From Ismaili Net 

The Ismailis celebrated the occasion of Navroz with great pomp and jubilation for the first time with the Imam on Indian soil on March 21, 1843 in Jerruk, where few marriages were also performed in presence of the Imam. On the day of Navroz, the Imam declared Jerruk as his headquarters (darkhana) in India and reappointed Datoo, another son of Merali as the Mukhi of Jerruk Jamatkhana. It became a place of rendezvous of the Ismailis from Kutchh in south, Sind and Baluchistan in the west and the Punjab and the Frontier in the north.

Vesso and Vali were very rich and their reputation prompted the jealousy of their implacable enemies, who were in search of an opportune moment to strike them. In sum, the Ismailis in Jerruk lived at that time amidst the teeth of bitterest opposition and harsh storms.

The Jokia tribe originally the Summa tribe of Rajputs, resided in Gharo, near Thatta. Their chief, who was known as the Jam, ruled them. According to “Gazetteer of the Province of Sindh” (Bombay, 1927, 1st vol., p. 8), “The Jokias infested the Delta two centuries ago, robbing merchants, and dominated the country about Karachi under the Mirs, enjoying lucrative privileges in return for the duty of furnishing a contingent of fighting men when required.”

The Kalmatis, who are wrongly associated with the Karmatis, were the Baluchi tribe in Makran, where they lived for some time before coming to Sindh

Most of the Abyssinian slaves in Sindh were imported from Muscat and other harbors of the eastern coast of Arabia, known as the Nomeria, Lumria, Naumardi or Numeri. Some of them constituted a large part of the population of Las Bela and held most of the hills at the time of British conquest. In the large block of hill between Sehwan, Kotri and Karachi the principal inhabitants were the Numeris.

The Kalmatis, who are wrongly associated with the Karmatis, were the Baluchi tribe in Makran, where they lived for some time before coming to Sindh. They penetrated into Mirpur Sakaro in district Thatta, where their chief obtained a jagir on the condition that he would muster his tribe for the defence of Thatta when required.

Most of the Abyssinian slaves in Sindh were imported from Muscat and other harbors of the eastern coast of Arabia, known as the Nomeria, Lumria, Naumardi or Numeri

In the beginning of 1843, these three tribes, i.e., the Jokia commanded by Jam Meherali, Numeri led by Malik Ahmed Khan and Kalmati headed by Malik Ibrahim Khan; gathered together under the orders of the Mirs of Hyderabad to attack the British camp at Karachi, but they failed and retreated.

These three tribes, comprised of 4000 armed men, then proceeded from Thatta to Jerruk headed by Mir Sher Muhammad Khan upon the instructions from Hyderabad, while Muhammad Khan Khushak turned towards Thatta with 2000 soldiers. In the encounter, about 10 Ismailis are reported to have been killed near Thatta. He then joined the principal force of Sher Muhammad Khan to launch their hostile operations against Jerruk.

Hitherto, these tribes had threatened to attack Jerruk a dozen times or so, but failed. On the evening of March 23, 1843, the Aga Khan had just finished his dinner, and was preparing for a rest on a swing when all of a sudden, a faithful in immense fear rushed, bringing the intelligence that a large body of Numeris with the help of the Jam Jokia had arrived within a mile of Jerruk, that he himself had seen them, and hurried on to give the Imam news, lest he and his heroes should be attacked unawares. It is narrated that a group of the people belonging to the Mallick and Numeri, the deadly enemies of the Ismailis, also joined Sher Muhammad Khan, each among them was shouting, “Vesso, Vesso” and “Vali, Vali”, indicating their overt hostility and derogatory designs for Vesso and Vali. Soon the enemies in the most ferocious and rapacious mood, dashed into the town.

Three tribes, comprising of 4000 armed men proceeded from Thatta to Jerruk headed by Mir Sher Muhammad Khan upon the instructions from Hyderabad and. Muhammad Khan Khushak turned towards Thatta with 2000 soldiers. In the encounter, about 10 Ismailis are reported killed near Thatta.

