FROM TORRENT TO TRICKLE: INDIAN MUSLIM MIGRATION TO PAKISTAN, 1947—97

Author(s): OMAR KHALIDI

Source: Islamic Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Autumn 1998), pp. 339-352
Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20837002 .
Accessed: 17/06/2014 19:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Islamic Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998)

FROM TORRENT TO TRICKLE: INDIANMUSLIM

MIGRATION TO PAKISTAN, 1947-97

OMARKHALIDf

INTRODUCTION
The criticalquestion at theheartof the rationaleforpartitioningBritish
India? whether Pakistan was going to be a homeland for all Indian
Muslims or only anotherstatewhere Islamwould be the "official"faith
? was
within itsfrontiers ignoredin the impatienceto divide and quit.
The leadershipof theMuslim League which spearheaded thePakistan
movement seems to have been unclear about the fate of theMuslim
minority thatwas going tobe letoutside theboundaries of theproposed
new country. Dismissing theMuslims of theSubcontinentoutside the
northwest zone "for the time being", Allama Iqbal wanted to see "the
Punjab, North-West Frontier, Sindh and Baluchistan amalgamated into
a single state".1 When Pakistan did actually come about inAugust 1947,
its formation was accompanied by a horrific human disaster, even by
the standards of a worldgrown accustomed to genocide. The huge
the partition of the Subcontinent was probably
migration accompanying
the largest and most concentrated in time that has been recorded in
modern history.
Although some observers feared that partition would lead to violence
mass migra
and forced migrations, they apparently did not anticipate
tions. At a press conferenceinNew Delhi on 12October, 1947, Prime
Minister JawaharlalNehru admittedthattherewas "nopolicywith regard

*Omar Khalidi, Aga Khan Program on Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts

Instituteof Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
The authorwishes to thankProfessor Theodore P. Wright, Jr.,Department
of Political Science, New York State University, Albany, for his comments on
an earlier draft of the paper.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
340 omar KHALiDi/From Torrent to Trickle

to exchangeof population [betweenthetwocountries]and thattherewas

no talk of it before August 15... None of us envisaged a major transfer
of population at any time".2 It was assumed that the future country of
Pakistan would contain themajority ofMuslim population, but itwas
stillexpected tohavemeasurableHindu and Sikhminorities in it. Indeed
itwas rationalizedby some thattheHindu minority inPakistanwould be
"hostages" for the good behaviour of India towards its remaining Muslim

minority. Because leaders of both future countries of India and Pakistan

tookpains to emphasize thattheywould protect theseminorities, large
scale migrations would seem unnecessary.
This paper will discus thepatternand process of IndianMuslim
migration to Pakistan over the last 50 years. It will pay particular
attention to the migration to what was once called West Pakistan, thus

excluding the Indian Muslim migration to East Bengal/East

Pakistan/Bangladesh.
Three phases of migration to Pakistan are clearly discernible. The
firstphase began inAugust 1947 and lastedthroughtheNovember of the
same year. Geographically this torrent of migration was confined to

Punjab, Delhi, four adjoining districtsof U.P., and the two princely
states of Alwar and Bharatpur, which are now part of the present state
of Raj as than. The second phase (December 1947? December 1971) of
themigration was geographically fromwhat is now U.P., Delhi,
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujrat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra
Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Kerala. The third and final phase (1973-1990s),
when itwas reduced to a trickle which involved educated unemployed
Muslims from all parts of India. Additionally, a large number of Urdu

speaking Muslims of Bihar, Orissa, Calcutta, Murshidabad, and other

parts of Bengal did make their way to Pakistan via Dhaka when itwas
still part of that country.

The Torrent ofMigration

Following thepartitionof Indiamassive migrationsofminoritiesdid take

place, despite hopes to the contrary. Muslims of East Punjab and
adjoining areas migrated by trains,on trucks,by foot or planes to
Pakistan,while Hindus and Sikhs ofWest Punjab went in theopposite
direction. Violence was
by no means confined to territories directly
administered by the British. In the three princely states of Alwar and
Baharatpur in Rajputana, and inKapurthalla in Punjab, the State Forces

instigatedand took active part in killing and enmasse expulsion of

Muslims.3 About fourteen million people moved between August and
November 1947. This migration may have been the most violent.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998) 341

