Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland

by Saaz Aggarwal

In 1947, as Independence approached, plans were made to partition the country into India and Pakistan. Punjab and Bengal would be split in two, with a part going to each country. Sindh, however, would be given intact to the new country, Pakistan. Hindus had been a well-integrated minority in Sindh for centuries, and would continue to be so.
However, the creation of a new country on religious lines mobilised the population along the new borders, creating terror and bloodshed in a way that no one could control. The Sindhi Hindus felt a growing fear and uncertainty and began to pack their bags to leave. Many believed they would return soon – when things settled down. As history tells us, things never ‘settled down’. The Sindhi Hindus left Sindh, never to return.
In their new, and often resentful, environment, they did not pause to feel sorry for themselves or to contemplate what they had lost. All their energy went into establishing themselves and restoring the lives of dignity and comfort they had been accustomed to.
Much has been documented about the Punjab Partition experience – but the Sindhis have never spoken. The generation of Sindhis uprooted by Partition was focussed on succeeding and did not have the comfort or confidence to pass on their heritage and memories, many painful, to their children. As the diaspora scattered around the world, they never looked back, never told their stories, intent on adapting to their new lives. Soon they had established themselves and even improved their situation. Unlike the Jews and Tibetans, they cast aside their traditions too easily. Unlike the Palestinians, they tore themselves away from their ancestral land. Somewhat like the gypsy Romani, they did not know how many they had lost – because they had not counted in the first place.
Using a narrative constructed of childhood memories from various sources, this book reconstructs life in Sindh before and during Partition. It is a journey into Sindh – its history, its beauty, different aspects of its culture and traditions, long-forgotten essential facts about Sindhi-ness.
While it is a tribute to the community for moving forward in difficult times, leaving behind their cultural heritage to make new lives for themselves – it is also a wake-up call to the Sindhi community that says, hey, enough time has passed; you can look back without those feelings of hostility and betrayal, to see who you are and where you came from.

Genres: India, Nonfiction, Short Stories

292 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Saaz Aggarwal is a contemporary Indian writer whose body of work includes biographies, translations, critical reviews and humour columns. As an artist, she is recognized for her Bombay Clichés, quirky depictions of urban India in a traditional Indian folk style, view www.saazaggarwal.com. Her art incorporates a range of media and, like her columns, showcases the incongruities of daily life in India. Her 2012 book, 'Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland', established her as a researcher in Sindh studies.
Book: The Songbird on my Shoulder (2011) http://www.songbirdonmyshoulder.blogs...
Book: Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland (2012) http://www.klisma.in/viewdeal/books/b...

Reviews

[Nirmal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had some misgivings about this book as somewhat simplistic and trite book about sindhi partition tales. But it is a decent book. Its strength are as following …

1. Includes extensive references and extracts from the most renowned books about Sindh.
2. Has good real photos of sindhi places (which author has got with the help of Pakistani friends)
3. A detailed collection of personal anecdotes from various sindhi migrants/partition victims including several recent migrants.
4. Generally does not romanticizes the events
5. Well Designed
6. Loaded with content

Its problems are as following..

1. Inconsistent narration.. At times chapters are written with Author as narrator at other times it’s the actual person. Sometimes it is difficult to follow who is the narrator especially during those times when narrator is changed implicitly within a chapter.

2.Banal details in the several anecdotes. In some cases these are minor irritants whereas in some other cases they affect the rhythm of the narrative.

3.Some anecdotes have lack of details wherein an important detail has been described in one or two statements without giving full details or insight of the event.

4.Lack of structure : At times book feels like collection of raw information than a structured analysis and information.


Despite its shortcomings , overall it is still a good effort especially on a topic which has dearth of books. So it is commendable and book is recommended for anyone interested in Sindh/sindhis.

[Krishna Sruthi Srivalsan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Talk of Sindh, and all I can think of is the river God, Jhulelal, the whirling dervishes of the Sufi tradition, and the beats of 'Dama dam mast qalander'. This book is a deeply poignant memoir which seeks to enlighten the reader on the history of Sindh, a land of peaceful coexistence, and how ugly politics drove the Sindhi Hindus out of their ancestral homeland. Forced into exile, they had to build their lives from scratch, and in the process of assimilating in a foreign land, they nearly sacrificed their own culture and traditions.