On that occasion, about one thousand Ismailis, men, women and children are reported to have gathered from far and near in Jerruk. Vesso and his two brothers, Vali and Mukhi Datoo, fearing large massacre of the Ismailis, came out with Holy Koran on their heads, requesting the raiders not to kill the innocent people. Instead of showing mercy, the Baluchi chief Ahmed Khan Qajar came forward and beheaded the three brothers inhumanly and quenched the thirst of jealousy with their blood. According to another tradition, some enemies dismounted from their camels and horses and entered the town with unshielded swords, asking each one, “Where are Vesso and Vali?” It is also said that both Vesso and Vali kept themselves hidden into the heap of unginned cotton. When the enemies found their whereabouts, Ahmed Khan Qajar set it on fire at once. Mukhi Datoo is said to have rushed to extinguish it, but the enemies killed him brutally. In sum, Vesso, Vali and Datoo became the first victims. Looking an overwhelm fire, the morale of the people fell. It spread so much terror and panic that no one knew what was actually happening, and the people began to flee in this chaos.

Some enemies mounted at night on the hill behind the residence of the Ismailis and sent forth a murderous rain of arrows wildly on the town to cause havoc. Soon afterwards, they launched a nocturnal assault from two sides and began to kill the innocent Ismailis indiscriminately. The stalwarts of the small force of the Imam came out to fight with the large army and subdued their attack. At that very moment, the Imam is reported to have predicted that, “The Mirs will no longer remain the rulers of Sind.”

The Aga Khan spurred his fleet horse and advanced briskly at full gallop, penetrating the front ranks of the enemies and fought against overwhelming odds. He was dressed only in a cotton shirt without any protective armour. In this skirmish the handful Ismaili champions forced the enemies to retreat to their fort. The Imam soon wheeled his small squadron and launched a reinforced attack on the fort, not too far from Jerruk. In pursuit, his horse all of a sudden skidded and he also fell on the ground. He was lying swooned on the ground with four teeth broken. The Ismailis quickly hurled themselves into the fray and shielded their master. They are reported to have said to the Imam to give up the fighting and go to Hyderabad for necessary treatment and they would fight and repulse the invaders. Some thirty Ismailis found however difficulties, but managed to escape the battlefield and brought the Imam safely in Hyderabad. H.T. Lambrick writes in “Sir Charles Napier and Sind” (London, 1952, p. 157) that, “The Agha Khan soon afterwards surprised at Jherruk by a body of Baluchis, and had some difficulty in escaping to Hyderabad with a handful of his men.” Before leaving the battlefield, the Aga Khan ordered his cousin, Muhammad Jafar Khan and a certain Mirza Ahmed to rush back to the town along with the message of assurance and treat those who were injured.

The skirmish took place at the outskirts of Jerruk with three principal tribes, while the Numeri and Mallick tribes plundered the town, and snatched forcibly what they found from the guest Ismailis. Soon afterwards, the Jokias also joined and pillaged the house of the Aga Khan

Remnants of the Ismaili cavalry that had survived at the fort, were grouped into a fighting force afresh and gave a tough resistance against the large hosts. Equipped with abundant stamina and vitality with daring and chivalric advance, they eventually turned back the attack. When the enemies took to their heels, they returned to the town, where they found fires everywhere and the dead bodies. The attacking tribes had also gone away. This marked an end of the Battle of Jerruk. It is related that the local people had closed their business for three days, and the atmosphere of the town remained as tense as ever.

It should be noted that the skirmish took place at the outskirts of Jerruk with three principal tribes, while the Numeri and Mallick tribes plundered the town, and snatched forcibly what they found from the guest Ismailis. Soon afterwards, the Jokias also joined and pillaged the house of the Aga Khan and took away a cash money of twenty lac of rupees and the boxes of gold and silver, valuing three lac rupees. The Imam did not mind over the loss of his wealth and sent no person in its pursuit. It is further related that they had plundered the house of Vesso and Vali and carried off 20 kg gold and a large deposit of silver on bullock carts.