About 600,000 were killed and hundredsof thousandsinjured.Millions

fled, literallyto save their lives from themurderousmobs engaging in
orgies of physicalviolence. During thisperiod some 7,200,000 Muslims
emigrated from India while 5,500,000 Hindus and Sikhs fled from
Pakistan, according to the official records.4
Since the majority of these refugees were from the eastern part of

Punjab, itwas easier for them to adjust to a geographically new but

culturally, linguistically, climatically, and economically similar area of
West Punjab. Thus fora vastmajorityof therefugees,thepsychological
trauma of displacement was cushioned because new homes were available
within a familiarenvironment.The refugeeswere quickly absorbed in
the economy and societyof Pakistani Punjab. The virtual exchange of
population (bothruraland urban) inPunjab lefta few thousandscheduled
casteHindus in theWest and a minusculeMuslim population in the tiny
princely state of Malerkotla in the East.

A Steady Stream ofMigration, 1947-1971

The virtual exchange of population in thePunjab did not put an end to

theMuslim migration to Pakistan. It continued? interrupted only by
thewars of 1965 over Kutch andKashmir? thoughobviously varying
in numbers, route of migration, geographic origin and the social
compositionof themigrants. During the firstphase of this streamof
migration (1947-1950) top civil servants, army officers and jawans,
Muslim League politicians, and some members of the intelligentsia
migrated. The civil servants and the military personnel of the central
government were given the option of choosing the new dominions

immediately after independence, and most Muslims opted for Pakistan,

so much so that less than 5 Muslim ICS officers were left in India.
Fewer than 300 Muslim officersopted to remain in the huge Indian
army. As to the politicians, some went over to Pakistan early on, while
otherswaited till thecomingof theconstitutionin January1950,which
abolished theCommunal Award, thusdoing away with the systemof
separate electorates forMuslims and other minorities.5 A permit system

regulated the flow of migrants from India to Pakistan until 1953. Of

those migrated, very few returned home. In this phase of migration,
both "pull" and "push" factors were in effect. Lucrative jobs pulled
many to thenew country,just as physical insecuritypushed them into
Pakistan.

Geographically speaking,Muslims of each regionof India responded

differently to' the formation of Pakistan as far as immigration was
concerned. Although communal riots did occasionally break out in the

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
342 omar KHALiDi/From Torrent to Trickle

thenBombay province (now divided intoMaharashtra and Gujrat),

immediately before and after independence, their scale and intensity was
not comparable to the one in Punjab. But the violence and its long-term
effects demoralized many Muslims in the Bombay province, particularly
the small, well-knit mercantile (and their sub-groups) of the
communities
Bohras, Khojas and Memons. A large number of these groups migrated
soon after partition, many of whom in any case had relatives in Sindh.
All the threegroups provided Pakistanwith much needed capital and
commercial expertise in the early years of independence. The annexation
of theKathiawari stateof Junagadhby theIndianarmy in 1947 triggered
another stream of migration.6 About the same time, the abolition of the

princely state of Bhopal and insecurityin theCentral Provinces and

Berar led to still another round of migration to Pakistan.7
In thebeginning the
Muhdjirs (as themigrants fromIndia called by
themselves and others) were welcomed in the new country. The then
Chief Minister of Sindh,M. Ayyub Khuhro, even claimed that "the
Sindhis were modern-day Ansars",8 an allusion to the hosts of the

ProphetMuhammad (peace be on him) and his Companions who were

welcomed inMadTnah uponmigrationfrom Makkah in theearlydays of
Islam. The collapse ofMuslim politicalpower inHyderabad,Deccan as
a resultof India's bloody take-overin September 1948 triggeredoff a
freshwave of migrants to Pakistan comprising partly of Razakars
(volunteers) who had resisted the Indian aggression and feared reprisal.
In the wake of the Indian take-over, thousands of Muslim young men,
rendered unemployed as a result of politico-administrative changes,
followed suit,9 so much so that the 1951 Pakistan Census recorded as
many as 95,000 Hyderabadis in Karachi. Further south, from Mysore
and Madras smaller groups of Muslims made the journey to Pakistan in
search of better prospects, although no precipitating event or events can
be identified as immediate reasons for emigration. Whether from U.P.,
Central Provinces, Bombay, Hyderabad or further south, an

