Raj Daswani
Raj Daswani was 15 years old at the time of partition and heartbroken at leaving his first love, Yasmin. Raj was Hindu and Yasmin was a Muslim. They lived in the same apartment block in the Sindh province, in newly independent Pakistan. They hoped that one day they would marry despite their religious differences, although there was no precedence for this and they feared their communities would be opposed to it.
Raj’s Muslim friends and neighbours cried when his family left Sindh, and promised to protect them. However, , his family no longer felt safe as Muslim refugees had arrived from India and were causing trouble for the Hindus in the Sindh province.
Raj’s family took the boat from Karachi to Bombay (Mumbai). They were not allowed to take anything with them. He felt they had been dumped in India and were not wanted there. They were moved between camps until they settled in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Bombay, where they stayed for 12 years in former military barracks. The barracks were often windowless and without ventilation, and they used bedsheets to divide sleeping space between families. Toilets were shared by around 500 people and the food given to them by the government was rotten. Conditions improved after some years.
In the camp Raj met his wife, Geeta, who was also from the Sindh province. Raj and Greeta later moved to the UK where they founded the Sindh Times and led Sindh musical programmes. In 1992, 45 years after he left, Raj was overjoyed to return to his former home in Sindh, where he says his attachment is stronger than his religion.
Raj and Geeta still feel bitter about partition and feel it made Sindhis landless.
After his third and final journey back, Raj wrote a poem addressed to Sindh. It began:
In the end have realised this.
In exile or forced to leave you
Image the agony suffered by me
Our flesh and blood, our kith and kin
Suffering, in the name of religion.