In the meantime, the British army inflicted defeat to Sher Muhammad Khan in Hyderabad, who fled from the battlefield. Soon after his recovery, the Aga Khan came in the British camp and stayed with Sir Charles Napier for few days as his guest. Sir Charles Napier was aggrieved on the tragedy of Jerruk and demonstrated his heartfelt sympathy and paid rich tributes to the martyrs. He also offered to bear the loss, but the Imam refused it and said that he had no intention to take revenge. The Aga Khan returned to Jerruk very soon. When the awe-stricken followers beheld their spiritual master in the town, they crowded around him reverently and drew a breath of immense relief.

The incident of Jerruk took a heavy toll of lives and materials of the Ismailis. The dead bodies were buried in a mass-grave in the heart of Jerruk, known as Ganji Shahidan, near the residence of the Imam. The Imam offered Fatiha and paid a glowing and well-deserved tributes to the martyrs and said, “These heroes are like the martyrs of Karbala and their memory shall ever remain green, even their flesh shall never decay.”

According to “Athar-i Muhammadi” (p. 136), the Imam also recited the following touching couplets in Persian on that occasion:-

Gardad  chu  kharab  tan  chigam  jan    bashad,

                                     Viran    chi     shaud    hubab    aman      bashad.

“No affliction should prevail when a body perished, because the soul exists (as if) the bubbles are smashed, but the ocean exists.”

Darushud        ishq       zianish     sud     ast,

                                    Gar jan biruvad  che  baak   janan  bashad.

“Love became a medicine, whose deficit is a profit for me. Doesn’t matter if a body is perished, but one who gives life is in existence.” According to the report of “Sind Observer” (Karachi, April 3, 1949), “Seventy dead bodies of Khojas buried 107 years ago at Imam Bara in Jherruck town, 94 miles by road north-east of Karachi, were found to be fresh on being exhumed recently in the course of digging the foundation for a new mosque for the locality, a Sind government official disclosed. The bodies which lay in a common grave was again interred another site selected for the mosque. The Khojas were believed to have been murdered in a local feud 107 years ago according to local tradition in Jherruck.”

Seventy dead bodies of Khojas buried 107 years ago at Imam Bara in Jherruck town, 94 miles by road north-east of Karachi, were found to be fresh on being exhumed in the course of digging the foundation for a new mosque for the locality

It seems that the Ismailis, who had been present in Jerruk, took no serious notice of the incident and most of them seem to have related the tragedy, but a little in their native places. Not being inclined to perpetuate the struggle and thereby causing further bloodshed, the Imam most possibly seems to have advised his followers not to reckon the incident a serious matter.

The Imam is also said to have awarded sword to each Ismaili warrior who fought with desperate valour. The Imam was highly surprised with their fidelity and devotion. Among them, the best known persons were Khalikdina and his son, Rehmatullah of Gwadar, Count Subazi’ali (ov), Alidina and Baledina, the sons of Assa, etc.