I loved the book; it's a great read for history enthusiasts. Some interesting tidbits I picked from the book:
- The author's mother's family originally came from Larkano, which is also the homeland of the Bhutto family. It was interesting to note that they were neighbors. I wonder how things would have been in a pre partition world.
-I loved reading about the Thattai Bhatia community and their connection with Sindh. I spent a major part of my childhood in Bahrain, where I used to frequently attend bhajan at the Krishna mandir there. Till now, I had always assumed the traditions followed in the temple were Sindhi, but I finally got a better understanding of the cultural symbols and traditions at play.
- Sindhi originally followed a Perso-Arabic script (I was so surprised when I recognized the alef-bey similar to Arabic. After Partition, with the migration of a large number of Sindhi Hindus to India, the language was taught using the Devanagari script.

There were some heart wrenching poems in the book; to lose one's homeland and become a refugee in a foreign land is agonizing. 'Cities Ran Amuck' by Motilal Jotwani and Zubair Soomro's 'Borders' in particular touched a chord with me.

As I finished the book, the one image that haunts my mind is that of a woman carving a message into her cupboard as she prepared to flee her home. 'Cursed be anyone who opens this cupboard belonging to Vindhri Tejomal!' When I read that line, I couldn't help but imagine what Vindhri's thoughts would have been at that time. What did she try to take with her as she fled to safety? Did she imagine that she could never come back to her home? Was it better to live in fear but still be in their own land, or was it better to become an uninvited guest in a foreign land which remained indifferent to them?

[Sanya Lakhani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Bought this as a gift for my 87 year old grandfather who was born in undivided India, as a reminder of where he came from. I also bought myself a copy to understand my roots and culture better. Anecdotal and easy to read, I preferred the pace to Nandita Bhavnani's The Making of Exile.

[Blatantly Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

before I am anything else, I am my mother‘s tongue, I am part of history that is older than partition, older than the differences that divide us as nations. before anything else, I am Sindhi. born and bred in Sindh.

I think it’s important to understand not just my own roots but of those who lived alongside my parents, their parents, Sindhi families who were born in Sindh but had to leave everything behind after the 1947 partition that split so many homes into two. Saaz Aggarwal has beautifully revived the memories of her family in this book, she has compiled pieces of history that had been overlooked, her work has brought to life an exile that barely exists in the partition archives.

When India and Pakistan declared independence, Punjab was split into two but Sindh was not. Sindh remained part of Pakistan and many families who had lived there all their lives had to flee because it was no longer safe to be a Hindu minority living in Sindh. Saaz describes the memories of her parents, her siblings and how their lives had been, living in Sindh. It’s heartbreaking to think that so much of what I grew up with is something many families missed terribly after partition. Her book is a bittersweet reminder of how much was taken from our people after the British colonisation.

This book is exactly what Saaz has mentioned it is in the preface. It is stories of people and their families who had to leave Sindh during or after partition. It has anecdotes of the past, a land no longer free for those who grew up there. A few areas that did not sit well with me were the style of writing. I couldn't tell if Saaz was the one narrating the story or someone else. I also felt like something the stories would be repetitive and should have been written with themes in mind.

“...𝐰𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐲, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐲 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧”

- 𝐒𝐚𝐚𝐳 𝐀𝐠𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐥, 𝐒𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐡: 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐀 𝐕𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝

[Manoj Dayaram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful account of several stories from Sindhi's past. It's quite enjoyable if you have the ties to the ancestries, proving to be rather enlightening if you've lived with a relatively quiet Sindhi household. I doubt it would be of much interest to someone who is not Sindhi though.

