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The Amils of Sindh

A Narrative History of a Remarkabe Community

Saaz Aggarwal

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Read an excerpt
A valuable addition to Sindh studies, a new book presents the history and oral narratives of a community largely displaced during Partition,
Nandita BhavnaniDawn

About The Amils of Sindh

The Amils of Sindh originated in a small group of families who migrated to Sindh through the seventeenth century, driven from neighbouring provinces by economic need, political forces and natural disasters. Through the centuries, the defining quality of the Amils was their commitment to education. They used their education to build careers for themselves, to lead comfortable lives and to create wealth for their families. As an elite layer of society, the Amils were inspiring role models and created a fervour of enthusiasm for education among the middle class in Sindh. The Partition of India and their subsequent dispersal cost them dearly, but they focussed on adapting with dignity to new lives in new places. This book honours the silent sacrifices of the generation that left so much behind. It provides the context for present and future generations to identify themselves with pride in family grids to which they belong.
VOLUME ONE is an introduction to this book with the style guide, a note on Amil surnames, comments on the complexities of restoring a lost legacy and acknowledgements.

This is followed by the history of the Amil migration into Sindh and their integration there, and how they established themselves in the courts of the indigenous princes of Sindh, first the Kalhoras and then the Talpur mirs. This volume provides information about why they began to be called Amils, and descriptions which evoke the environment in which the community came to be formed. It proceeds to describe how the new city of Hyderabad was built and populated. Clarifying that information about this period is rudimentary and often confused with later periods, it gives a view of the early days of Hyderabad and life for the Amils under Talpur rule. Some accounts that have endured, both historical as well as legendary, are presented here.
The British annexation of Sindh was a period of transition for the Amils. Great injustice was done to the Mirs but the Amils continued to be useful to the new rulers, and thrived. The British introduced infrastructure and systems, and included Sindh in the Bombay Presidency for easier administration. Here we get an insight into the changes this era brought to Hyderabad, the opportunities offered by the new capital Karachi and the rise of the Sindhworkis. The Amils immediately took to the new system of education, eagerly making their own initiatives to spread education across the province, with a strong focus on women’s education as well as on higher education.
There were Amils working systematically towards justice and self-determination even before the Indian National Congress did. There were also Amils responsible for law and order, and there are interesting stories which highlight the anomaly. Many ordinary Amils sacrificed their personal dreams to follow Gandhi, to create awareness about the exploitation of British rule, and to work for the upliftment of society. Ironically, with victory came the loss of their own homeland. This chapter commemorates the forgotten heroes.
Finally, this volume immerses the reader in Hyderabad, the capital city and home of the Amils, a place that would transform completely when they were forced to flee from it.

About Saaz Aggarwal

Saaz Aggarwal is a biographer, book critic, and humour columnist. With a Masters in Mathematics from Bombay University, Saaz Aggarwal taught early in her career at DG Ruparel College, Mumbai, and subsequently worked as HR head of Seacom, a retail software company in Pune. Saaz Aggarwal is also known for her Bombay Clichés — quirky paintings of contemporary urban India done in a traditional Indian folk style.

Praise for The Amils of Sindh

A valuable addition to Sindh studies, a new book presents the history and oral narratives of a community largely displaced during Partition,

Nandita Bhavnani, Dawn

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Saaz Aggarwal

The amils of Sindh

A narrative history of a remarkable community

Saaz Aggarwal

Buy Now

Feminists before the word existed

Saraswati, daughter of Master Dayaram, was called to the bar in 1937, an extraordinarily rare example of higher education in England for a woman at the time, a matter of pride to the Amil community. Far more common, and even more indicative of the status of Amil women, is the many who worked in the railways in Sindh, checking passengers’ tickets. For a woman to do a job like this doesn’t just mean that the women were outgoing and confident. It doesn’t just mean that Amil families supported – to an extent – a woman’s individuality and her ambitions. It also means that the men of Sindh could tolerate authority from a woman. Jotumal Hassomal Chandiramani worked in Karachi Customs and two of his daughters were ticket checkers. Sundri Shahani and her sister Popati were also ticket checkers. They were beauties and naturally all the passengers on their beat, the Hyderabad-Kotri commuter line, fell in love with them. There was a long line of suitors. But Sundri fell in love with Gobindram Shahani and that was that. Popati married Mohan Mansukhani. It is also interesting to note that, in an era of child marriage across India, both these girls got married in their late twenties. After Partition they were able to continue supporting their families with jobs in the Railways.

After Partition, many Amil women in Bombay, unwilling to tolerate the quarters that had been foisted on them, took the initiative to get good accommodation. Ram Malani writes of his mother, Chaturi, who worked hard to locate a flat. She found that the Habib family, who had built Habib Mansion in 1936, had migrated to Pakistan. She was able to have the flat allotted to her as a refugee and even managed to get the flat transferred in her name as a direct tenant. Like a number of other Amil women of her time, she was very resourceful and had made several influential friends who helped her at various stages.

There were also Amil women who had glamorous careers while in their twenties in 1950s India. Mohini Chhablani worked as an Indian Airlines airhostess. Her father, Mitharam Chainrai Sitlani, had been branch manager of Bombay Life Insurance Company for Sindh and Baluchistan and the chief agent for Vulcan Insurance. He was also a member of the Sindh Collegiate Board and for a period its president. A member of the elite Karachi Club, he made his eldest son Bhagla a member when he was just twenty-one. He had two bungalows and was a joint owner of four cinema houses in Karachi. So when his daughter Mohini was offered a job flying for Indian Airlines after Partition, he hesitated for just a few seconds. While the family stayed in Churchgate, it was a convenient commute as Indian Airlines provided transportation. However, when they moved to live in Shyam Niwas, and the pick-up drivers refused to drop Mohini on her side of the road – she, self-assured Amil lady that she was, simply quit.

