The Bhagat Singh of Sindh: Hemu Kalani Remains One of Pakistan’s Unsung Heroes

What's interesting is that Kalani's death sentence galvanised the Sindhi elite across religious and political ranks.

The province of Sindh has played a seminal role in the successful struggle for Pakistan and even before that in anticolonial struggles going back to the First War of Independence of 1857; as Dr Jetho Lalwani, author of Azadi Ka Parwana: Shaheed Hemu Kalani also reminds us in the opening chapter of his book, translated into English from Sindhi by Mohan Gehani to coincide with the 75th anniversary of freedom from colonial rule.

From Hoshu Sheedi and Rooplo Kolhi in the 19th century to Tejoomal of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Azad Hind Fauj; Ali Ahmed Brohi, an organiser of the 1946 Royal Indian Navy Mutiny; Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi and GM Syed who moved the only resolution in favour of Pakistan’s creation in the 20th century, Sindhis have been intrinsic to the anti-colonial history of the Indian subcontinent.

Yet the book under review is about Hemu Kalani, a Sindhi Hindu freedom fighter who was even younger than Bhagat Singh when he laid down his life for the cause of India’s freedom in 1943.

A Daring Teen Revolutionary

This book is being reviewed on the birth centenary year of Hemu Kalani. For young Pakistani readers in particular – who are either denied access to learning history at all or are only introduced to selective texts – let me briefly give out the details of Kalani's life.

Kalani was born in Sukkur on 23 March 1923. He belonged to a modest, middle-class family which was staunchly pro-British. Hemu’s father was a contractor for building jails which housed anti-colonial freedom fighters.

According to the book, Hemu was a good student but an even better sportsman, excelling at both wrestling and cricket. Inspired by one of his uncles, Hemu became the leader of the Swaraj Sena, a youth organisation mobilising students against the British.

After organising many raids upon jails, trains, and police stations, Hemu Kalani was arrested on the night of 22 October 1942 while unfastening the bolts from the fishplates of a railway track in Sukkur upon which a British train was to travel to Quetta loaded with arms and ammunition.

Though Hemu was with four other comrades namely Lachhmandas Keswani, Hashoo Santani, Hari Lilani, and Tikam Bhatia, the latter managed their escape while he peacefully surrendered himself to the police.

Despite the pleas of his lawyers and his family, the nineteen-year-old revolutionary took sole responsibility for the plan, neither naming his accomplices nor repenting for his actions by asking for mercy from the colonial authorities.

Kalani’s Death Brought the Sindh Community Together

Eventually, a callous decision taken by the Martial Law Administrator led to a change in Hemu’s life sentence to a death sentence and young Hemu was executed on 21 January 1943, in Sukkur.

What is interesting to read and reflect upon is that while Hemu was apprehended at a time of rising communal tensions between the Hindus and Muslims of Sindh, his death sentence galvanised the Sindhi elite across religious and political ranks.

Subtitled, "A creative reconstruction of the life and times of the great martyr Hemu Kalani", it is clear that the book is not a straightforward historical account of the legendary martyr since neither the writer nor the translator – both Sindhis born before partition in areas comprising Pakistan now – is a trained historian and at many places, the artistic license has been taken to reimagine particular incidents of Hemu Kalani’s life.

For example, the reader is not sure whether the wrestling incident described in Chapter Four, where Hemu defeated a white wrestler, ever took place. Similarly, the details of the trial and scenes from Hemu’s sentencing in Chapter Eleven have not yet been made public. So the reader may discern that the writer again takes creative license to imagine these scenes and seems to be inspired by the much-publicised trial against the Punjabi revolutionary Bhagat Singh and his comrades Sukhdev and Rajguru, who were executed in Lahore a decade earlier.

However, a dissenting note must be added here. At a couple of places within the book, the translator claims that the four aforementioned comrades of Kalani who made themselves public many years after his execution and India’s subsequent independence claimed to be part of the anti-British resistance with him. Especially that fateful night when he was attempting to derail the train, falsifying their association with him.

A Forgotten Patriot

As far as mainstream public messages through the media and teaching history through curricula are concerned, the establishment in India is fast trying to reinvent its past. Its desire is to create an amalgam of mythology and history that suits the current dispensation in power, popularly known as 'Hindutva'.

It was alarming to notice on an Indian television channel that the Jama Masjid in Delhi was, in fact, Yamuna Mandir. That is taking the Taj Mahal-being-a-temple argument to the next level.

In the case of Pakistan, our establishment has – as the expression goes – "been there, done that." For instance, we can raise a statue of Ghazi Ertugrul in Lahore to appease Turkish sentiments, but will not restore the name of Muhammad ibn Qasim Park on the banks of the Indus in Sukkur after the city’s most illustrious citizen – Hemu Kalani.

It is a matter of shame too that the ancestral house of Kalani located on Mirki Street in Old Sukkur where Hemu was born and whose photographs are available online is in a dilapidated state; thanks to the constant rains and now the recent floods. The state of Pakistan will do nothing to renovate it and make it a national monument, at least in Hemu Kalani’s centenary year.

Many more instances can be cited here. Even if one accepts the argument that Hemu Kalani’s family migrated to India after partition, what stops us from adequately commemorating the Babrra massacre near Charsadda, the Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre in Peshawar, and the resistance put up by Hoshu Sheedi and Rooplo Kolhi in Sindh?

The only savior, in this case, can be the creation and propagation of an alternative memory bank to be able to understand our history and civilisations – its successes and failures, peaks and pitfalls.

(The author is a Lahore-based, award-winning translator and researcher. He was recently in the United Kingdom to access British archives pertaining to the case (against), trial and execution of Hemu Kalani. He can be reached at: [e-mail] and tweets at @raza_naeem1979. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)