overwhelming majority of the refugees settled inKarachi, and other parts

of Sindh as can be seen from theTable 1. Most of the refugeeswho
migrated to Karachi found homes in homogeneous housing complexes or
neighbourhoods, such as Aligarh, Bihar and Hyderabad Colonies, CP.
and Berar Housing Society, Punjabi Saudagaran Colony, Bangalore
Town. People from Bombay tended to settle down in Kharadhar and
Mithadhar. Even in the late 1990s Karachi is a veritable museum of
ethnicgroups fromall partsof undivided India. The firstcensus (1951)
conducted in Pakistan gave the migrants from India the appellation
Muhdjir, which since has became an official category for enumeration.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998) 343

Meanwhile in India, an uneasy peace returned after the assassination

ofMahatma Gandhi by a Hindu fanaticinearly 1948. Real or perceived
discrimination in education and employment spurred many young men
to seek betterprospects inPakistan. But themajor impetustoemigration
was the recurring anti-Muslim violence in many parts of the country.
No less than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru noted the steady stream
of migration to Pakistan. In a letter dated 4 December, 1952, addressed
to thechiefministers of theprovinces, thePrimeMinister found:

There has ... since 1950 been a movement of some Muslims from India to
Western Pakistan through the Jodhpur-Sindh via Khokhropar. Normally,
traffic between India and West Pakistan was controlled by the permit
system. But theseMuslims going via Khokhropar went without permits to
West Pakistan. From January 1952 to the end of September, 53,209
Muslim emigrants went via Khokhropar... Most of these probably came
from theU.P. InOctober 1952, up to the 14th, 6,808 went by this route.
After that Pakistan became much stricter in allowing entry on the
introduction of the passport system. From the 15thOctober to the end of
October, 1,247 went by this route. From the 1stNovember, 1,203 went
via Khokhropar.10

Despite the lapse of the permit system and the introductionof

passportsbetween thetwocountriesinOctober 1953,migrationof Indian
Muslims to Pakistan continuedunabated. PrimeMinister Nehru noted
this movement again in a communication to his chief ministers dated
1December, 1953:

A fair number ofMuslims cross over to Pakistan from India, via Rajasthan
and Sindh daily. Why do theseMuslims cross over to Pakistan at the rate
of three to four thousand a month? This isworth inquiring into, because
it is not to our credit that this should be so. Mostly they come from Uttar
Pradesh, Rajasthan or Delhi. It is evident that theydo not go there unless
there is some fear or pressure on them. Some may go in the hope of
employment there. But most of them appear to feel that there is no great
future for them in India. I have already drawn your attention to difficulties
in theway of Government service. Another reason, I think, is the fear of
the Evacuee Property Laws [EPL]. I have always considered these laws
both in India and Pakistan as most iniquitous. In trying to punish a few
guilty persons, we punish or injure large numbers of perfectly innocent
people... the pressure of theEvacuee Property Laws applies to almost all
Muslims in certain areas of India. They cannot easily dispose of their
property or carry on trade for fear that the long arm of this lawmight hold
them down in itsgrip. It is this continuing fear thatcomes in theway of
normal functioning and normal business and exercises a powerful pressure

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
344 omar KHALiDi/From Torrent to Trickle

on large numbers of Muslims in India, especially in the North and the

West.11

Nehru desired these laws tobe struckdown, but in spiteof his own
Congress Party'smonopoly of power at theCentre and thestates, ittook
as many as threeyears before theEPL were withdrawn in 1956. In the
meanwhile thedisastrous effectsof thediscriminatorylaws such as the
EPL did enormousdamage toMuslim businesses andmorale leading to
furtherimmigrationso vividly captured in the filmGarm Hawd (Hot
Wind) starringBalraj Sahni in 1975.12
For most people the journey to Pakistan was not easy. From
Barmer, Jodphur, the migrants, usually single males, crossed the no
man's land of a fewmiles in themiddle of thenight intoKhokhropar,
Tharparkar district in Sindh. At Khokhropar, Pakistani trainswere
available only once a week to carry them to Karachi and other towns in
the interior.Often thousandsof people waited out fordays, and nights
were spent in open air. Little water or food was available.13 Many of
themigrants, once settled into jobs, came back tomarry in various parts
of India.
A reportpublished by the International
Labour Organization (ILO)
as
in 1959 foundthatbetween 1951-56 many as 650,000 Muslims moved
to Pakistan.14 However, the figuressupplied by ILO have not found
supporting evidence in the Pakistan census, 1951-61, as indicated by
Pravin M. Visaria of Bombay University.15 What may be the reasons of
under numeration of theMuhdjirs in Pakistan Census of 1951-61? Apart
from the technical deficiencies and inefficiency of the Census organiza
tion, two more reasons, indeed far more critical factors account for lack
of statistical evidence in the census records. The first is that the
welcome accorded to theMuhdjirs had gradualy petered out in Pakistan.
For instance as early as 1949, G.M. Syed, a Sindhi nationalist leader,
warned that the influxof theMuhdjirs "looms ahead like a terrible
nightmare,inwhich thepeople of Sindhwould be trampledupon as mere
serfs by the more numerous and aggressive outsiders... The Sindhi

