What we read in 2022: The News on Sunday 25 Dec 2022

As we bid adieu to 2022, TNS turns to South Asian writers and authors to ask them about the titles they read this year that have stayed with them. Here, in alphabetical order, is what they say: What we read in 2022

Episode 308: Saaz Aggarwal Enters a Vanished Homeland

From The Seen and The Unseen by Amit Varma

This post features a rich four-hour oral history interview with Saaz Aggarwal, recorded as Episode 308 of Amit Varma's podcast The Seen and the Unseen on 19 December 2022. In the conversation she traces her life, her writing, and the enduring importance of Sindh in her imagination and work. The discussion spans personal memory, cultural inheritance, literary labour, the experience of displacement and revival — and helps us understand how one “vanished homeland” can remain a persistent source of identity, exploration and creative energy.

I found the interview highly engaging — it moves across many terrain: family history, Partition’s legacies, the role of the Sindhi diaspora, the process of publishing, and the forging of community in unexpected places. For those interested in Sindhi heritage, Partition studies, and literary memoir, it offers deep insight and many resonant moments.

Review of My Silk Road by Ram Gidoomal for thewire.in

Book Review: An Intimate Glimpse Into the Life of a Sindhi ‘British Asian Refugee

The most striking – the most intense – experience Ram Gidoomal describes in his memoirs is the feeling that overwhelmed him when he arrived in Bombay at the age of 14. Suddenly, unexpectedly, for the first time in his life, he knew what it felt to fit in. It brought home the paradox of “home” for an immigrant: on one side homesickness for the country of origin, a sense of cultural belonging, allies in appearance, and the freedom from fear these bring. And on the other, the cords of daily life that tie one to the birthplace and local community.

Ram’s family endured the transition from citizen to refugee twice. Displaced both times by political whim, they experienced a harsh wrenching from community, culture, status and education, and were summarily swept from wealth and comfort to situations of continued struggle – twice. Once as refugees when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and Pakistan was formed, and the second when his family was removed from Kenya. As a teenager he would discover, in immigration queues, that he was an “alien”. And, despite his academic brilliance and significant contribution to early workplaces, he would remain painfully conscious that he was different.

In this book about his life, Gidoomal begins by describing his happy childhood in Kenya, followed by the challenges of adapting to Britain in the late 1960s – unwelcoming, and one where this family with a multinational trading operation begins afresh with a corner shop – and yet an obvious choice for the time.

There are intimate glimpses into a family of large and complex but congenial groups, and the poignancy of family tragedies including the loss of his birth father and then of his father-figure uncle who brought him up; precious memories handed down from the past, including those of links to the lost homeland of Sindh. There are fascinating peeps into business practices and secret codes. Later, during his blissful days with a young family in Switzerland, he was that role-model father who changed his working hours so that he could spend time with his children, returning to office after they went to bed. As the years passed, Ram moved from his life in the corporate world to one centred on social issues and philanthropy, using his business skills to transform others’ lives. His contribution earned him a CBE, Commander of the British Empire, from the Queen of England in 1998.

In between comes a huge, surprising transformation: “By my early twenties, I had lost two fathers but gained a heavenly one in God.”

This wholehearted embracing of Jesus is disconcerting, coming from one whose community sacrificed all they had to escape conversion. As a child in a Sindhi family, Ram grew up Hindu with Sikh influences. At the Aga Khan School in Mombasa, he absorbed Islamic teachings. The choice he later made, with the backdrop of his exceptional intelligence and crystal-clear rationality, resulted from the pull of faith. Succumbing to the warmth of its embrace, he selected a life of devotion to the Church.

Through it all, his Sindhiness remained intact. He writes of his feeling of comfort on reading Matthew chapter 27 verse 59, about Joseph of Arimathea wrapping the body of Jesus in cloth: “The Greek word for this cloth is Sindhon, a cloth from Sindh. A cloth created in my homeland, holding the body of Christ.”

