Dr. Hemandas, from an Amil family of Sindh, was Sindh’s Minister of Medical & Public Health, Veterinary, and Civil Defence
Saaz Aggarwal
On Pakistan’s first Independence Day, 14 August 1947, the day on which Pakistan was created, a celebratory cavalcade drove through Karachi, a 3-mile state drive by the Viceroy Louis Mountbatten and the Quaid-e-Azam – Great Leader – of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The route was lined with British and Indian military units, and a flight of air force planes flew over the procession, dipping in salute as it passed. Hundreds of people stood, watching and cheering, at every vantage point.
The Citizens’ Celebrations Committee had erected 16 gates along the route. Each of the 16 was named after a prominent citizen of the new state of Pakistan. These included the most senior political and religious leaders, and intellectuals – the best-known names of their times. One of them would be the first Prime Minister of Pakistan; 2 others would be PMs subsequently.
There was one Hindu among the 16 – Dr. Hemandas Wadhwani.
Dr. Hemandas, from an Amil family of Sindh, was Sindh’s Minister of Medical & Public Health, Veterinary, and Civil Defence.
Living in the family home in Jacobabad, Dr. Hemandas had built up a formidable reputation as a skilled and dedicated doctor across the Upper Sindh Frontier region and Baluchistan, and was also responsible for many social activities there. When devastating floods occurred in Jacobabad in 1929, he led the relief efforts. He was also in the forefront of relief activities after the Quetta Earthquake of 1935 in which, of a population of sixty thousand, more than forty thousand lives were lost. Dr. Hemandas was also Honorary Secretary of the Indian Red Cross Society, implementing global processes which he had learnt while volunteering with the Red Cross Society Leagues in London and Paris. His MBBS degree was from Grant Medical College in Bombay, and he had enhanced his skills with specialized courses in diseases of the Ear, Nose, and Throat in Vienna. A member of the Jacobabad Municipality for several years, and Chairman of the Sanitary & Primary School Boards, one of the charming initiatives conducted by the Child Welfare Centre he established in Jacobabad was annual Baby Shows.
One of his most enduring efforts was the establishment of Dow Medical College in Karachi
Dr. Hemandas’s biggest motivation was to create awareness of best practices in hygiene and nutrition in his region. Perhaps this is what earned him the title ‘Kaiser E Hind’ from the British colonial government. Grateful families held him responsible for significantly reducing maternal mortality in Jacobabad and training midwives who worked in all parts of Sindh.
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 is reported as having said about Dr. Hemandas:
His efforts were untiring; he would accept no discouragement, and it is certain that this heme 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 Dr. Hemandas rose to prominence across the province, he remained an extremely kind and good-natured person, loved and respected not just by family members but by the citizens of Upper Sindh Frontier and Baluchistan.
When Sindh was separated from the Bombay Presidency in 1936 and established its own government, he 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 after him, Hemandas Wadhwani Road.
Dr. Hemandas was counted as one of 16 of the most prominent citizens of Pakistan, with a gate in his honour on the day celebrating the creation of Pakistan.
While the British government stood firm on the matter of not granting independence until the Second World War had ended, regular negotiations were conducted. One of the senior government officials who participated in the high-level discussions was Dr. Hemandas Wadhwani.
These may have been the reasons why Dr. Hemandas was counted as one of 16 of the most prominent citizens of Pakistan, with a gate in his honour on the day celebrating the creation of Pakistan.
However, the creation of Pakistan meant that he and his family eventually had no choice but to join the exodus of Hindus leaving their ancestral homeland forever. Who can imagine the sorrow and despair, the utter helplessness, with which Dr. Hemandas and his family left Sindh forever in 1950?
Their first home away from Sindh was in Udaipur, where Dr. Hemandas was welcomed as personal doctor to the Maharaja, whose treatment he continued for nearly a year. They then moved to Indore where Dr. Hemandas tried, unsuccessfully, to set up a business venture retailing steel vessels for his son Moti. Dr. Hemandas, Totibai and Gopal, who was differently abled, moved to live in Bombay. Moti, his wife Kamala and their children Vijay and Ashok who were born in Sindh, and baby Ravi who was born in Jhansi, moved to Pimpri.
Dr. Hemandas’s father, Rupchand, had resolutely stayed on in Sindh. His wife Jasoda and his brother Thakurdas had both passed on; his brother Hiranand and his family were by this time settling in other parts of India.
Building up a professional practice takes years, and Dr. Hemandas was one of the hundreds of illustrious Sindhi professionals who had lost everything and did not have the resources to start all over
When the mass migration out of Karachi began, Rupchand moved to his darbar – a traditional Sindhi place of worship usually maintained by the generations of a family – in Kambar. As part of his duties, he swept its floors and referred to himself as “Darbar jo naukar Rupo – Rupo, a servant of the darbar”. When the attacks by Muslim mobs on gurmandars, tikanos, darbars, and other shrines where Hindus worshipped moved from the cities into interior Sindh, the devotees of the Kambar Darbar fled too, reconvening with help from its followers in Kandivali, a distant suburb of Bombay. Rupchand then moved to Bombay too. It was 1953, and the family was united in Colaba where Dr. Hemandas, high-profile and extremely popular in Sindh, was leading a commonplace life.
Building up a professional practice takes years, and Dr. Hemandas was one of the hundreds 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. Dr. Hemandas established the Colaba Sindhi Panchayat and Bombay Sindhi Panchayat where medical treatment was provided free of cost.
Read: Haridwar – Records of Sindhi Pilgrims’ Travel and Worship
In the completely altered life after Partition, Dr. 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 in the new life in Bombay, and it gave the comfort of home to many who had lost everything. And so Dr. Hemandas, reported by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn on August 15, 1947 as one of just sixteen prominent citizens honoured during the Independence Day celebrations in the new country, was now associated with the Ramayana recital that took place in his home at 4 pm every day. This made him one of the many illustrious Hindus of Sindh whose contributions lived on long after them, but who lost their own place in history.
Still, it must be said that when Dr. Hemandas passed away 1972, his funeral cortege was enormous, numbering hundreds. The local population probably wondered what all the fuss was about.
Read: The Satha-ghari Kirpalani family of Hyderabad Sindh
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Saaz Aggarwal is an independent researcher, writer and artist based in Pune, India. Her body of writing includes biographies, translations, critical reviews and humour columns. Her books are in university libraries around the world, and much of her research contribution in the field of Sindh studies is easily accessible online for example in:
https://www.sahapedia.org/sindhworkis-unique-global-diaspora https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZVBQWpTX4Uww1e-ZP_kT8A
Her 2012 Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland is an acknowledged classic. With an MSc from Mumbai University in 1982, Saaz taught undergraduate Mathematics at Ruparel College, Mumbai, for three years. After a career break when she had a baby, during which time she established a by-line as a humour writer, she was appointed features editor at Times of India, Mumbai, in 1989, where she launched Ascent, the highly successful HR pullout of the Times of India Group. From 1998 to 2006, she was HR and Quality Head of Seacom, an Information Technology company based in Pune. As an artist, she is recognized for her Bombay Clichés, quirky depictions of urban India in a traditional Indian folk style as well as a unique range of offerings at the annual Art Mandai event in Pune. Her art incorporates a range of media and, like her columns, showcases the incongruities of daily life in India. View all posts by Saaz Aggarwal
Courtesy: Saaz Aggarwal | Sindh Stories