people as they have been known to history so far, may well perish and
be remembered only as an extinct race".16 A mirror image is found in
the anonymous letterof a Muhdjir published in Dawn, a Karachi
newspaper, dated 18 January, 1948:

I feel it is the struggle and sacrifices of people like us thatwent a longway

towards the realization of Pakistan. Or is it thatwe were cleverly duped
and Pakistan was meant for the people of Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan,
Frontier, and Bengal only and not for every Musalman of India?17

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998) 345

Muhdjirs had outwornthewelcome inPakistanwithin

It is clear that
a fewyears. TheMuhdjir political dominationof thecountryendedwith
theassassination of PrimeMinister, Liaqat Ali Khan, in 1951, although
they remained firmly entrenched in the civil service, educational
institutions, journalism, business and industry, and independent
professions for at least another decade.18
In order to establishcitizenshipby birth,mostMuhdjirs deliberately
misrepresented themselves to the census enumerators to escape adverse

consequences associated with being a Muhdjir, sometimes contemp

tuously referredto by Sindhis as pandhgirs, refuge-seekers.19Within

India, the act of migration to Pakistan by close relativeswas rarely
revealed publicly for fear of negative implications. Right after
independence, Muslims were blamed forhavingbroughton thepartition
? called "vivisectionofmother India" ? and
by theHindu rightwing
the attendantsufferingsof Hindus and Sikhs. The loyaltyof most
Muslims became suspect. The Muslim minority communities in India
were marooned at home and with the passage of time not quite welcome
inPakistan. To be known to thepolice and theauthoritiesforhaving
relatives in Pakistan was not a pleasant prospect for most Indian
Muslims. For aMuhdjir itmade no practical sense to identifyhimself
in
with the land of his birth Pakistan, and the
members of the residual
Muslim minoritydid not go out of theirway to reveal thattheirclose
relatives had relocated across the national border. Therefore, it is not

surprisingthatneitherthePakistani nor the Indiancensus of 1951-61 or

beyond show toany reliabledegree theextentofmigrationbetween India
and (West) Pakistan. Evidence for their migration coming from the

highest political authority in India farmore easily establishes the extent

of emigration.
With the introduction of the passports between the two countries in
1953, it became possible for Indian Muslims to migrate to Pakistan

legally. Given the relatively low level of education in areas that became
Pakistan, thatcountrystillneeded educated and skilled labour thatcould
be absorbed in theexpandingeconomy. As lateas December 1971, the
Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi was authorized to issue
documents to educationally qualified Indians tomigrate to Pakistan. The
was taken by unemployed but educated classes
legal route to immigration
seeking better fortunes, whereas poorer classes still went illegally via
Rajasthan-Sindh border until the 1965 India-Pakistan war when that route
was closed. After the termination of war and the Tashkent Pact in 1966,
most Muslims desiring migration to Pakistan went there via India-East
Pakistan border. Once reaching Dhaka, most made theirway to the final

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
346 omar KHAUDi/From Torrent to Trickle

