The book "Bantva Kal Aur Aaj" belongs to the first category because events and happenings are narrated by different writers on the strength of their own experiences and observations.
In pre-partition days, Bantva was a small town of Manavadar State near Junagadh in Kathiawar of Gujrat Province of India. It had a population of around 30,000. Belonging to the Memon community, the people were mostly Muslims. Bantva had four to five Memon business families who had their head office at Bantva. Each group had 100 to 200 branches spread all over India. Most of the famous Pakistani businessmen of 50s like the Dada Ltd, Adam Ltd, Arag Ltd, Dawood Group etc belonged to Bantva.
After partition, Junagadh signed an agreement of annexation with Pakistan. However, India did not accept it. India occupied the State through the Indian Army and the volunteers of the so-called Aarzee Hukumat on 9th November 1947. Manawadar had also announced the decision to join Pakistan but the signing of the formal instrument of annexation was somehow delayed. This provided an opportunity for the Indian Army to occupy both Bantva and Manawadar on 3rd October, 1947.
Life was not difficult for the residents of Bantva till 9th November, 1947 when Junagadh was occupied by the Indian Army. On 14th November, 1947, the Hindu population is stated to have attacked Muslim houses. In the presence of Sikh soldiers and despite night curfew, they took away everything they could find. The next day the Muslims of Bantva decided to migrate to Pakistan. The entire Muslim population specially the Memon community, left Bantva within a week. The book narrates these events lucidly in chronological order.
The book contains many memoirs, selected by the compiler, Abdur Razzaq Thaplawala. Thaplawala left Bantva at an early age reportedly. Yet most of the happening of the last days, before fall of Junagadh, are part of his memoirs.
The book contains write-ups by known businessmen like the Late Kassim Dada, Moosa Lawai, Aziz Kanya, besides several articles contirbuted by the compiler. These articles include details of culture and traditions of the residents of Bantva which include rituals at weddings, wedding dinners, vivid accounts of celebrations of Muslim festivals viz. Moharram, Milaad-un-Nabi, Giarhvi Sharif and Ramazan.
The memoirs also contain recitals of the way special dishes were cooked on these occasions as well as details of dresses and customs of the residents. The Memon women observed strict purdah in those days. The women folk used to wear a Burqa which we still see in NWFP. The Burqas in Bantva were invariably black.
The recital titled "Birth Place Revisited" by Thaplawala contains details of his visit to Bantva in 2005. This also has photographs of places of interest including those of the mosques which later turned into ruins, because all the Muslims had migrated from Bantva and there was no one to take care of them.
A number of photographs of old buildings, taken in 1982 & 1988, are also included in the book. The 2005 photographs are in colour, apart from photos of the mosques in depleted condition. They show the shops which the immigrants, mostly Sindhi Hindu migrants from Pakistan, settled in Bantva, had established.
The shops are doing good business because Bantva now has a population of 18,000 Sindhi Hindus. Bantva has schools with Sindhi as the 'medium of instruction'.
The book is worth reading by the elders who had migrated from Bantva by the people of the present generation, keen to know how their forefathers lived before the Partition of the sub-continent. The book contains several photographs of Quaid-e-Azam, who visited Bantva in January, 1940 for collection of money for the Press Fund. He was not disappointed as a major portion of the Press Fund came from the Memons of Bantva and other towns. The Bantva Memon Jamaat and compiler, deserves appreciation.