Indeed, the Sindhiness pervades his life: English was the language of instruction but Sindhi was the language his mother spoke to him in, the language the old men swore in, the language he was scolded in. When he fell in love, it was to a highly eligible Sindhi girl – one who, however, was initially forbidden to him as she was of another “caste”. Sunita was from a progressive Amil family, too progressive to consider caste and perhaps just worried about how she would adapt in his traditional Bhaiband family. Indeed, Ram Gidoomal observed with admiration that his father-in-law treated his daughters and sons equally, inspiring him to do the same with his own children.

One of the most prominent themes of this book is Ram Gidoomal’s tremendous network of relationships in every area of life. As a young executive in the 1970s, his complacent and supercilious managers failed to comprehend this tremendous asset which could have taken the bank into new markets with valuable new customers. For Ram, the connections were simply a way of life, partly the community and business networks inherited from his family; partly his own aptitude to thrive on and develop relational networks – ties of location as much as shared cultural traditions among the diaspora flung across the continents. Working at Inlaks, a global company with a huge base in Nigeria, he could speak in Sindhi with the senior executives who preferred to do so when communicating confidential commercial information.

This book has an elegant story-telling style, weaving in humour, and creating a build-up of suspense as the plot unfolds. Despite being put together by a professional writer, Ram Gidoomal’s voice comes through clearly and is the same as in his 1997 UK Maharajas which was also written by a professional. Through the book, Ram Gidoomal’s personal motto stands out clearly: “Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can.”

My Silk Road

The Adventures & Sturggles of a British Asian Refugee

Ram Gidoomal CBE

Pippa Rann books & media

MRP Rs799

270 pages

Review by Saaz Aggarwal

Published on 4 December 2022 

https://thewire.in/books/ram-gidoomal-book-review-my-silk-road

    

Lajwanti Shahani Stories of Sindh - Loss of Homeland | Interview with Saaz Aggarwal | Archaeo Talks 6 | 27 Nov 2022

In today’s ArchaeoTalks, Lajwanti Shahani talks to Saaz Aggarwal who has recently released her book on the Sindhi community with more curated human stories of the Partition of India in 1947. This is a story about lost homeland, reinvented lives… eventually loss of language and culture… It also begs the question of a generational trauma. A story which the newer generations of Sindhis are now beginning to engage in. Saaz talks about her latest book titled Losing Home, Finding Home as well as her experience with the Sindhi people she has interviewed over the years. You can check out this one and all her previous books at Amazon on the link given below. https://www.amazon.in/Books-Saaz-Aggarwal/... Thank you, viewers, for joining us today. Please like, share and subscribe to our channel, and don’t forget to hit that bell icon. Also, you can support our work by sponsoring a video or through paid promotions. Please contact us by email on ind.hist.arch@gmail.com Namaste!

Review of Losing Home Finding Home by Kalyani Sardesai in Pune Mirror

Facing loss, finding ground

by Kalyani Sardesai

It’s funny how our parents remain inside us long after they are gone! observes Saaz.

Little wonder then that the narrative of Losing Home, Finding Home, Saaz’s latest work on the Sindhi community amongst others she has written on the Sindhis, is narrated in the voice of her late mother Situ Savur (herself a Sindhi.) It is also a fitting chronicle of a hard-working community that has embraced Pune after losing its home state to partition.

A collection of personal narratives that provide a spectrum of the Sindhi experience, Saaz started this book by writing each one in the voice of the person whose story it was and then, wanting to introduce her own perspective, shifted to the third person. However, and quite unexpectedly, her mother’s voice kept intervening with snippets and insights. It seemed only correct to turn the story over to her mother, and as a result, this book is told in Situ’s voice.
I’m glad I surrendered to her frequent reminders and comments and let her tell the story as many things emerged which may not have otherwise occurred to me to include, she says.
For those who came in late, Saaz Aggarwal has written several books, including quite a few about the Sindhi community. While some of them have documented the community through the stories of individuals and families she has interviewed, some of her work has also been very personal, with insights into what happened to the Sindhi community through the experiences of her mother’s family. For this book, she selected stories that would give an overview of not just Partition but also the very interesting and little-known recent history of the community and how it played a role in the rehabilitation after Partition.