?
destination Karachi.
But not all IndianMuslims who migrated toEast Bengal were able
togo toPakistan. This was tragicallydemonstratedin 1971. During the
Pakistani army's crackdown in East Bengal and the subsequent war with
India leadingto thecreationofBangladesh, the immigrant
Urdu-speaking
? ? known as Biharis
population collectively though erroneously
supportedthestateagainst theBengalimajority. After theconclusion of
the war, almost 500,000 Pakistanis, a great many of whom had

immigratedfromBihar,were leftinBangladesh. Some 200,000 resettled

inPakistan in the 1970s. But 250,000 remain inBangladeshi camps.
They were Pakistanis before the war and continue to define themselves
as "stranded Pakistanis" in Bangladesh. The successive Pakistani
governments, whether military dictatorships or democratically elected,
loath to upset ethnic and political balances in Sindh and so refuse to
repatriate what are, by every definition, Pakistani citizens.20
Thus theoriginal criticalquestion posed but never answeredduring
?
the Pakistan movement whether Pakistan was to be the homeland of
all IndianMuslims or just another statewhere Islam would be the
?
"official" religion has been answered by the experience. It is not
meant to accommodate all Muslims of the Subcontinent. In fact it did
not even accommodate large segments of its own population who were
most in its formation.
enthusiastic Itmay "officially", i.e. formally be
an Islamic state, but there is a growing feeling among Muslims inmany
countries of the world, that its rulers hardly functioned in accord with
the best traditions of Islam and have a record of ethnic conflict
managementwhich hardlybringsmuch honour to theMuslims of South
Asia.

MIGRATION SHRINKS TO A TRICKLE

The December 1971 India-Pakistan war over Bangladesh was a watershed

event in thehistoryofmodern SouthAsia. The perceptionof Pakistan
as thehomeland forMuslims of undivided Indiawas finallyshattered.
The news about largescale killingof fellowMuslims inEast Bengal by
units of thePakistan armyhorrifiedIndianMuslims as itdid the restof
India and the world at large.21
1971 very few Muslims went to Pakistan.
After Several factors are
responsible for this change. First is the relative decline of anti-Muslim
violence in India during theearly 1970s. Firm controlof law and order
by the centre and the state governments prevented civil strife on the scale
and duration exemplified by the cases of such fractured countries as

neighbouring Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and the more distant cases of

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998) 347

Nigeria, Lebanon, former Yugoslavia, and Zaire. Barring the brief

"Emergency" nightmare of 1975-77 and the Kashmir conflict, Indian
democracy acted as the safety valve for the resolution of ethnic conflicts.
The second reason is the rise of ethnic nationalism and the improvement
of education within Pakistan which made the migration prospects
difficult. Tighter controls at the internationalbordersmade illegal
migration hazardous, as in the case of small-scale migration in both
directions throughtheKutch area alongGujrat-Sindhborder.22Problems
associated with legal travelwith visa prevented frequentvisits, thus
weakening thekinship tiesof divided familiesacross theborders.23
Psychologically,mostmiddle classMuslims were reconciledto sink
or swim within India by 1971 and stopped looking to Pakistan as a
desirable destination. Fortunately, for many middle and lower class
Muslims, the oil boom in theMiddle East provided a tremendous
alternative employment potential, whereto thousands have headed since
the 1970s. The decline in IndianMuslim migration to Pakistan was
confirmedina littlenoticednews storycomingout of officialsources in
Islamabad. On June 18, 1995, Pakistan's Interior Minister, Naseerullah
Babar, informedtheNational Assembly thatduring the period from
1973-1994, as many as 800,000 visitorscame fromIndia on valid travel
documents. Of these only 3,393 stayed back.24 Granting that those
entering illegallywould not informtheauthoritiesof theirarrival, their
numbers are in all likelihoodnot large given the loss of pull factors
within Pakistan. Intermarriages between Indian and Pakistani Muslims
have declined sharply.According toa November 1995 statement
ofRiaz
Khokhar, the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi, the number
of cross-border marriages "have gone down from some 40,000 a year in
1950s and 1960s to barely 300 annually now".25

THE IMPACTOF EMIGRATIONON INDIANMUSLIMS

Of those who left for Pakistan, most never came back; a minority,
however, did. These include several thousand Mewati peasants, "8000

government servants",26 and other individuals who for one reason or

another did not want to live in Pakistan. Among the intelligentsia these
includedSayyid Sajjad Zaheer (1905-73), K.M. Ashraf (1903-62) both
of theCommunistParty of India, thepoet Sahir Ludhianawi (1921-80),
andQurrat al-AinHaydar (b. 1927), a leadingnovelistwho leftPakistan
in 1960. Unlike thewell-connectedmembers of the intelligentsia,
many
ordinary persons tried to come back, but many were expelled, others
were harassed by thepolice inboth countries,and some are still in limbo
as late as 1998.27