Due to the paucity of historical evidence, it is difficult to ascertain the casualties of the Ismailis in Jerruk. Vesso and his brothers, Vali and Datoo were the first to be martyred. The famous Ismaili merchant of Hyderabad, called Assa had also sent his five sons, and three among them were killed in the encounter, whose names are not known. It is also reported that when the Aga Khan left Iran in 1842, skirting the rocky tracts of Baluchistan, a rumour spread in Gwadar that some Baluchi chiefs near Turbat intended to obstruct the Imam’s caravan. Thus, a group of the young Ismailis rapidly came forward and joined the Imam’s caravan near Turbat as the security guards as far as Jerruk. In the ensuing battle of Jerruk, a young Ismaili of Gwadar, called Thanvar was martyred and his brother, Sayan and another Ismaili, Meru Jindani were wounded. Meru Jindani got his thumb cut and became known as Meru Mundh in Gwadar. It appears that most of the martyrs belonged to Mulla Katiar, about 32 miles from Jerruk and Kutchh, who had come for Imam’s didar. Some members of Akhund family were also killed in the battle. It must be learnt that an Ismaili of Syria, known as Bawa or Baba in Iran had settled in Shahr-i Babak in Kirman, most possibly in the period of Ismaili Imam Abul Hasan Ali (1730-1792). He and his descendant taught Arabic to the family members of the Imams. Among them, Pasand Ali Bawa and his son Muhammad Ali Bawa also migrated with the Aga Khan from Iran and had been in Jerruk.

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Courtesy: Ismaili Net

Click here for Part-I, Part-II 

The post Jherruk and the Ismailis during the British rule (Part-III) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Kutchi, Migration, and East African Asian Identity in the Indian Diaspora

The author explores the historical origins of her family language, Kutchi, and its enduring legacy through years of migration and settlement across continents.

By Omme-Salma Rahemtullah  

Kutchi as a Religious Signifier in East Africa

While the changes to the Kutchi language as it traveled from India to East Africa came as no surprise, I was shocked to learn that it is now a language spoken only by Muslims in East Africa. While I am well aware that the divisions between different Asian groups in East Africa are clearly demarcated by religion – as evidenced, for example, in the different places of worship in different Asian neighborhoods in the cities of East Africa, and given that marriages across religious lines in these communities are rare – it was interesting to learn how language was also religiously coded.

Ronikali, another of the interviewees, grew up in Uganda and visited his mother’s village in India in the Kutch region during his childhood. He was confused at hearing Hindus speaking Kutchi, he told me “all these Indians there, they were Hindus but they were talking Kutchi. I’m confused…In Uganda Biju Bhai or Dhyar Bhai [Hindu names] is not talking Kutchi, they’re talking Gujarati. When I went up there [to India] all these Champabhain [Hindu name] everybody talking Kutchi. I thought they were Muslims like us, but they’re not; it was kind of confusing, they were all talking Kutchi.” Similarly, in a 1972 study of Asians in East Africa, Agehananda Bharati divides Hindu Gujaratis (i.e., those from the state of Gujarat) between Gujarati-speaking Patels and Kutchi-speaking Lohanas (two Hindu castes), but points out that the younger generations of Lohanas in East Africa no longer speak Kutchi; they find it embarrassing and switched to Gujarati, which is seen as being more prestigious. A similar sentiment was felt by Gujarati Indian poet Manisha Joshi who in a 2016 interview said “I like Kutchi, as it represents the culture and simplicity of people speaking it and also the unpolished, rough intimacy that the language consists” and that, because as a writer thought of “Kutchi as a ‘regional language’ and Gujarati as a more outward, refined one.”

However, this doesn’t fully explain the religious differences among Kutchi speakers in East Africa. Muslims in the region are not unsophisticated, and Ismaili and Ithna-Asheri Muslims are very well settled and relatively wealthy. A more convincing argument is made by Bharati about language being used in East Africa to cement religious and ethnic divisions. Ismailis and Ithna-Asheri are historically Muslim converts from Lohana Hindus in the 14th century, and Bharati highlights this well-known part of the history of these groups in order to emphasize Kutchi’s role as a point of contention: “The fact that the Ismaili Muslims have been speaking Cutchi with no embarrassment or diffidence might have prompted the Lohanas not to perpetuate it.” Kutchi and Gujarati are not, however, the only language indicators of religion in East Africa. In Tanzania, for example, Sunni Asians increasingly use Swahili as their religious language, and Balochis, having lost the Balochi language, now only speak Swahili (and English). Additionally, Ithna-Asheri Muslims speak Swahili as their home language more than Ismaili Muslims, likely owing to the fact that, until the 1970s, Ithna-Asheris tended to be from Zanzibar, and were more likely to intermarry with Africans and Arabs because of their closer theological affinity to Sunni Islam. As I continue my oral history interviews with non-Ismaili Muslim Ugandan Asian refugees in South Carolina, I am curious to explore this aspect of Kutchi use.

