India, economically depleted by centuries of colonial rule, further drained by the Second World War, was hardly in a position to receive the lakhs of fleeing refugees but did make a tremendous effort. Army camps around the country were rundown, but had the infrastructure. The homeless ones were taken there in droves.

Remembered T. Sushila Rao, wife of a camp commandant at Kalyan,

If I ever woke before dawn and looked out, I would see a long line of the Sindhi refugees walking to the station on their way to Bombay for the day to work or trade or study. They had lost everything but did not weep and complain. How hardworking they were!

Sindh had many women doctors and teachers, even in the 1930s and 40s – but most middle-class women did not go out to work. After Partition, women of many families contributed economically. Some used domestic skills, making papad and pickles which their menfolk sold from door to door; some took in sewing. Others went to work as telephone operators, secretaries, assembly-line workers.

Many of these refugees had lost not just their homes and their homeland but also their comfortable lives and sources of livelihood. The Bombay Refugee Act of 1947 was a further slap on the face with the restrictions it placed. The Sindhi community fought back with indignation. By definition, a refugee is a stateless person – and they were in their own country for whose independence they had sacrificed so much! The Act was modified and a new definition, ‘displaced persons’ was coined.

Kaka Pribhdas Tolani (1893-1988) and his sons, Gopaldas, Pribhdas, Nandlal, Chandru, Bombay, c1970s. Having left Sindh with nothing, Kaka Tolani was one of the many Sindhi entrepreneurs who began by building a home for himself and his family, but continued in the ‘construction line’ and went on to build some of the best known-buildings in Bombay. He also built a number of colleges in Gandhidham which are still run by his family. 

Yet another blow came when the constitution failed to list Sindhi as an Indian language. Aghast, the writers and thinkers of the community recruited the young Ram Jethmalani to lead their campaign and Sindhi was included in Schedule VIII of the Indian constitution – but only in 1967. So while Sindhi parents had stopped speaking to their children in their mother tongue in an effort to acquire languages which would help them in their new lives, the state played its own role in the extinction.

The biggest support came from within the community, with doors being opened to members of extended families, friends and business associates. And the wealthy ones were most generous, contributing materially to the camps, providing employment within their enterprises and campaigning relentlessly to the government for matters such as hawking licenses and support in housing development.

There are a very large number of names, too many to list here, but among the best known is Nanik Motwane in Bombay for his extraordinary efforts on behalf of the “refugees” at every level.  Ramnarayan Chellaram in Bangalore contributed with material relief and also helped the “refugees” protect their rights as citizens preparing identity documentation, applications for compensation, admissions to educational institutions and other requirements.

Certificate of domicile of Situ Kishinchand Bijlani, who was 13 years old at the time and lived 30 years as the wife of a planter in the Nilgiris – but preserved this precious document all her life

Sahijram Gidwani lived in Ahmedabad: he had studied at Cambridge and was retained as tutor to Vikram and Gautam Sarabhai through their secondary schooling and later headed the Sarabhai Empire's Calico Mills, which contributed substantially to refugee relief. As the numbers increased, he moved to Bombay and took up an honorary position as chairman of the newly instituted Bombay Housing Board.

One of the most interesting histories is of Bhai Pratap, one of the businessmen with a global retail chain, who with Gandhi's help acquired a piece of land from the Maharao of Kachchh to create a “new Sindh”. It was Bhai Pratap who initiated the development of Kandla Port. [S8] He assured the Maharao that he would bring enough business to Kandla so that it would soon match up to and exceed the volume of trade done by Karachi. He was also instrumental in having Kandla designated as a free-trade zone – Asia’s first – in 1965.

Meanwhile, the refugee camps in Bombay, Poona, Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Bhopal, and other places grew into hives of industry. Being homeless, the Sindhis built homes for themselves. In time, they would change the skyline of these cities. From the camps rose other tremendous institutions – factories, hospitals, educational institutions. For a community that had lost its ancestral homeland forever, the names they chose – Jai Hind, Jai Bharat, National and so on – are poignant indeed.

Seventy-five years later, the Sindhis are respected for their contributions and for the way they have integrated. What is often not noticed is the magnificent way in which this heterogenous community behaved as one: each person, each family, each group felled by Partition simply stood up and kept moving. Their contribution is seen and appreciated – but the loss of their language, music, poetry, philosophy – and the distortion of their history – is only now being acknowledged, as an important aspect of the story of the 1947 Partition of India.

 Saaz Aggarwal is a biographer, oral historian and artist. See her website here.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

First appeared here on Aug 13, 2022

HT Podcast: Books & Authors with Saaz Aggarwal, author, Losing Home; Finding Home

Podcast with Sonam Kalra for 1947 Partition Archive on 18 July 2022.