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 348 omar KHALiDi/From Torrent to Trickle

Leaving aside the exceptional case of Punjab, where a virtual

exchange of population tookplace, and excluding themigration to the

then East Pakistan, the impact of Muslim migration from other areas on
the residual Muslim population was felt inmany ways; some immediate,
some long-term.The firstand immediateimpactwas the loss of political
leadership, except in the southernparts of India which was never
replaced to the same extent as before 1947 due to the abolition of
separate electorates. A second set of loss was that of role models in
education, civil service, and business as a result of migration of educated
middle classes of urban areas and entrepreneurs of Bombay, Calcutta,
and elsewhere but notMadras. It is only in the 1980s thatone was
beginning to see a recoveryand revival of collective initiativeof the
Muslim community to establish educational institutions of its own. A
thirdlosswas theemigrationof some of themost productivewriters and
poets ofUrdu, a numberof creativejournals and publishinghouses, so
much so thattoday thecentresof Urdu publishing are notHyderabad,
Delhi, and Lucknow, but Karachi and Lahore. In the rural areas of the

country, however, where most Muslims live, no drastic changes are

discernible.Muslim landedaristocracywas shakenby theupheaval of the
early years of independence,and the abolition of jdgirddri/zaminddri,
but peace returnedand has been disturbednationwideonly occasionally
when events of national significance took place such as the sack of
Babari Masjid in December 1992.

CONCLUSION
In the four months of August-November 1947, several million Indian
Muslims migrated to Pakistan as a resultof physical insecurity,just as
several million Hindus and Sikhs arrived in India. Peace returned to
India in late 1947 but perceived and real discriminationineducation and
employment forced hundreds of thousands more to emigrate between
December 1947-December 1971. Initiallythemigrantswere welcomed
but soon resentment among the native Sindhis grew at the stream of

migrants which continued to arrive well into 1971. No one had

anticipated the exoduses that would ensue as result of partition and the

accompanyingviolence. Many Muhdjirs, having arrived in Pakistan,

migrationon twoaccounts.One, on theground thatitwas
justifiedtheir
primarily the
Muslims in theHindu-majorityprovinces in Indiawho had
brought about and, therefore, deserved Pakistan. Secondly, many
Muhdjirs pointed out thattheconcept ofHijrah (migration)was itselfa
sunnah (tradition)of theProphetMuhammad (peace be on him) and
migrantswere only following in his footsteps. Indeed, according to

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998) 349

manyMuhdjirs therewere precedentsofHijrah in South Asia: in the

nineteenthcenturywhen themovement of theMujdhidin led by Sayyid
Ahmad ShahTd of Bareli (1786-1831) sought tomove away from the
Abode ofWar (Ddr al-Harb) of British and Sikhwho ruledNorth India
to an Abode of Peace {Ddr al-Isldm) in theNorthwest. In the twentieth
century,Muslim migration toAfghanistan in 1920 was supportedby
many among the 'ulamd' as an act of religiousduty. It is not difficult
to see the abortive emigration to Afghanistan as a forerunner to the
movement to Pakistan thatwas to occur about three decades later.28 Both
are manifestations of a latent readiness of Muslims to accept the view
thatdifficultiescan be remedied by movement elsewhere, insteadof
facing themat home. A Muslim politicianknows thatthis is one of the
appeals thathe canmake, thoughat any given situation,theappealmay
be made by one set of leaders
and_opposedby another. In the 1920
instance, Mawlana Abu'l-Kalam Azad supported the call, whereas
Muhammad Ali Jinnahdid not. By 1947, thepositionwas reversed.
Brushing aside the intellectualjustificationor opposition given for the
migrationby theirforefathers,a significantsectionof thenew generation
of theMuhdjirs came out todemand explicit recognitionof theirethnicity
in the 1980s.