What of Kutchi in South Carolina?

The five interviews I have conducted so far were with Ismaili Muslims from Uganda currently living in South Carolina. All identified Kutchi as their home language and mother tongue. In this way I relate to them very much: I grew up speaking Kutchi at home, and, as I grew older, spoke a mix of Kutchi and English. As long as I can remember, Swahili was the language my parents spoke to each other when they did not want us kids to understand. And in turn my sister and I spoke to each other in French which, being Canadian, we learnt in school, when we didn’t want our parents to understand. My nephews, currently ranging in age from 3 to 10, do not speak Kutchi at all, but understand a few Gujarati words as well as a few Tamil words, as their father is Tamil. The Kutchi language, it seems, is dying with subsequent generations, but growing in its place is a unique mixture of all the languages that have defined our migrations. The Kutchi language, it seems, is dying with subsequent generations, but growing in its place is a unique mixture of all the languages that have defined our migrations. Like my family in Toronto, the families in South Carolina that I interviewed can fall in and out of several languages in one sentence, taking words from one, syntax from another and conjugation from yet another.

There is, though, something incredibly distinctive about Kutchi for me: the way it tells the history of the migration of my family, and the way it conjures a strong sense of African Asian identity. This identity is one of mixed migrations and imperial dislocations: from West India to East Africa to North America, from Kutchi to Swahili to English, each piece adding to the roadmaps of our lives, never fully leaving any one place or language behind.

My father almost never speaks Gujarati. In my family, my mother’s side speaks Gujarati, my maternal grandparents having migrated to East Africa from Rajkot, Gujarat, whereas my father’s side has been in East Africa for at least four generations, and speak Kutchi. (Though we have been able to trace one of my great-great grandparents to Kanalus, Gujarat, a Gujarati speaking part of the state, we know less about the others; we’ve decided, though, that we must have some family down the line from the Rann of Kutch – our only indication being the endurance of spoken Kutchi.) Rarely, my father will speak with my masi (mohter’s sister) in Gujarati, jumping in on a conversation already having started in Gujarati. When my dad says even one sentence in Gujarati, I am caught off guard, and, for a second it throws me off, I even kind of laugh at the strangeness of it. Speaking Gujarati makes him seem so Indian to me; when he switches back to Kutchi, I feel settled again, once more in the comfort of my Tanzanian Asian father. Maybe that’s the box I’m always looking for whenever I need to fill out a form: my father tongue.

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Notes

– Historically, Ismailis used the now extinct Khojki script for the language; today, if Kutchi needs to be written, it’s done in the Gujarati or Hindi scripts, and, in the diaspora, it’s transliterated into Roman/English script.

– Kutchhi, Kachchi, Kachchhi, Kacci, and Cutchi, to name a few. There is no particular reason I use Kutchi, except that it was the first way I learnt how to spell it as a child and have used it ever since.

– By “Asian” I mean what in American parlance is “South Asian,” but in East Africa Indians whose ancestors migrated to East Africa in the mid 1800’s and early 1900’s are simply known, after 1947, as “Asian.”

–  While historical trade links between the west coast of India and the east coast of Africa go back centuries, permanent settlement of Indians in East Africa commenced in the mid to late 1800’s to the mid-1900s, starting with the colonial construction of the railway from Uganda to the coast of Kenya in the 1890s. The Uganda Railway used Indian indentured labour – over 35,000 “coolies” – of which only 1/5 remained in the region after their contract; this was followed by a more sizable and substantial migration of voluntary economic migrants to the coast and interiors of East Africa encouraged and facilitated by the structure of the British colonial empire. By the independence era of the 1960s there were 360,000 Asians living in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, many of whom were second or third generation East Africans.