Interview with Harish Mehta about his book Maverick Effect for Hindustan Times

Interview: Harish Mehta, author, The Maverick Effect – “Technology is like bottled lightening”

BySaaz Aggarwal

1.      What made you write this book?

India’s economy has ballooned in the last few decades, and the seminal role played by the IT industry, which contributes almost 10% of the country’s GDP, has not been properly acknowledged. Noted professionals, industrialists and even bureaucrats have written books but none mentioned its contribution, or the contribution made by NASSCOM in fuelling this growth. Even seasoned economists only credit the economic reforms of 1991, unable to explain how these reforms arrested the downward spiral our economy.

The reforms did help to make the business environment more conducive, and almost all sectors grew – but no other industry matched IT. It was a technology-led revolution, and this success was an outcome of what we did at NASSCOM – some of which were getting the government to understand how IT would transform the world and the opportunities it gave India; working with IT companies to embrace global practices; building brand India at various levels. It was a structured series of monumental tasks.

Someone had to play the role of the historian and set the record straight!

2.      What has been the social and cultural impact of the IT revolution?

The Indian IT industry employs 5.3 million engineers, and earns foreign exchange of around $160B. In some countries, growth and riches are divided amongst the king’s family or a few large companies. But in an IT company, about 70% of expenses are employee-related. These jobs give a high disposable income which allows employees to expand their imaginations and wings. The second-order effect has been humongous. It’s the IT jobs that gave the real-estate sector its biggest boost. Our airports needed to be expanded because of the global reach of our business. Our campuses and infrastructure gave a boost to many businesses.

In the past, to get a job you needed to know someone. In IT, if you get through the standard recruitment test, you get the job. This seeded a meritocratic revolution as India Inc started following our standards.

It's not just meritocracy we introduced but also a new era of gender equality. Today the IT industry has 37% women employees: almost two million women delivering great outcomes and earning a good income, enjoying freedom at work and freedom at home. Imagine the cultural change as these women bring up their families and inspire the next generation.

Industry players also set world-class standards of corporate governance and transparency standards in financial reporting – these built trust in India Inc and opened the gates for FDI money.

As for my friends who run MSME/SMEs, most lament about the government regulations crippling their growth. The only way to do business was by bending the rules. Subsequent generations who inherited this environment assumed it was the only way. However, the changes around them have encouraged young entrepreneurs and smaller companies to start doing things differently.

 

 

3.      Do you have a message for the new generation, the start-up people who are building the unicorns?

I admire this generation – they are fearless, imaginative, and confident. And they have the potential to change India faster than any of us can imagine. Technology is like bottled lightning, and they have the capacity to bring it out and use it to create solutions.

They are also lucky to inherit an environment that can enable them to solve the problems that have been plaguing us as a society!

Of course, I’d like to caution them. I see many young ones chase valuation and not values. They should chase both and never focus on one at the cost of the other.

I also feel that they are too hyper-focussed on their respective businesses. At NASSCOM we saw success differently. Each of us spent 10% of our time working for the ecosystem – contributing to the industry, or to India. I believe this allowed us to deliver a CAGR of 30% over the last 30 years. We knew that if the size of the industry pie grew, our slices would get bigger too, and that’s the way it turned out. When you think like that, your approach to solving problems is markedly different.

People in today’s start-up space have to understand that building trust with competitors, as well as among stakeholders, from employees to government, will help accelerate growth.

4.      Respect for intellectual property and an anti-piracy feeling comes out strongly in your book. Is that an Indian tradition?

In India, we believe in sharing knowledge freely. Our epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata are free. Everybody uses our ‘zero’ without paying royalty. IP is a western concept, one that the IT industry had to buy into.

In our early days at Hinditron, when we travelled abroad to try and sell our services, our prospects would look at us as if we were thieves. They would not give us business because they suspected we would sell out to their competitor for a higher price.

We knew that unless India respected copyright, the world would not recognize us as a business-friendly nation. NASSCOM lobbied hard to amend the Copyright Act 1957 to include software with some tough conditions. When the modified act (even stricter than the UK laws) did not prove as effective as we had expected, we recommended that software piracy be treated as a criminal act. The new Copyright Act of 1999 carried a seven-day jail term. These actions sent out a powerful message across the world: India was serious about the software business and IP. We became a trusted nation to do business with. And this stance has been one of the advantages we have over China.

5.      You’ve written about the influence of Jain teachings such as Anekantvad on your life and work, can you give an example not mentioned in your book?

I’ll tell you about an incident that took place at a customer site in the 1990s. My company, Onward, produced ALPM (Account Ledger Processing Machine), a single desktop which did simple data processing. We had shipped a large number of ALPMs to the Bank of Baroda and many other banks. BOB was now ready to step up to the next stage of automation, but there was resistance from the labour union. The negotiations continued for some months. One day CIO K Kannan – later MD and Chairman of BOB – asked if I would be willing to attend the next meeting to present industry’s views. He told me that the demands were simple: automation should not result in layoffs or loss of increment, plus a few minor points, all of which the management agreed to. However, they were still refusing to sign.

