“…Sindhi Hindus in India have already moved to the dominant global mode of cosmopolitanism and accepted its ethnocidal thrust as an inescapable part of the contemporary world.” So goes Ashis Nandy in his forward to Nandita Bhavnani’s The Making of Exile and the Partition of India, a book which I’ve wanted to read since my Sindhi mother first acquired it a couple of years ago. Nandy’s introduction gets to why I’ve wanted to read it. I am half-Sindhi, but it has always nagged at me what exactly that means. I cannot speak the language. My limited culinary skills do not extend to Sindhi food. To be frank, I’m not even sure what would fall under that category beyond papad. I have never watched a Sindhi movie, though it’s unclear if an industry even exists. I am not steeped in Sindhi Hindu tradition, whatever that is. Of course, I have never been to Sindh, though as far as I aware, no one still alive in my family has been to post-partition Sindh. It would only be a bit of an exaggeration to say that my knowledge of Sindhi culture comes to knowing of the stereotype that Sindhi Hindus are miserly businessman whose names normally end in -ani. There’s a good chance I’m uniquely disconnected from my heritage - even the most culturally aware of us have a connection to old country which is essentially elevated LARPing - but what Bhavnani posits is that disconnection, albeit to a lesser extent than mine, is a defining attribute of what it is to be Sindhi Hindu post-partition.
Unlike Punjabis and Bengalis, the two main most chronicled ethnic groups of partition, there was no Sindh in India to go back to, no homeland to hold on to. In a way it makes the Sindhi Hindu partition closer to that of the muhajirs - after all, Muslims from Gujarat, Hyderabad, or wherever else in Indian sans Bengal and Punjab were not going to a partitioned Muslim version of their state, though even then, this comparison does not work fully, with the muhajirs entering Pakistan often coming with the vision a better life in a country for them. In fact, Bhavnani and her subjects hinge much of her history on the contrast and relation between the two groups. The expectations of Sindhi Hindus and Muhajirs immediately post-independence are opposites. Whereas the muhajir expectation is one of a new country with almost utopian possibilities, many Sindhi Hindus saw Indian independence and the partition that actually happened as a loss and a betrayal of their expectation - for many of them, the Indian independence that they fought so hard for resulted in them not even being in India. Bhavnani also portrays the muhajirs as the successors of the Hindus; in one sense, quite literally, as a muhajir-led riot in Karachi successfully achieved in aim of persuading the Hindus to leave so the muhajir refugees could occupy their properties, but also in a metaphotical sense, with muhajirs sliding into the Sindhi Hindu role of being the property and business owners of the province itself.
Bhavnani also just not discuss physical dislocation, but psychological dislocation as well due to differences of the Sindhi partition experience from those of the Bengalis and Punjabis. One of the most striking things I learned from reading was how few people in power wanted the exodus of Sindhis from Pakistan to actually happen. Many in the Pakistani government saw there being a utility to having a minority population of Hindus inside the country’s borders, as the ability to hold Pakistani Hindus “hostage” would serve as “insurance” against anything harmful happening to India’s still quite large post-partition Muslim population. This had enough currency that chief minister of Sindh made it difficult for Sindhi Hindus to legally emigrate from the country immediately post-partition. On the Indian side, many initially did not see a need for Sindhis to migrate to India - after all, they were not victims of the type of horrific violence which defined the Punjabi and Bengali partition experiences. Though he eventually changed his mind, even as eminent a figure as Gandhi initially said the Sindhis should stick it out in Pakistan. Once in India, they did not do a great job of playing the role of the “perfect victim.” Beyond the relative lack of violence they dealt with as a reason to flee, many were apparently unwilling to take on manual or agricultural labor jobs, leading to charges of entitlement. This was only one of a surfeit of negative perceptions that they had to deal with in India - that this was a group of quasi-Muslim, hard-drinking, meat-loving miserly businessman who were ready to cheat you for your money.
Did reading Bhavnani’s book bring me any closer to my essential Sindhiness? A little bit, though as someone two migrations away from Sindh, any type of engagement with the culture or history would. A large part of me still wants to visit Pakistan one day to see where both sides of my family originally came from. That being said - and maybe this is not the best to admit - I sometimes do wonder what the point of that would be, and especially if there is a reason to visit the cities in Sindh where my family is originally from. Hindu culture in all of the country, let alone the cities, is mostly gone, and even Sindhi culture in general is apparently far from dominant in urban Sindh. This isn’t a unique situation by any means - the often forced migrations of the 20th century have had these effects across the world - but I am left wondering what heritage there even would be to pursue, what family history there even is to see that I cannot just get from Bombay.
