Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of Nation had special attachment with Sindh
and Sindhis. Several Sindhi prominent personalities were part of his
Satyagraha and Swadeshi movements.
During the freedom movement of the 20’s and 30’s, he visited Sindhi more
than seven times and addressed gatherings of students, political workers etc.
He was influenced by Sindhi Sufi views.
In the struggle for freedom, Sindhis whole heartly supported Mahatma
Gandhi with all their might.
After the partition, Gandhi felt sad at the plight of Sindhi refugees migrating
to India. It was Gandhi who was instrumental in securing an alternative
homeland for Sindhis in India. And the then Sindhi leaders lovingly named
their new homeland “Gandhidham”, after their Bapu’s name.
Such was the deep bond ‘Gandhi and the Sindhis shared among each other.
Today, the city of Gandhidham is a flourishing Sindhi settlement which is a
Sindh in Hind for Sindhis and Gandhidham stands as a testimony to the fact
that Mahatma Gandhi and the Sindhi community shared a common purpose
and direction for life.
The great soul of India, while speaking to students of D.J. Sindh College, on 5 th
February 1929, said:
Sisters and Brothers,
I thank you for your giving me the address and the purse, which you have
collected for the Lalaji Memorial Fund. Whatever you have given me will go
to the Fund and nothing shall be left with me. You have said in your address
many things in praise of me. There is, however, an English proverb which I
want to remind you of. It says, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. If I
praise anybody, I must act according to what he says. But I see that you have
gone precisely the other way about. You have, as it were, praised me to the
skies, but have done nothing according to my wishes. I am not profited by this,
nor are you. What have you done? You have presented me with an address
written in English. You have appreciatively mentioned in it all my activities,
but it is now clear that you have failed to understand me.
I wish that all the students, inclined to serve India, must work in some way.
They must try to speak in their own language. Perhaps, you thought that if
you gave me an address in Sindhi, I would not be able to understand it. But
then you could have supplied me with a Hindi translation of it and I would
have appreciated your patriotic sentiment and felt thankful to you for it. I
would have then said, ‘Well, whatever else the Sindhis may or may not have
done, at least they have followed one of my precepts, by giving me an address
in Sindhi. Not that I want to do away with English altogether. English will, no
doubt, have its place in India under Swaraj as medium for international
commerce. But that does not mean that it should be allowed to usurp the place
of your mother tongue. Even when foreigners come to see me, they at least try
to speak as many Hindi or other non-English words as they might be knowing
in my presence and end their conversation with a Vandematram or a Salaam.
You have called me here. You have called me the greatest man of the world,
but you have forgotten the first essence of courtesy, viz., to address me in the
mother tongue. Or was it that you wanted only to pull my leg, raising me to
the frozen Himalayan heights of mahatmaship and absolving yourselves form
the duty of following me in practice? Do not think, because I am smiling, that
I am happy at heart. Really speaking I am weeping in my heart. My heart is
bleeding to see you dressed in foreign [cloth]. This is very strange to me. The
Nehru Report has recommended that Hindustani should be the lingua
franca and official language of India under Swaraj. But, perhaps, you will
turn round and say, ‘Oh, these are old ideas, suiting old fossils; we are not
going to follow them. We are Independence walas.’
How dare you refuse to put on homespun khadi prepared by the pure hands
of your sisters? You have garlanded me with a Khaddar garland, how dare
you then yourselves put on collars of foreign textures! If you must put on
collars why can’t you put on the khaddar collars prepared by Vithaldas
Kerajani? These foreign fripperies are not decorations, they are your fetters
since they result in an annual drain of 69 crores of rupees of India every year
and help to keep her in bondage. That is why I am crying from the housetops.
Boys and girls, look to the money that you are wasting over fripperies,
remember your fellow-beings who are starving and dying.
But let me remind you that you have been weighed and found wanting in my
test. There is another thing which I want to tell you. During the floods in 1927
Prof. Narayandas Malkani had written to me about the trouble here. He
thought it necessary to import some Gujarati volunteers here. Is it not a
shame that you should require Gujarati swayamsevaks to come here and serve
you? At the most you might accept financial help from outside, but is it not a
humiliation that you must ask Gujarat to help you with men also? In spite of
all your professors’ teaching, in spite of all your knowledge, you are not ready
to help yourselves?
Then there is a third thing even more important. I am told that as soon as
marriage is proposed to a Sindhi young man he wants to be sent to England at
the expense of his prospective father-in-law and that even after marriage,
misses no opportunity of exacting money from the bride’s father. You think
yourselves very clever. You get a good lot of money and try to become
barristers of I.C.S. Now what is the meaning of all this? You thereby
tyrannize over your own women, over your wives. Wife in our language has
been described as ardhangini or the better half of man. But you have reduced
her to the position of mere chattel to be bought and sold. There is a word in
Hindi – ardhangavayu. Can anybody tell me a proper English word for
ardhangavayu?
A voice from the gallery : Paralysis.
Yes, paralysis is the exact word for it. This shows that you know Hindi very
well and a vote of censure should be passed for Mr. Lulla’s having presented
to me the address in English. Well, I was going to say that it is the suppression
of the better half of society by you menfolk that is responsible for the state of
paralysis in which we find our society today. You read your Milton, your
Browning, and your Whittier, all right. Is this what you have learnt from
them to reduce your wives who should be the queens of your hearts and your
homes into londis? Shame, shame on you! Tell me that you will starve but you
will never make your women your slaves. Promise me that deti-leti shall be
wiped off. Swear that you will cherish the freedom of your women, as much as
your own, that you will die to restore to them their full status and dignity.
Otherwise, remember the whole world will shower its contempt on you.
The other day Prof. Narayandas Malkani wired to me that he got his daughter
married with only a sari for dowry. He wanted me to send my blessings to the
couple. But I hesitated as a Sindhi friend to whom I mentioned the thing told
me that it was impossible for a man to get his daughter married in Sindh with
that much dowry. That shows what sort of reputation you have established for
yourselves. Promise me that you will die rather that be party to the
humiliation of your womenfolk by allowing the custom of deti-leti to prevail.
Then I will understand that you are ready for the freedom of your country. If
I had a girl under my charge, I would rather keep her maiden all her life than
give her in marriage to one who demanded even a pie as a condition for
marrying her.
Remember these four things then : use your mother tongue, wear only
homespun cloth, free your women folk from social disabilities, and do
something to help our poor. Finally, let me warn you that if you do not act up
to my advice after all your professions of regard for me, you will be called
bhats or bards! You must give addresses even to the foreigners in your own
language.
(Ref. Diary jottings on Sindh impressions on 21st Feb, 1929 which was
published in Young India of that date.)
Sindhi Impressions :
As it is, everything in India attracts me. It has everything that a human being
with the highest possible aspirations can want, but when I first visited Sindh
in 1916, it attracted me in a special way and a bond was established between
the Sindhis and me that has proved capable of bearing severe strains. I have
been able to deliver to the Sindhis bitter truths without being misunderstood.
I did not mince matters anywhere during the last extensive but hurried tour in
Sindh. The audience took my remarks in good part and where it was possible,
they gave immediate effect to my advice.
The warning to the Karachi students against presenting addresses in English
and filling them with empty (empty because of lack of action behind it) praise
had instantaneous effect. The numerous other addresses that followed were
much more subdued and were read in easy, simple and graceful Sindhi or in
equally easy and graceful Hindi instead of being in high-flown and bombastic
English which 90 percent of the audience could never follow. Perfection was
almost reached at the students’ meeting in Hyderabad. The address was first
composed in Sindhi and a good translation in Hindi was supplied to me. I
must deal with this separately next week. The only defect was that although it
purported to come from the students they knew nothing of the contents. There
is too much of laxity observable among us about such simple matters. Surely
addresses presented on behalf of institutions must be duly approved by them
before they are presented.
Khadi
As in Travancore so in Sindh there is unlimited scope for khadi propaganda
for the simple reason that the women of Sindh young and old, do not go in for
coloured saris with picturesque borders. They wear white scarves without
borders. If men of Sindh will but do a little national propaganda among the
womenfolk, they should have no difficulty in inducing them to take to khadi.
But the painful fact is that with a few honourable exceptions they are not
interested in khadi. They will not part with their foreign clothing. The terrible
poverty of the people which they do not see fails to move them. Hence Sindh is
perhaps one of the most backward province in point of Khadi.
Of production there is next to nothing. Acharya Kripalani who now better
deserves the title of khadi hawker than of Acharya is emphatically of opinion
that there is great scope for khadi production in Sindh as he thinks that is
spite of the prosperous appearance of the Amils and the Bhaibands there is
much poverty in Sindh. He quotes in proof of his statement that the pie is still
current coin in Sindh. I can bear testimony to the fact that apart from Orissa,
I have never found so many pies in my collections as in Sindh. In one
collection of about ten rupees from among over a hundred men, forty pies
were counted. This phenomenon cannot be explained away by saying that the
people were stingy or unwilling to give. Stinginess I have never experienced in
Sindh A people who gave over Rs. 70000 in twelve days could not be
considered unwilling. And the fact that they had pies to give shows that a pie
can fetch something in the Sindh villages not even far away from the railway.
In one place I found even cowries among the collections. Upon inquiry I found
that a pice was equal to five cowries. At the same time, I am free to confess
that this khadi hawker’s evidence must be taken with a certain amount of
reserve because of the fact that for years together he has lived in self-imposed
exile. But this is certain that no serious, sustained, methodical effort backed
by expert knowledge has been made to test the capacity of Sindh for khadi
production. Add to this the fact that Sindh is a cotton-producing tract and has
compulsory primary education as in Hyderabad. If there was khadi
atmosphere, sacrificial khadi could always be produced through the
numerous schools of Sindh. A methodical daily manufacture of yarn under
proper inspection in the schools if not even in the colleges should yield good
and durable cheap khadi in large quantities. But want of faith is the father of
an innumerable brood of doubt.