[Yash Kukreja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in a tightly knit Sindhi community, I was always curious about our heritage and origins. Unlike the excerpts mentioned in this book, I spent the 20 years of life living in a colony where Sindhi is spoken on the streets by everyone, from the young ones who had barely had any idea about the erstwhile Sindhi Society to the Older ones who were born in Sindh. I was even educated in a Sindhi school, with Pre dominantly Sindhi teachers and a overwhelming Sindhi majority in the class. Despite all of this privileged access to my roots, no one talked or discussed about our story, all we were taught is that after partition we shifted to India, leaving our well off life behind. Period. Nothing else. Thankfully, this book gave me an opportunity to read all about my culture and heritage that I always wanted to know.

This book opens up a window in time and takes us back to the pre partition life of our ancestors, the stories are documentations of the different people who lived in the different villages and districts of the Sindh. The narrative is very simple and engaging, and engrosses the reader completely and fully, as if we are walking right there in the ancient Sindh. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to have some idea about Sindh.

[Preethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaving one’s homeland without knowing when they’d return and ending up homeless and as refugees only to begin building their life from scratch again has to be one of the most painful experiences to anyone. And yet we see this story repeated almost everyday - with almost nothing done to address this.

In this book, the author brings her family’s and others’ experiences in their homeland in Sindh - how they decided to leave their home, the religious harmony they lived in and then not, the play of politics in their lives, their lives in a new land that looked at them with distrust and how they continued building a prosperous community in their new home.
Each story gives a good perspective of how beautiful Sindhis’ lives were in Sindh and the adjustments they had to make to live in partitioned-India - and how none of them have any resentment towards either country for all their troubles.

To me, the loss of a way of living, the threat to the spoken language and hence literature, the forgetting of culture and stories - these are of equal importance for an immigrant refugee population , and am glad to know that this is being addressed thanks to the determined people of the Sindh.

[Riz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fascinating book is about the stories of Hindu Sindhis from the time of the British India to their migration to India after the partition where they found themselves in a sorry plight and how they gradually got out of it by paying heavy prices.

Sindh suffered greatly from the migration of the Hindus comprised 30% of the population and paid 80% of the income tax. Moreover, it also created a vacuum in Sindh from which it badly suffered because the Hindus had the majority in the middle class. One can also imagine how well-established this community was in Sindh and how they had to start from scratch in India.

I really enjoyed reading this book because I also belong to a Sindhi household, albeit a Muslim Sindhi. This book made me very much nostalgic about the times when my late grandmother was alive and how she used to tell me interesting stories about her childhood in pre-partitioned India and to my surprise some of her stories resonated with the stories in this book.

[Karishma Udit Chhatrapati · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book, unraveled so much about the inherited qualities of being a Sindhi. It was as though a mirror is reflecting my roots. Through a collection of stories so beautifully crafted together, I felt like I was part of this journey from Sindh to India, and the rest of the world, considering how Sindhis had to find their destination for new beginnings.

I feel this is a must read for those seeking to learn about Sindhis, as well as those who feel embarrassed being Sindhi because the jokes and acidic statements against the people who belong to this community.

[JAYA DADLANI · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read for Sindh/Sindhi enthusiasts.
The References and stories are impressive.
Narration is not structured well. Also, the author only got in touch with influential Sindhis. But many of the Sindhi families were not lucky enough to be related to the most influential politicians, freedom fighters or even educated Sindhis. So for someone to be able to relate with the stories, I would have recommended more diverse pack of memoirs.

[Vishal Talreja · Rating 4 out of 5]

For years I have felt a sense of incompleteness about my family's history who came from undivided India in Sindh. This year, I decided to delve into the stories and picked up this book as a first one. Loved the stories and some of them helped me connect the dots of stories I had heard from my own grandparents. The stories in the book seem incomplete and so it was also with the stories from my grandparents. They didn't share many stories with their children so the stories hang orphaned as meandering clouds in the sky. Its a journey that has just begun.

[Sanjay Banerjee · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book provides glimpses of different aspects of life in pre-partition Sindh.

[Maher Gidwani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful to read about my culture

[Farhaad Hussain · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must for people wholove knowing about hoe things were in the past!