Nalini Bhagwan Hiranandani, who later married Mohini’s brother Indroo, was one of that breed of elegant Amil ladies, who with the natural grooming to feel at home in an international environment, worked as an airhostess with BOAC (now British Airways) in the 1960s. At a time when air travel was the prerogative of the super-rich and in an era when most Indian women hardly ever left their homes, she saw the world.

Pushpa Dembla was staying in London when she got the opportunity to work in the Indian High Commission there. Shamdas Udharam Malani, Pushpa’s father, had studied in the UK and was keen to give his children the same opportunity. In 1954, after completing her graduation, she was sent to London for further studies and stayed with her brother Ram who was working there. Pushpa did not pursue her education, but was recruited for a job as a hostess in the Indian High Commission. The career diplomats at Indian embassies around the world study and pass examinations that qualify them for the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), but few have the kind of social graces that Pushpa’s Amil background had groomed in her. After two years at the Indian High Commission in England, she was transferred to the embassy in Switzerland continuing with administrative duties which she enjoyed very much: “The best years of my life; a very good experience interacting with people from different walks of life.”

Another Amil lady diplomat was Janki Mirchandani (nee Wadhwani). Janki was born in Hyderabad, where her mother Parpati’s parents lived. When she was a few months old, her mother took her back to Rawalpindi where she grew up and attended a convent run by Irish nuns. Her father, Tilumal Wadhwani, had an agency for Buick and other cars. The business was destroyed by the Great Depression and Tilumal and his family relocated to Delhi in the 1930s where he, an engineer from VJTI (Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute at the time; later renamed Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute) took up a position with Kaycee. Janki was admitted in Indraprastha College and later Hindu College (where the principal was NV Thadani). Her MA from Hindu college was in Ancient Indian History. Her brother Gulab joined the Indian Navy.

Having never lived in Sindh, Janki had no direct understanding of what it meant to be an Amil but her family moved in elite social circles. She remembers going swimming at Chelmsford Club in the days when membership of most clubs were out of bounds to Indians except for a very few privileged ones like her father and his friends, who tended to be rather anglicised.

As a consequence of one of Tilumal’s close friendships, Janki worked in the Indian diplomatic missions in South America for two years. Tilumal had known Aftab Rai since his Rawalpindi days; the latter was appointed Chargé d’ Affaires for Brazil and then Argentina. Janki accompanied his family on the Princess Mary in 1948. They crossed the Atlantic and took up their positions in Brazil and later Argentina, mingling with diplomats and the cream of society of those countries. Janki naturally developed a deep friendship with Aftab Rai’s daughter Sheila who later, as Baroness Sheila Flather, became the first Asian member of the House of Lords.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Amil women who entered the Indian workforce learnt to deal with men to whom it was a curious and often unpleasant anathema for a woman to have authority over them. Mohini Bhawnani who managed to educate herself after great struggles following Partition, gave a competitive examination to enrol as an engineer in the telephone department. Mohini was placed fourth among four hundred candidates, and the only woman, and thereafter got a job with the department. It was 1957 when Mohini married into a wealthy family but she continued working and as the years passed, she was promoted to higher positions. In 1981 she received training in computers and took charge of changing the installations from electromagnetic to electronic, unusual for an Indian woman at the time and with the job of managing male egos an unlisted addition to her tasks.

Mira Advani (nee Ghanshamdas Mirchandani) completed her matriculation when she was just thirteen – three years younger than the average8. In 1941, four years later, she had completed BSc and followed this up with a first class double master’s degree: MA and MSc in pure and applied Mathematics from DJ Sind College. She worked as a lecturer at the college and after Partition, her qualifications secured her a job in the sales tax department. Mira rose from the post of sales tax officer, retiring as Additional Commissioner of Sales Tax and member of Sales Tax tribunal. It is testimony to her competence as well as her social skills that in her thirty-three-year career she was not transferred even once though three-year transfers were the norm.

Mira had observed Sindhis facing prejudice and contempt when they settled in other parts of India. To her sorrow, she saw Sindhis who changed their names so that they would not be identified as Sindhis. She wrote copiously for the Sindhi press and the mainstream media to depict Sindhis as the enterprising, hardworking, loyal and honest people that they are.

Despite all her professional achievements, Mira did not neglect her traditional skills and continued with needlework that she had learnt as a child. Till today she treasures a sari border which her mother had embroidered for her own trousseau, and an embroidered picture made by her sister Mohini – herself a well-known doctor who served beyond the call of duty at the Chembur refugee camp. Late one evening, Mira remembers, Mohini diagnosed a case of cholera in one of the barracks and knew it would spread rapidly throughout the camp if she did not act swiftly. Sending her patient to the hospital quarantine, she locked both barracks doors and arranged for anti-cholera vaccine from the Bombay Municipal Corporation. It was now night, but she injected each person herself, a task for which, Mira remembers with pride, she received due appreciation from the government.

Gomibai Javhermal Shahaney relaxing at home with her newspaper Karachi c1940
Gomibai Javhermal Shahaney relaxing at home with her newspaper Karachi c1940
Image courtesy Sunita Shahaney
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