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Scroll.in
42 minutes ago
- Scroll.in
The doctor from Sindh, once honoured by Pakistan, now forgotten
On August 14, 1947, the day Pakistan came into being, Karachi was swept up in jubilant celebration. A 4.8-km state procession wound its way through the city led by Viceroy Louis Mountbatten and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam – Great Leader – of the new nation. Military units lined the route of the procession, while overhead, fighter planes dipped in salute. Crowds gathered at every corner, cheering, waving, witnessing the birth of a country. To mark the occasion, the Citizens' Celebrations Committee had erected 16 ceremonial gates along the route. Each one bore the name of a distinguished citizen: political leaders, religious figures, intellectuals and national heroes. Among them were three future prime ministers of Pakistan, pioneering voices of the Pakistan Movement, spiritual heads of major communities, and iconic city-builders. One of the 16 was a Hindu: Dr Hemandas Wadhwani. Eminent but forgotten I came across his name quite by chance while working on the family history of a Wadhwani family and was intrigued. A few older relatives with memories of Sindh had mentioned Hemandas Wadhwarni, a doctor with a practice in Jacobabad. Some thought back with faraway expressions and vaguely recalled that he had once been a minister in Sindh. Curious, I began piecing together his story through online searches and scattered mentions. I found more than I expected. Most striking of all was a Dawn report dated August 15, 1947, quoted by Khurram Ali Shafique on The Republic of Rumi website, which mentioned the 16 ceremonial gates. Who was this prominent Wadhwani, honoured on the day Pakistan was born – and now almost entirely forgotten? From news reports, gazetteer entries, and administrative records of the time, a shadowy picture emerged: that of a widely respected physician and high-ranking public servant. These findings were later enhanced by family memories. What Kanu remembered Kanu Wadhwani (1934-2022) was 84 when I first met him. He had lived in Jacobabad as a child where his father Hiranand (Hemandas's paternal uncle) was headmaster of the municipal high school. He had very fond memories of his well-settled older cousin and the three-storey family home with its arches, red pillars, wide verandas and spacious rooms overlooking the Begaree Wah. Hemandas's clinic was in the house and several of the rooms doubled as a nursing home. When Kanu's elder brother Moti contracted typhoid, the family moved from their government quarters to live in the family home, where a safe and comfortable convalescence was assured. Kanu's memories of his loving, always cheerful uncle are balanced by Hemandas's formidable reputation as a skilled and dedicated doctor across the Upper Sindh Frontier region and Balochistan, where he was responsible for many social activities. Doctor saab When devastating floods struck Jacobabad in 1929, Hemandas led the relief efforts. He was again at the forefront during the Quetta earthquake of 1935, in which more than 40,000 lives were lost from a population of 60,000. He served as honorary secretary of the Indian Red Cross Society in Sindh, implementing global practices he had encountered while volunteering with the Red Cross Society Leagues in London and Paris. His MBBS degree was from Grant Medical College in Bombay. He had enhanced his skills in Vienna with specialised courses in diseases of the ear, nose and throat. A long-serving member of the Jacobabad Municipality and Chairman of both the Sanitary and Primary School Boards, he also established a Child Welfare Centre in the town. One of its most beloved initiatives was the annual baby show – a joyful community event with a public health purpose. Hemandas's greatest motivation was to promote hygiene and nutrition across the region. Grateful families credited him with significantly reducing maternal mortality in Jacobabad and with training midwives who later served across Sindh. Perhaps it was his dedication that earned him the title Kaiser-e-Hind from the British colonial government. One of his most enduring efforts was the establishment of Dow Medical College in Karachi. When Sir Hugh Dow, governor of Sindh, laid the foundation stone of the college, he reportedly said of Hemandas: 'His efforts were untiring; he would accept no discouragement, and it is certain that this scheme would not have been brought to the stage which we see today had it not been for his enthusiastic and dedicated work. I have done my best to second his efforts, but in my opinion the college might have been more appropriately named after him than after me.' As Hemandas rose to prominence across the province, he remained a kind and good-natured man, loved by his family and widely respected by the people of Upper Sindh Frontier and Balochistan. The rise to eminence When Sindh was separated from the Bombay Presidency in 1936 and established its own government, Hemandas was put up as the candidate of the Indian National Congress from Jacobabad and won a resounding victory. He was appointed minister of health for Sindh and his time was divided between Jacobabad and Karachi. In Karachi, he set up a nursing home next to his residence and the road was named in his honour: Hemandas Wadhwani Road. Although the British government had postponed independence until the Second World War had ended, negotiations were already underway. Among the senior officials involved in these high-level discussions was Hemandas Wadhwani. Were these the reasons he was honoured as one of 16 eminent citizens of Pakistan with a ceremonial gate bearing his name on the day the country was born? He stayed on as long as he could Gradually, things began to change. Sindh had not been partitioned. Hindus had lived there as a peaceful and prosperous minority for centuries and at first, there was no reason for them to leave. But Partition had created a tide of desperate new arrivals – refugees who had been promised a homeland and who looked to Sindh to begin again. Kanu Wadhwani's family left in September 1947, after a traumatic incident in which their home was raided. He remembered his father walking calmly to the front door and opening it, as the police inspector in charge of the search