'Muhammad Iqbal, Presidential Address to theAllahabad Session of All

India Muslim League, Allahabad, 1931.
2JawaharlalNehru, cited inKeith R. Sipe, "Karachi's Refugee Crisis: The
Political, Economic and Social Consequences of Partition Related Migration",
Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1976, 242.
3For Alwar and Rajasthan, see Shail Mayaram, Resisting Regimes: Myth,
Memory and theShaping of a Muslim Identity (Delhi: Oxford Press, 1997). (For
Kapurthalla, see n. 4.)
4Joseph B. Schechtman, "The Hindu-Muslim Exchange of Population", in
Population Transfers inAsia (New York, 1949); 22; G.D. Khosla, in his Stern
Reckoning: The Story of Partition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991;
reprint of 1949) gives a figure of 500,000 dead. Khushwant Singh's Train to
Pakistan (New York: Grove Press, 1956) remains one of the best fictional
accounts of the partition. See also The Journey to Pakistan: A Documentation
on Refugees of 1947 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, Cabinet Secretariat,
Cabinet Division, National Documentation Centre, 1993). For a study of
migration in the Indian East Punjab, see Rober S. Corruccini, Halla:
Demographic Consequences of the Partition of thePunjab, 1947 (Washington,
D.C. University Press of America, 1990); G. Kudaisya, "The Demographic
Upheaval of Partition: Refugees and Agricultural Settlement in India, 1947-67",
South Asia, 18 (1995): 73-94. Also see The Census of Pakistan 1951 (Karachi:

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 350 omar KHALiDi/From Torrent to Trickle

Government Printing Office, n.d.), Vol.1, table 2-F, 31.

5See, Omar Khalidi, Indian Muslims Since Independence (New Delhi:
Vikas, 1996) for details on the exodus of Muslim civil servants, armed forces
personnel at independence.
6Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah evidently "ordered" leading Muslim bankers and
industrialists in Bombay tomove to Karachi, see Hanna Papanek, "Pakistan's
Big Businessmen: Muslim Separatism, Entrepreneurship, and Partial Moderniza
tion", Economic Development and Cultural Change, 21, No.4 (1972): 1-32.
There is some literatureon themercantile Muslim communities of theWestern
coast of India, see Asghar Ali Engineer, Muslim Communities of Gujrat: An
Exploratory Study of Bohr as, Khojas and Memons (New Delhi: Ajanta, 1989);
Sergey Levin, "The Upper Bourgeoisie from the Muslim Commercial
Community of Memons in Pakistan, 1947-71", Asian Survey, 14 (1974):
231-43.
7David E.U. Baker, "The Muslim Concern for Security: The Central
Provinces and Berar, 1919-47", inMushirul Hasan, ed., Communal and Pan
Islamic Trends Since Colonial India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1985), 221-47.
8Cited from contemporary Pakistani newspaper by Keith R. Sipe,
"Karachi's Refugee Crisis", 252.
9Omar Khalidi, ed., Hyderabad: After theFall (Wichita, KS: Hyderabad
Historical Society, 1988).
10JawaharlalNehru, Letters to the Chief Ministers, 1947-64, ed., G.
Parathasarathi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 3: 194. Muslim
migration to Pakistan was rarely debated in an otherwise free press. Laeeq
Futehally's "Muslim Exodus fromBihar and UP", inRadiance (Delhi, April 28,
1968), 4 stands out as an exception. High sensitivity of the issue, no doubt,
contributed to the hush-up.
MJawaharlalNehru, Letters to the Chief Ministers, 463.
12Directedby M.S. Sathyu, thisUrdu film is probably the only one that
addresses the question of IndianMuslims so poignantly and passionately.
^Interviews in Karachi, June 1992, with 150 Muhajir families who
migrated during various years between 1947-1971.
^International Labour Organization, International Migration, 1947-57,
(Geneva: ILO, 1959).
15PravinM. Visaria, "Migration Between India and Pakistan, 1951-61",
Demography, 6, No.3 (August 1969): 323-34.
l6G.M. Syed, The Struggle for New Sindh (Karachi: The Author, 1949),
225-26, cited in Keith R. Sipe, "Karachi's Refugee Crisis: The Political,
Economic and Social Consequences of Partition-Related Migration", 248.
11
Dawn, 18 January, 1948, 5, as cited in Sarah Ansari, "The Emigration
Factor: Comprising the Experiences of theMuslim and Jewish Communities of
South Asia", 214-29, in Jung and theMonotheisms, ed., J. Ryce-Menuhin
(London: Routledge, 1996), 224.
18Thoedore P. Wright, Jr., "Indian Muslim Refugees in the Politics of
Pakistan", Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 12, No.2 (July

