Hindus from Sindh who fled India for Hong Kong at Partition recall how they built a community

The Partition of India, following the country’s independence on August 15, 1947, displaced more than 12 million people along religious lines, causing refugee crises and violent tensions that simmer to this day. It resulted in division between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and the largest mass migration in history at a cost of more than a million lives.

Unlike Punjab and Bengal, which were split in two, Sindh province was given intact to the newly created nation of Pakistan. So Sindhi Hindu and Sikh refugees had no non-secular state to call their own. Uprooted from their homeland and culture, their communities were forever displaced.

Seventy-two years later, memories of the horrors and unbearable struggles that unfolded remain raw in the minds of Sindhi Hindus, including those who have since relocated to Hong Kong, which was a British colony until July 1997.

Charlie Daswani was 14 and living in the Sindhi city of Hyderabad when the new borders were drawn. At first his Muslim neighbours remained brotherly, but when an influx of Muslims arrived from India’s Bihar state, Hindu homes were looted and taken, locals were stirred up to join in the violence, and Daswani’s family had to leave with whatever they could carry.

“I had three sisters and we’d heard of horrifying rapes, so we left by train with my aunt’s family and their dog. So-called customs officers stole what they wanted from our cases, but just before leaving a relative of my aunt’s appeared, giving us a bag of gold guineas,” he says.

Daswani was filled with terror when his family were stopped at the border by a group of Muslims who attempted to attack their compartment and take their gold, but luckily the barking of their dog scared them off.