entered. His terror turned to astonishment when the inspector bowed before Kaka and assured him that the house would not be searched. Hiranand had once been his headmaster at the Municipal High School in Jacobabad – how could he violate the home of a man he still respected? But the officer pleaded with Hiranand to leave Pakistan, warning that it was becoming increasingly dangerous for Hindus. It was Hemandas who arranged passage for the family on one of the ships evacuating non-Muslims from Karachi to Bombay. Kanu remembered his father weeping at the port and others around him trying to console him, saying there was nothing anyone could do. Hemandas and his family remained in Sindh until 1950. Who can imagine the shifts that finally forced them to leave: the disillusionment, the helplessness, the loss of all the goodwill and prestige he had built over decades of hard work? Their first home away from Sindh was in Udaipur, where Hemandas was welcomed as personal doctor to the Maharaja, whose treatment he continued for nearly a year. It's unclear how this association had formed, but the family already had links to Udaipur – it had been the first port of call for several relatives after Partition. This included Kanu's family, who were allotted two rooms in a large house known as Iron Bungalow, shared with seven other displaced Sindhi families. It was their first home as refugees. From Udaipur, Hemandas moved to Indore, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to set up a business selling steel vessels for his son Moti. Eventually, he, Totibai, and their differently-abled son Gopal moved to Bombay. Moti, his wife Kamala, and their sons Vijay and Ashok – both born in Sindh – and baby Ravi, born in Jhansi, settled in Pimpri. In time, the family came together again in Colaba, Bombay. Our family physician Building up a professional practice takes years. Hemandas was one of the hundreds of thousands of illustrious Sindhi professionals who had lost everything and did not have the resources to start all over. In time, patients came, largely from families who had known him in Sindh. Many travelled from the refugee camps in Kalyan, a journey of nearly three hours, having complete faith in his treatment. Colaba had a large Sindhi population too. Hemandas established the Colaba Sindhi Panchayat and Bombay Sindhi Panchayat where medical treatment was provided for free. Among the many Sindhi families who made Colaba their home was that of my grandfather, Presidency Magistrate KJ Bijlani. That home in Colaba remained a centre for gatherings and happy times for our family, all the way till 2003. When I asked two of my uncles if they remembered Hemandas, it turned out that his home had been right nearby. To my amazement, they recalled him vividly – because he had been the family physician. However, they had not the faintest idea that he had once been an important public figure in Sindh. What they did remember, the kind of detail children are so likely to retain, was the lisp with which he spoke. My uncle Hiru, who was born in February 1948 at the peak of post-Partition trauma (the family had migrated just months earlier in November 1947), had been sickly as a child. He remembered Dr Hemandas as kind and reassuring. On phone consultations he would say, 'Haa, haa, samjhi vyus' – yes, yes, I understand. Someone would then be sent over to collect the medicine he dispensed. The Ramayana mix-up For some years I believed that in the completely altered life after Partition, Hemandas revived a tradition initiated by his grandmother Chetibai when he was a little boy in Sindh, encouraging him, 'Ramayana ji katha budhaye', tell us a story from the Ramayana. People would gather round to sit and listen when he did. This became a daily routine and it gave the comfort of home to many who had carried on with stoic bravery after their lives had been upturned. However, in November 2024 I finally got the opportunity to meet Ashok Wadhwani, Hemandas's grandson, who had grown up in the Colaba home, and he was adamant that no such routine ever took place in their home. Kanu Wadhwani had passed on. There was no one else I could check with. Confused, somewhat sheepish that I seemed to have made a mistake, I went back to Kanu's recordings. Eventually it became clear that I had misheard. It was Rupchand, Hemandas's father, whose Ramayana katha was so popular. Seventy-four when Partition took place, Hiranand's brother Rupchand resolutely stayed on in Sindh. His wife Jasoda and their brother Thakurdas were both no more. While most of the family left Sindh, Rupchand chose to stay. He moved to his darbar – a traditional Sindhi place of worship usually maintained by generations of a family – in Kambar. There, he swept the floors himself and referred to himself humbly as 'Darbar jo naukar Rupo', Rupo, a servant of the darbar. After the pogrom of January 6, 1948, when mobs began attacking gurmandars, tikanos, darbars, and other Hindu places of worship across interior Sindh, the Kambar Darbar's devotees fled as well. With help from its followers, the community reconvened in the Bombay suburb of Kandivali. Rupchand went to live with his son – once the health minister of Sindh – now leading an unassuming life in Colaba. The memory of the daily katha was not Hemandas's. But it remains part of the family's atmosphere of comfort, continuity, and quiet reconstruction in a world turned upside down. A lasting legacy While in Bombay it is the memory of Hemandas's gentle lisp that lives on, in Sindh his legacy endures – not only through infrastructure and institutions, but through a model of civic service, compassion, and professional excellence. His contributions to Dow Medical College, the Indian Red Cross Society's work in Sindh and the Jacobabad Child Welfare Centre, along with the public health practices he pioneered, continued to shape the region's medical and social fabric long after his departure – and long after his name was erased from plaques and street signs. Hemandas was one of many illustrious Hindus of Sindh whose work lived on even as their names vanished from public memory. I felt a little better about this when my uncle Moti told me about Hemandas's funeral procession: that it had been enormous, with hundreds of mourners. The local population probably wondered what all the fuss was about.