I remember that meeting vividly – a huge table with thirty or thirty-five people on either side, with management sitting across from the union members. They talked and argued, and I sat quietly and listened. There was no unresolved issue, but the aggression was tangible. After some time, I got up and went around the table and sat next to the union leader. He looked at me suspiciously and asked curt questions. “What do you want? Why are you here? But you represent the management!” I explained that I represented customers of the bank, and those were essential to both management and union. That broke the ice, a relaxed discussion followed, and the agreement was signed. This is an example of something I was trained in at an early age – the Jain philosophy of Anekantvad which encourages you to take a non-egoistical view of things, to look at the other person’s point of view, and when in doubt to choose the higher common good, because there is no such thing as absolute truth.

I have also benefited from other concepts of Jainism. Aparigraha is the law of detachment. When I had to give up my place as MD of Onward, my son was selected by the board to replace me. He was still in his mid-thirties, and I was criticized by many and warned of sombre consequences! But it was the right time for the younger leaders to take over, and I found it easy to give it up. Similarly, Sweekar – acceptance – has helped me through the tragedies of my life.

6.      In an interview about the autobiographical aspect of this book, you said it was like taking the risk of walking naked on the streets. How did that turn out?

I’m enjoying being an author. Many from the industry, some critics, and quite a few strangers, have written to me praising the book. Seeing your book at the bookstores gives you another high. Traditionally, we Indians have never really valued writers, and I would like to contribute as a change driver in that transformation too!

The other day my daughter-in-law’s friend came to talk to us about the book. While we were chatting her phone rang, and she stepped aside to take the call. We heard her say, “I can’t talk to you now, I’m having wine with an author!”

That felt good.

First appeared here on Jun 10, 2022

Sindhiness and the untold truth about Partition: Global Indian Series podcast on 30 Mar 2022

Judge books by their covers, says Saaz Aggarwal

Interview about books with Chetana Divya Vasudev for Money Control on 7 March 2022

Saaz Aggarwal is a writer and artist based in Pune, India. Her body of writing includes biographies, translations, critical reviews and humour columns. Her books are in university libraries around the world, and much of her research contribution in the field of Sindh studies is accessible online.

Read also: Women's Day Special

The first book you remember reading?

The Prince and the Pauper. I loved it, still have it, fished it out and realised from ‘After the story by Mark Twain’ on the title page that it was an abridged version – Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, London and Melbourne… surprisingly the year of publishing is not mentioned but I would have read it when I was seven or eight – late 1960s.

The first book you wish you'd read?

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh … I’ve been eager to read it for SO long and it’s been on my bedside shelf, waiting, but…

Your hands-down favourite writer?

Kurt Vonnegut <3 absolutely no comparison

A genre you're partial to?

Literary romances

A book you outgrew and grew into again?

Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico

A classic you'd like to have written?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

A character you wish you'd met?

Darcy (of course).

An author you want to meet on the other side?

Eiji Yoshikawa, I never got enough about Musashi.

Inside jokes or references that found their way into your writing?

I like to channel Stephen Fry and Spike Milligan.

Your most unconventional workspaces?

For several months the lobby of what was then called National Hospital, while waiting for my daughter to finish school across the road. This was really long ago and I was writing on a notepad – with a pen! It’s Hinduja Hospital now and probably not that easy to gain entrance into. I’ve always worked at airport lounges and waiting areas too, while waiting to take off …

As you work, you listen to?

My inner yakking only! It doesn’t matter what’s playing or even if there’s a big racket with people shouting or construction happening… I can’t hear it. One of the precious gifts of my existence.

The book(s) you've gifted most?
On Two Feet and Wings by Abbas Kazerooni
Mukund and Riaz by Nina Sabnani
and of course my books :)

Ever fallen in love with a character? 

Laurie in Little Women.

If you were in a murder mystery, your choice of weapon would be...

Poison, of course!

Book covers are...

to judge a book by! I make as much effort on the cover of my books (erm... almost) as on the text.

A book-based movie you liked better than the book?

Gone with the Wind

A female character you think an author did disservice to?

I can’t think of a single one since it’s many years since I read James Hadley Chase but in college I devoured every one that my local lending library had and the women were really sad, shallow characters, one and all!

A woman or girl in history you wish had got a different ending?

Erm... Sunanda Pushkar maybe?

"There are no bad books..." -- your take?

Hahahahaha – it’s the other way around these days as publishing is very easy and most books rolling out so relentlessly are of very poor quality.

(This is a multi-part interview series with women writers.)

Chetana Divya Vasudev