Karachi’s Khan Family Preserves 160‑Year‑Old Badayuni Pera Tradition Amid Fading Cross‑Border Ties

KARACHI: Muhammad Hamza Khan stirred a pan of reduced milk solids in a Karachi workshop earlier this month while workers around him shaped the brown, sugar‑coated sweets his family says it has made for more than 160 years.

The 30‑year‑old is the latest generation to produce Badayuni pera, a firm milk‑based sweet named after Budaun in northern India. His ancestors brought the recipe to Karachi after the 1947 Partition of British India. Although the family has continued making the sweet, contact with relatives who remained in India has waned.

“When Pakistan was created, my father and grandmother came to Pakistan,” Hamza’s father, 59‑year‑old Mehmood Alam Khan, told Arab News. “Then they started this work here around 1950. It has been running continuously here since then, and after them, I took over.”

Partition created the independent states of India and Pakistan and set off a vast movement of people across their new borders. More than 15 million are thought to have migrated in the months around 1947, taking family trades and food traditions with them.

The Khans trace their trade to an ancestor, Mumman Khan, who they say began making pera in Budaun around 1860. A pera, also spelled peda, is a South Asian sweet generally made from reduced milk and sugar. The family’s Badayuni version is cooked until brown and finished with a light coating of sugar.

“Our business is not of regular sweets,” Mehmood said. “We are just continuing the work that our great‑grandfather started.”

At the workshop, the mixture is cooked, cooled and shaped into small pieces. Hamza said they make 40 to 50 kilograms (88 to 110 pounds) on an average day, increasing production for large orders.

“We make it fresh every single day so that customers receive fresh stock,” he said.

A FAMILY ACROSS THE BORDER

Migration did not immediately end the family’s connection with Budaun. Mehmood said he personally spoke to relatives in India in 1974, the last contact he recalls. Older family members continued to speak to relatives by telephone for a time, Hamza said, but the numbers were eventually lost.

“Before my grandfather passed away, he remained in contact with his old relatives, including my father’s aunts,” Hamza told Arab News. “This communication happened through PTCL phone lines, but we no longer have those contact numbers.”

The Karachi family later heard that most of its relatives in India had stopped making the sweet. Hamza said they believed one shop associated with the family remained near Mumman Chowk in Budaun, but they have no current contact with its owners. Arab News could not independently establish who owns the shop today.

In Karachi, customers have also watched the business pass from one generation to the next. Muhammad Khalid, 62, said he had seen the family at work throughout his life.

“I have been seeing them for 60 years myself,” he told Arab News. “I was born in this very street and live right here.”

Another customer, Muhammad Waqas, 40, said he had known the sweet since childhood.

“The taste is exactly the same today as it was during their father’s and grandfather’s time,” he said.

For Hamza, the customers who return after decades are a link to the past he can still hold onto.

“It brings us immense joy when people come and mention that they used to visit with their elders or grandfathers during their childhood, often returning after 20 or 30 years,” he said. “We are incredibly proud to have kept our elders’ tradition alive, maintaining the original standard and taste so that people still visit and praise it today.”

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