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Too harsh, too vague
Uttarakhand is following in big brother UP's footsteps as its state cabinet approves what can be fairly described as draconian amendments in anti-conversion law via the Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill 2025. Aside from harsher punishment (minimum prison sentence of seven years, fine up to ₹10L) and expanding its scope (property seized), the law is even more problematic thanks to loosely worded conditions defining the offence. For instance, inducement/allurement has been expanded to include 'glorifying one religion against another'. It bans 'social media applications aimed at building online communities of people who share interests and activities or are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others…' for the purposes of the law. Whatever does this mean? The law in a 2022 amendment had already imported terms of the most stringent of laws – anti-terror legislation UAPA. So, 'illegal conversion' is a cognisable nonbailable offence, police already need no warrant to arrest, suspicion will suffice, and the burden of proof is on the accused. New amendments increase jail-term to life of 14 years. Similar to UP's law, if convicted of illegal conversion of minors or SC/ST, jail-term may be 20 years or remainder of life. Mass conversion is defined as 'when the religion of two or more persons is converted'. CM Dhami justifies the amendments because allegedly a 'demographic change' is being wrought in the state through 'illegal/forced conversion'. For the record, Uttarakhand population is 83% Hindu, about 14% Muslim, a smattering of Christians and others. The long arm of the law has stretched into what is legislative and executive overreach. The legislation is to be amended to allow local govt to confiscate property belonging to the accused if there is not evidence, but mere suspicion of 'foreign funds' being involved. DMs can order seizure of any property they have 'reason to believe' is related to alleged conversion. And this can be done '…regardless, whether a court has taken cognisance of such offence.' This, when the burden of proof is already on the accused. There is disquiet in the state about harsh measures being exploited by officials for witch-hunts. A law where anyone can be arrested on mere suspicion of 'intent', where the accused's property can be seized, which places the onus of proving the charges wrong on the accused is at the least a poorly designed legislation. It demands a thorough review, or reversal. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
New Indian Express
3 hours ago
- New Indian Express
Reclaiming the spirit, relieving the pain: Two poems for an independent India
India has historically had more than one Independence Day. The first among them is 11 May 1857, the day on which the revolutionaries of 1857 declared Bahadur Shah Zafar as the Emperor of India. 'Against this background […] the Mughal court, for all its weakness, assumed a centrality and a political importance it had not had for a century. The daily audience, or darbars, were resumed for the first time since the Persians sacked the city in 1739, and the Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, was hailed again throughout Hindustan as Mightiest King of Kings, Emperor son of Emperor, Sultan son of Sultan,' writes William Dalrymple in The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 (2007). Yet the remarkable social significance of this turbulent day lay in its revitalising air of communal harmony. The flag song of the revolution, Hindustan Hamara, penned by the polyglot ideologue Azimullah Khan from Kanpur, proclaimed the fraternity of Hindus and Muslims: Hum haen iss ke malik, Hindoostan hamaaraa Paak watan hae qaum kaa Jannat se bhee piyaaraa. (We are its owners, Hindustan belongs to us. It is our holy land, lovelier than paradise.) Aaj shabidon ne tumko, ahl-e-watan lalkaaraa Todo ghulamee kee zanjeeren, barsaao angaaraa. (Martyrs are calling you, compatriots! Break the shackles of slavery, rain down fire.) Hindoo–Mussalmaan–Sikh hamaaraa bhai piyaaraa–piyaaraa Yeh hae azaadi kaa jhanda, isse salaam hamaaraa! (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh are our dear brothers. This is the flag of independence, salute to it.) The Muslim Diwan of a Hindu Peshwa Azimullah Khan's life was itself a testament to India's syncretic spirit. Born in the early decades of the 19th century, he was proficient in English and French, a scholar, poet, and political strategist. Azimullah served Peshwa Nana Sahib II as a minister, and could recite Persian ghazals as easily as he could quote from Sanskrit scriptures. He had a keen interest in international politics and travelled to Constantinople to study the military capabilities of Russia. Later, he visited France and the Crimea, observing the politics and war strategies of their rulers. The struggles of those nations for their own freedom inspired him to work for India's liberation. Azimullah sought to build friendly ties with countries willing to aid in the fight against British