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Islamic Studies 37:3 (1998) 351

1974): 189-205, and the same writer's "Center-Periphery Relations and Ethnic
Conflict in Pakistan", Comparative Politics, 23, No.3 (April 1991): 299-312.
19InterviewsinKarachi, June 1992 with 150Muhajir families who migrated
from India between 1947-71.
20Paula R. Newberg, "South Asia's Silent Refugees", Christian Science
Monitor (December 16, 1991), 18.
2ITheodore P. Wright, Jr., "IndianMuslims, theBangladesh Secession and
the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971", inMain Currents in Indian Sociology, ed., Giri
Raj Gupta (New Delhi: Vikas, 1978), 3: 128-48.
22RameshMenon, "Illegal Immigration: The Kutch Run", India Today, 30
September, 1983, 138-39.
23See Joyce Aschnebrnner's "Politics and Islamic Marriage Practices in the
Indian Subcontinent", Anthropological Quarterly, 42, No.4 (October 1969):
305-15 for difficulties associated with trans-bordermarriages, particularly for
Delhi families.
24"49,000 Visitors Stayed Back Illegally in 21 Years: Babar", Saudi
Gazette, (Jeddah, June 19, 1995), 12. In a rare interviewwith Afkdr-iMilli,
(August 1992), 34-35, an Urdu journal published from New Delhi, Pakistan
High Commission via Counsellor Habibur Rahman outlines the visa rules in
effect.
25Mayank Chhaya, "Cross-Border Marriages Defy Indo-Pak Tensions",
India Abroad (New York), November 10, 1995, 34. The decline of Indo
Pakistani marriages is reflected in the pattern of marriages in Pakistan, see
Theodore P. Wright, Jr., "Intra-Provincial Marriages and National Integration
in Pakistan", Contemporary South Asia (1993).
awaharlal Nehru, Letters toChief Ministers, 1: 125. For Civil Servants,
26J
see Constituent Assembly of India: Legislative Debates, November-December
1949, 10.
27SeeNo Land's Man: The Strange Case ofTaskin Ahmed's Muslims (New
Delhi: Vikas, 1986), chapter 6. For theKerala Muslims in limbo, see "Pushed
Back and Forth, They Pin Hope on Peace and PM", Saudi Gazette, July 27,
1997, 8, and the award winning Urdu movie "Mammo" directed by Shyam
Benegal in 1994.
28SarahAnsari, "Migration and Refugees: Responses to theArrival of the
Muhajirs inSindh During 1947", South Asia (Australia) 18 (1995): 109-30. See
also her "Muhadjir" in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1960- ) for a neat summary and bibliography. There is a great deal of
literature on the theory of migration in India and Pakistan. See Muhammad
Ahmad Khan, "Iqbal on theMeaning and Significance of al-Hijrat", Islamic
Order, 2, No.l (1980): 78-89. For the 1920 Hijrah toAfghanistan, see Tahrik
i-Hijrat, ed., Shahid Husayn Khan (Karachi: Idarah-i Tahqlqat-i Afkar wa
Tahrikat-i Milli, 1989). Also see C. Emdad Haque, "The Dilemma of
"Nationhood" and Religion: A Survey and Critique of Population Displacement
Resulting from the Position of the Indian Subcontinent", Journal of Refugee
Studies, 8, No.2 (1995): 185-209.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 SO
"
z
00 w
2
<
s 8 15
3 * ?

2 ?

o
ON*
Q

0 2
?
'5
.?> o

^ < < ?
1O Q.
E < < o c
? Si
5r is
K a a

|
o
w < 5 ?
Si o
- o ?
3
O
- s 1 a =
? ? o ?

^
a:
o o00 m ?
g >
2 5
m ? ?
Q

- <N ?
< ? - ?n -

a _ ? ?
< oo
a* 2 C

8I m ?

J
00 w o
D
a. -3
8 fc *
<
s 1 c ui
g p:
?
?o
?
so : 1
~
?
rf * ?
u<
O

a.
2
Z ? y .s
< <
O H
o oo
z
X DC
t H
CQ u u
< u.
<
aa
X
Q < s 3
o o ^ CO z H s =
< < D Z O
2 CO z a.

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.96 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:56:02 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions