Uttara Shahani, RSC Research Fellow in the History of Forced Migration, has co-authored an Op-ed in the Times of India commenting on the enduring impacts of Partition on the Sindhi Hindu community 70 years on.
Extract:
“After Partition, Sindhi Hindu refugees left the areas that became Pakistan and settled all over the newly defined territory of India (and, indeed, all over the world). In the absence of a state to call their own (unlike the refugees of Punjab and Bengal), Sindhi leaders in India like Ram Panjwani hoped that Jhulelal would unite a displaced, stateless community. The Sindhi intelligentsia aimed to preserve what they called Sindhyat (Sindhiness) at a time when their cultural and religious practices were often disparaged. Scholars such as Rita Kothari, Michel Boivin, and Dominique Sila-Khan have shown how Sindhi refugees in India faced stigma for their syncretic Hindu, Sufi, and Nanakpanthi practices. To fit into states across India, Sindhis learned new scripts, spoke new languages, changed their diets, and sometimes dropped their surnames.”