rule. After returning to India, he advised Nana Sahib to rally native rulers and wrote to them about the urgency of coordinated revolt. To mould public opinion, he launched a newspaper, 'Payaam-e-Azadi', in both Hindi and Urdu. He assisted leaders such as Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh, Moulvi Ahmadullah Shah, Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi, Mughal Prince Firoz Shah, and Tantia Tope, formulating strategies against the British. When the flames of the 1857 revolt spread from Meerut to Delhi, Azimullah took up not only political and military roles but also the pen — crafting verses that united communities against a common oppressor. Though the British crushed the revolt, his war song survived in oral memory — a relic of a time when the dream of freedom was inseparable from the dream of togetherness. Azimullah escaped to Nepal, where he breathed his last, but his message outlived him. The Clouded Dawn On 15 August 1947, the soil of India was red with the blood of communal riots triggered by Partition. If Azimullah Khan's song was the music of an unbroken dream, renowned Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz's Subah-e-Azadi (The Dawn of Freedom) was the dirge for a dream torn apart. As the subcontinent celebrated its liberation, Faiz's words refused to join the official chorus of jubilation; he was consumed by anguish at the scourge of Partition. Ye daagh ujala, ye shab gazeeda seher Wo intezaar tha jiska, ye wo seher tau nahi Ye wo seher tau nahin, jis ki arzu le kar Chaley thay yaar ke mil jaye gi kahin na kahin Falak ke dasht mein taaron ki aakhri manzil Kahin tau hoga shab-e-sust mauj ka saahil Kahin tau ja ke rukay ga safeena-e gham-e dil. (This stained light, this night-bitten dawn; This is not that long-awaited daybreak; This is not the dawn in whose longing We set out believing we would find, somewhere, In heaven's wide void, The stars' final resting place; Somewhere the shore of night's slow-washing tide; Somewhere, an anchor for the ship of heartache.) Faiz concluded with: Abhi giraani-e-shab mein kami nahin aai Nijaat-e-deeda o dil ki ghadi nahin aai Chaley chalo ke wo manzil abhi nahin aai. (Night's heaviness is not yet lessened; The hour of the heart and spirit's deliverance has not yet arrived; Let us go on, that goal has not yet arrived.) Faiz had witnessed the terrible price of freedom: trains arriving filled not with passengers but with corpses; refugee caravans stretching for miles; homes abandoned in haste; neighbours turned strangers. Independence had come at the cost of unity — the unity Azimullah's song had once so passionately proclaimed. His refusal to romanticise 1947 was not cynicism but a moral stance. Freedom, Faiz insisted, could not be celebrated without confronting its cost — millions displaced, bereaved, and permanently scarred. Today, India stands at a crossroads where the spirit of Azimullah Khan's song is more necessary than ever. His call to embrace our shared heritage and see one another as brothers is the antidote to the polarisation that gnaws at our social fabric. At the same time, we must free ourselves from the lingering pain that Faiz so eloquently captured — the divisions, prejudices, and unfinished reconciliations that bind us to the traumas of the past. To reclaim the spirit of the former is to make unity not a slogan but a lived reality. To relieve ourselves of the pain of the latter is to dare to imagine a freedom that is whole — not fractured, not conditional, not partial. The Fading Colours of the Rainbow A rainbow — a thing of beauty — is a joy to every poetic mind. When the first public flag hoisting took place at Princess Park near India Gate in the afternoon of 15 August 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled the Tiranga, and at that very moment, a rainbow appeared in the sky — as if nature itself blessed the tricolour with its full spectrum of promise. Seventy-nine years later, those colours are fading. The saffron of courage pales when we are afraid to stand for what is right. The white of truth dims when falsehood becomes currency. The green of hope withers when cynicism takes root. As Ali Madeeh Hashmi concludes his biography Love and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2016): 'Faiz is gone but his voice is still with us in his poetry, and so are those things in the world that so rankled and infuriated him: exploitation, injustice, tyranny, oppression. If we can remember that the best tribute we can pay him is to dedicate ourselves, in whatever small way we can, to ending these cruelties, Faiz would be happy that he had succeeded in his mission.' This Independence Day, let us reclaim the colours of that rainbow. Let us bind ourselves, as Azimullah Khan once urged, in the fraternity of a common flag. Let us dry the tears Faiz wept for a fractured freedom. And let us dedicate ourselves to harmony, peace, and justice — so that future generations may inherit a rainbow that shines in full, undimmed glory. (The author is Deputy Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala. Email:
