The Social Structure of a Sindhi Refugee Community

Abstract

O NE of the greatest population transfers in history took place at the time of the granting of independence to India and Pakistan. According to the India and Pakistan census reports of 1951, there were 7,150,000 Muslim refugees in Pakistan and 7,471,000 non-Muslim refugees in India by March 1, 1951.1 Even now, over five years after Partition, the influx of refugees has not ended. Indeed, as this was being written, 1,700 recent refugees from East Bengal were camping in the Howrah Station in Calcutta. task of taking care of the millions of displaced persons, of providing food, shelter, and means of rehabilitation, has been an enormous problem for the young governments of India and Pakistan; and the last five years have been a very painful period for the refugees, who have often had to adjust to radical changes in their standard of living, their occupations, and their way of life. As this vast process of shifting and amalgamation takes place, one wonders how it will ultimately affect the social structure of South Asia. Throughout India there are hundreds of refugee settlements which sprang up overnight in the first months of Independence. Many of these have since become permanent communities, and in each one some kind of social organization has necessarily taken shape. It would be interesting to know what kind of social structure has developed in these settlements. Has there been simply a reconstitution of the old town and village life, transplanted but unchanged-or has something new developed in the new setting? What has happened to the traditional Hindu caste system in these settlements? Has it tended to disappear in the shaking-up process of migration; or has it, through a self-protective reaction, been strengthened, reaffirmed? And what is the present role of the caste and regional panchayats, those regulative bodies which settle the disputes and infringements of taboo in Indian villages? Have the panchayats lost their hold in the transplantation? If so, what new organizations have taken their place? Has there, furthermore, been any development of class stratification in these settlements? Finally, what kind of relationships exist between the refugees and the local populations where they have settled? It would be difficult to find general answers to these questions, because of the great variety in these settlements. Some, like Faridabad and Nilokheri, have received extensive government support, have well-developed co-operative organizations, and appear to the visitor to be laid out with mathematical orderliness, like a huge army camp. Other communities, on the other hand, are small makeshift colonies with only a few hundred inhabitants, lacking planned enterprises or co-operatives. There are also various regional differences-for example, in the situations confronting the refugees in East Punjab and those in Bombay State. No special linguistic adjustment has been necessary in East Punjab. Most of the refugees there have come from West Punjab, where the language and culturepatterns are essentially the same. But in the case of the Sindhis, who sailed from Karachi to Bombay State, the refugees have had to adjust to an area with quite a different language and written script and with many other striking cultural differences. It would be difficult, therefore, to frame universally applicable generalizations about the social structure in India's new refugee settlements. In October-November 1952 the writer interviewed camp officials, panchayat leaders, and other refugees at Pimpri Colony, a settlement of Sindhi refugees located by the Bombay-Poona railroad, about twenty minutes by train from the city of Poona. purpose was to answer the questions listed above with regard, at least, to one refugee community.2 This is no substitute for I William Henderson, The Refugees in India and Pakistan, Journal of International Affairs, VII (1953), 57-65; India and Pakistan Year Book; and Who's Who, 37 (Bombay, 1951), pp. 15-17. See also C. N. Vakil, Economic Consequences of the Division of India (Bombay: Vora and Co., 1950). For a general discussion of India's refugee problem, see Horace Alexander, New Citizens of India (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). 2 Having previously received official permission to