– Up until independence, most East African education was segregated along racial lines, with Gujarati (because it was a written language) and English being a mode of instruction in Asian schools. Post-independence, Swahili became a mandatory language of instruction alongside English, and Gujarati faded away.

– Swahili is the lingua franca of East Africa.

– There was heated debate in my family’s WhatsApp group chat about whether the word tapelo is actually Kutchi or Gujarati, and we finally figured out (through Google translate and a friend from Gujarat) that the Gujarati word is tapeli.

– There is no extensive documentation of Swahili loan words in East African Kutchi, but there is some documentation and linguistic research into the opposite, that is, Kutchi loan words in Swahili. Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, in his 2008 presentation at the Workshop on Language Planning and Language Politics at the Central Institute of Indian Language in Mysore, India, shows that Indic loanwords in Swahili, often thought to have come from Gujarati, are more probably in fact Kutchi loan words. He proposes that this is due to early Indian settlers and traders in East Africa being from the Kutch coastal areas, whereas later settlements were Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi speakers: “the influence of these later Indians on the Swahili language and culture is thus not as strong nor deeply rooted as those of the earlier settlers.” For example, in Swahili a bangle is called a bangili, in Kutchi bangli, and in Gujarati bangadi.

– Translated to: “In the home we spoke Kutchi, our Kutchi was different, it wasn’t mixed with khathawari [meaning Kutchi from the region of Kutch/Kathiawar]. Now Kutchi has changed a bit, but my daddy was speaking lots of [pure] Kutchi. It’s like you know, like if you say excuse me or move a little further, my dad would say ‘paria hhat’, it means move forward. Ya we don’t say that now. So some of the words my dad used to use, he always used to say bhalah, which mean ‘that’s a good thing that happened’. So my brother in Romania when he sends me a message, he’ll say ‘bhalah that’s good news’ and I would say to him, when did you start saying ‘bhalah bhala’ you are younger than me even. When he remembers our father, he says ‘bhala’. The Kutchi that we speak has a lot of Swahili words in it.” Note that there is no standardized transliteration of Kutchi into English script, so I have used as much phonetic transliteration as I could hear. There is only one Kutchi language ‘dictionary’ that I was able to find, but it is a very informal project of the author and he provides the following ‘Accuracy Disclaimer’, which should also apply to any Kutchi I used here within: “Due to the cultural diversity of the Kutchi-speaking community, and the lack of formal information about the Kutchi language, the documentation posted on KLO is imperfect and should not be deemed 100% accurate. Instead, it should be used to aid the general understanding of the Kutchi language, enabling individuals to pair their backgrounds in the language with the documentation provided in order to synthesize theories that will be understood in their own respective communities.”

– In East Africa the following tightly held religious divisions are maintained: Sunni Muslims, Shia Ismailis Muslims, Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslims, Shia Bohora Muslims, Hindu Batia, Hindu Wania, Hindu Patel, Jains, Sikhs, Goan Catholics and a small Parsee community from Zanzibar.

– Different home languages is not a deciding factor in marriages within the same religion, and for Ismailis it is very common to have one parent’s family speak Gujarati at home and the other Kutchi; regardless of individual home languages, most family members speak both Kutchi and Gujarati fluently. Greg Thomson also found this to be the case in his study in Albuquerque, NM of Kutchi as a distinctively Ismaili ‘in-language’.

(Concludes)

Click here for Part I 

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About the Author

Omme-Salma Rahemtullah is a recent transplant to the American South – Columbia, South Carolina. Born in Tanzania and raised in Toronto, Omme’s work as a community programmer and academic has explored questions of identity, race and belonging. The Archival Creators Fellowship Program is made possible with a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Courtesy: SAADA

The post Tongue Tied – Kutchi across the Borders-II first appeared on Sindh Courier.