https://punemirror.com/pune-mirror-explore/facing-loss-finding-ground/ Nov 22, 2022

Review of Losing Home Finding Home by Shreya Jachak in Sunday Mid-day

A new illustrated book by Saaz Aggarwal traces the stories of Sindhi refugees in India

Uprooted from their roots in Pakistan during the Partition of 1947, the Sindhi community that built life from scratch in India are celebrated in a new illustrated book by one of their own

Khushiram Kundnani

It must have been an arduous journey for educationist Khushiram Kundnani, then principal and professor at Government College University, Hyderabad (Sindh), to traverse through the blood-smeared terrain of India-Pakistan during the Partition of 1947. More so, because Kundnani did not travel alone. He carried his college with him to the shores of Mumbai. Bags of library books and laboratory equipment as companions, Kundnani sought refuge in a cramped accommodation. He walked the streets of Mumbai looking for a place to reestablish his college. Every week he wrote postcards to his former colleagues, cheering them up, promising them that it was just a matter of time before they would get their jobs and their students back. In just another two years, the refugee had fulfilled past promises and established the RD National College in Bandra in 1949. 

And this was not the only institution that Kundnani and other Sindhi refugees established in Mumbai. Now, a just-released book by author Saaz Aggarwal traces the many stories of Sindhi refugees in the backdrop of the Partition, what they lost but more of what they found on Indian shores. Losing Home, Finding Home, is a labour of a decade-long body of research that Aggarwal conducted around the Sindhi community. A book accompanied with illustrations by Subhodeep Mukherjee, it brings back true stories, but not those of trauma but of shared experiences and perseverance. 

“It was the Sindhi refugees building homes for themselves that made the cooperative housing society so widespread in Bombay—the book describes the early years and how the phenomenon spread. These refugees also built a number of institutions that Mumbaikars now take for granted. Some of them, including educational institutions, came out of the refugee camps,” Aggarwal tells mid-day. 

While the community settled in various parts of the country, Aggarwal says Mumbai is central to their story as a large population of the evacuees from Sindh made the city their home. 

“The Motwanes of Gyan Ghar, Khar, as well as the Sawaldas Madhavdas family who had a bungalow in Santa Cruz, opened their homes to a large number of refugees, setting up tents in their building compounds and providing meals from huge cooking pots,” she says, adding, “Many Sindhi families set up businesses, while members of others took up jobs in various professions.”

Saaz Aggarwal

Aggarwal holds the book dear to her. “It’s filled with personal stuff, as along the way, my Sindhi mother started piping up with her ideas and opinions. I lost her in 2014,” she adds, “I’m really glad this book happened because she included many things that may not have occurred to me.”

Penning the story as a lived experience of her interviewee, Aggarwal says that she chose the ones that covered the widest span of common experience.  “It gives a glimpse into the history of Sindh. So in that sense, it is not just a story book, but also a history book and a book of art,” she puts it. 

But why did she choose to write another book on the community after already having authored her first book, Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland, 2012 and compiling an anthology, Sindhi Tapestry, on the Sindhi identity in 2021? Aggarwal explains, “The Sindhi story started coming out 65 years after Partition. There was much less violence in Sindh than other Partition-affected regions and the Sindhis assimilated without fuss. These are some reasons why their story was neglected and it had to be told.”

For the new book, Aggarwal says references were taken from old photographs to have visual elements catering to the changing reading patterns around the world. “I wanted pictures in the book that showed real life and historically authentic scenes from Sindh. We did use photo references, but also detailed descriptions from Partition survivors, as can be seen in the illustrations accompanying the interviews. The illustrations make the storyteller familiar,” she says.

Drawing on from material she had accumulated from 10 years of research, Aggarwal says the book is for readers of all ages, but targeted specifically at the younger crowd. Preserving the past and looking forward to the community’s future link with it, Aggarwal says, “It contains a summary of my work on the diaspora, with all the messages that I want to pass on!” 

First appeared here on 20 Nov 2022

Interview: Mark-Anthony Falzon, author, The Sindhis; Selling Anything, Anywhere

 By Saaz Aggarwal

Saaz: How did you manage all this research during lockdown?

Mark: My first and most intensive period of fieldwork was in 1999-2000, in London, Malta and Mumbai. I was at the Gateway of India for the millennium celebrations, and remember watching the first sunrise of the third millennium at the lakeside in Borivali. I have since been to India six more times, and the results of that work are contained in my scholarly writing. I also draw on them in this book, though Selling Anything, Anywhere is not aimed at the academic reader. I did intend to spend some months updating my notes in India in 2020-1, but had to resort to Zoom. There was also a fair bit of desk research, which was unaffected by Covid.       

2.     Saaz: Was it really the Sindhi businessman Bhojoomal and his sons who founded Karachi?

Mark: If the memoirs of Seth Naomul Hotchand are anything to go by, then yes. Hotchand was a merchant who lived in Karachi in the nineteenth century, and who wrote the history of his family. He wrote that his ancestor Seth Bhojoomal (who originally hailed from Sehwan in Sindh) settled and established business in Kharrakbandar around 1720. The place, however, quickly silted up, and Seth Bhojoomal and his fellow Sindhi merchants relocated to a new place, later named Karachi, and developed it into a port of considerable prominence.      

3.      Saaz: Claude Markovits published his findings about the Sindhi global traders in 1999. Why did it take so long for this centuries-old phenomenon, well known among the Sindhis themselves and the local populations where they live, to be identified and written about?

Mark: The Sindhworki network goes back to the 1850s, and involved traders from Hyderabad-Sindh who travelled quite literally around the world in search of potential markets (usually in port cities, especially in the earlier phase). That of the Shikarpuris goes back to at least the early eighteenth century, and involved men from Shikarpur who ran an elaborate banking trade in Central Asia. You’re right in saying that it took scholars a long time to get the hint. Some early examples were Anita Chugani’s 1995 MA thesis on Sindhworkis in Japan, my undergraduate thesis on Sindhworkis in Malta in 1996, Markovits’ benchmark book of 2000, and my book of 2005. I think the reason is that Sindhis are so adaptable and flexible in their ways, that they are easily overlooked as generic ‘Indians’. It took Markovits considerable detective work to tease out the Shikarpuri presence in Central Asia; and Sindhworkis can be even more difficult to identify as such. For all their globetrotting and business acumen, Sindhis tend to fly under the radar.            

4.      Saaz: Why are there no women in your book? There’s a brief indication of them as secret agents, and later the ones to prepare ‘poppadums’ and pickles which the men hawked. What about the many who had the gene and the connections and used them, the entrepreneurs and the captains of industry?

Mark: I do mention that in some contexts Sindhi women are increasingly directly involved in business, and that women played a key role in the circulation of information – crucial to business success – back in Shikarpur and Hyderabad, and that well-connected Sindhi women in India and elsewhere play an important part in the making of networks. Still, I think your observation is justified. Mine is a partial story that leaves room for many more. Some have already been told by Rita Kothari, Subhadra Anand and yourself, and there’s a new breed of scholars (some are Sindhi women – Trisha Lalchandani, Radhika Chakraborty and others) who are researching doctorates on various aspects of Sindhis, and there's Aruna Madnani’s ‘Doorway to Sindh’ webinar series for her Sindhi Culture Foundation.          

5.      Saaz: “Poppadums”? Seriously Mark?

Mark: It’s papad I had in mind – not least since I must have consumed hundreds in the course of my fieldwork. Sindhis can be good hosts. You’re quite right to say papad is iconic. In part that’s because of their unique peppery taste and blistered appearance (they always remind me of Neapolitan pizza dough). But as I mention in the book, the making and selling of papads and pickles is a defining episode in the story of how many Sindhi refugees survived, and overcame, the economic hardships of Partition. 

6.      Saaz: Why does your book not mention the Sindhi tradition of philanthropy? And why do you have mostly only stories of plodders and small-time dealmakers - yes, the bell-curve people – but no representative of the huge population of rags-to-riches and the "my mother's blessings took me to where I am" people, who would have loved to be mentioned by name?

Mark: This book does not cover every aspect of Sindhi business and culture. It was prescriptively intended as a short and readable text, aimed at a popular audience. Besides, I cannot claim to have worked with a mathematically representative sample of Sindhis. That's also why this interview is welcome: it complements the contents.

Many Sindhis are in fact involved in philanthropy. In the case of some of the big Sindhworki and other firms, this can be as prominent as full-scale hospitals. But I’ve met people of more modest means who funded and ran small homeopathic clinics, for example, in India and elsewhere. I think the point really is that, contrary to some of the more toxic stereotypes, Sindhis do not form isolated moneymaking enclaves; rather, they are embedded in the societies they live in in various ways that include philanthropic giving. Seth Naomul writes that on one auspicious occasion in 1805, his ancestors spent “large sums of money in charity and in feeding Brahmins and fakirs, and acquired such renown on account of their liberality that Bhats and Brahmans chanted their benevolence in songs especially composed”.  

7.      Saaz: Did you observe cultural differences between the solidly Sindhi communities in Panama, Hong Kong, the Canaries (and other locations) through local influences?

Mark: You’ve put your finger on one of the most fascinating parts of the Sindhi story. Simply put, Sindhis live in places.

The very first Sindhi I interviewed ran a retail business in Malta which had been in the family for many decades. In a corner of the shop was a little shelf, and on it photos of departed family members and figures of Ganesha, Lakshmi and the Virgin Mary. When I asked, he told me he was ‘100% Hindu’ but also a follower of a number of Catholic devotions.

In Indonesia today there are about 10,000 Sindhis; many are businesspeople involved in many different lines. Perhaps the best known is the production of sinetron (soap operas), which they have been heavily invested in since the 1980s. The Sindhi producers even came up with an innovative product, sinetron Ramadhan, which in turn evolved into a new genre of Indonesian television known as sinetron Islam (Islamic soap opera). These are two small examples of their linguistic, cultural, economic and social diversity. And yet, Sindhis retain a strong sense of a networked cultural affinity, which makes it possible for them to relocate should they wish or need to.        

8.      Saaz: Priya Ramani sent me an indignant message about the title of this book and I realised that it could be seen as demeaning to the community. I told her I’d ask you.

Mark: There’s the joke about the Sindhi on the moon who approached Neil Armstrong and tried to sell him a flag – old and weary, but telling. Everywhere you look you will find pockets of Sindhis selling things as diverse as souvenirs, textiles, electronics and carpets; financing films and developing real estate; manufacturing industrial plastics in West Africa and snack foods in Ulhasnagar, making bespoke suits in Hong Kong and running restaurants and hotels in dozens of locations worldwide. Selling Anything, Anywhere is my homage to a tremendous lifeforce of adventure and enterprise.  

 First published on 11 November 2022 in Hindustan Times

An excerpt from Losing Home Finding Home in Scroll on Nov 10, 2022

How did the Partition affect the people of Sindh? Using true stories, a new book finds out

The Sindhworkis

Boolchand Mohinani left home when he was seventeen years old, to work in a store in Ceylon. After three years, he joined his father in the family business in the Dutch East Indies.

Many things have changed in the world. Ceylon is now Sri Lanka, the Dutch East Indies is now Indonesia. But ambitious young men were leaving Sindh to trade in other countries ever since 1850, more than seventy years before Boolchand set out to seek his fortune. They sailed from Karachi, carrying trunks filled with beautiful handicrafts made in Sindh, and got off at ports to sell them. After all the goods were sold, they went back home and brought more. In time, they set up stores of their own, and moved on to new ports to expand their businesses. Soon there were many Sindhi stores in ports around the world! The young men who ran them lived above their stores, and sometimes even had to do their own housework, or cook for their bosses. When a ship’s horn sounded, whatever time of day or night, they quickly ran down to the dock to call customers to come and buy. Because they had started by selling ‘Sindhwork’, they became known as ‘Sindhworkis’.

The Sindhworkis led a hard life, and they could only visit their families every two or three years. The ship journeys were long and difficult. During the Second World War, the ship routes were closed and some men were separated from their families for all the years of the war.

By this time, Boolchand had his own store. He and his wife Muli and their three children lived in an apartment above the store. Three more children were born to them during the war years.

Isolated in Indonesia by the war, Muli missed Sindh and her parents very much. When the war ended, they decided that she and the children would go and live in Hyderabad, as most Sindhworki families did. Boolchand would continue his business in Indonesia and visit his family every few years.

A life of luxury 

Muli had grown up in Hyderabad. Her father, Khiomall, was a Sindhworki too. He had lived in Durban, South Africa, his entire working life. He visited his family in Hyderabad for two or three months every few years. Sometimes, when he left to go back, he would take his wife Pappur and the younger children along with him in the steamer ship on the twenty-day journey to Durban. After some weeks or months, he would send them back.

The drawing room of Muli’s childhood home. On the right you can see Ramchand, Boolchand’s brother, and their stepmother who have come to ‘see’ Muli and plan the wedding. Muli is in the centre with her parents Khiomall and Pappur on either side. Pappur’s brother Bullo’s is on the left with his children Gul, Rukmani and Gope. The goblets have a gold coin for the honoured guests to take home! This lifelike and accurate illustration is by Subhodeep Mukherjee

In Hyderabad, Pappur lived like a queen. When people visited on formal occasions, they would be served wine with a gold guinea at the bottom of the glass, a stylish gift from their hosts! They owned horse carriages made of pure silver.

When Muli married Boolchand, she went to live with him in Indonesia. Life was quite different from what she was used to! But she soon made friends with her neighbours and learnt how to cook delicious Indonesian food, which her children would always love even when they went to live in other countries. They spoke Sindhi to their parents, but Indonesian to each other and their friends.

Tulsi was born soon after they returned to live in Hyderabad, in July 1946. Just as the children started going to school and getting used to their new lives, Partition took place. As trouble broke out on the streets, there was no choice but to leave Sindh.

They got in the train, not knowing where they were going

Quite a different situation from the one in which she grew up, Muli is seen here with her family. Another fleeing family occupies the berth above. Illustration by Subhodeep Mukherjee.

By the time Partition took place, Muli’s father, Khiomall, had died.

Muli had to flee, taking care of her children and her mother, Pappur, as well as her younger sister Sati, who had two babies of her own. Luckily Muli’s son Jiwatram and daughter Mohini were older, and they could help her. It was very difficult and frightening but Muli was a brave lady, and so were the other women who had to leave Sindh with their children and family elders. They did not know where they were going or what would happen to them.

Muli and her family travelled in a very crowded train [S2] with a few clothes and eatables they had packed, and crossed the new border. They arrived in Ajmer and were taken to a camp and given a room in a row of rooms, each occupied by many people. The toilets were in outhouses and people had to stand in line and wait their turn.

After two weeks they left Ajmer and took a train to Delhi, where they had to wait on the railway platform for a long time. The trains and railway platforms were full of people like them, who had left their homes and were looking for a safe place to settle. They talked to each other, asking where they had come from and where they were going, trying to find out where they could live and what they could do to earn money.

Muli and her family boarded the train to Patna, where her cousin lived. Boolchand sent money to the family in Patna. It took nearly a year before he was able to make arrangements for them to return to Indonesia, and they were finally reunited.

 

Losing Home, Finding Home

Saaz Aggarwal

Illustrations by Subhodeep Mukherjee

black-and-white fountain

hardcover, 112 pages

for readers of all ages

Rs750

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First appeared here on Nov 10, 2022

Losing Home Q&A in Indian Express Pune

Sindhi voice is unlikely to carry much weight in public life: Saaz Aggarwal

Saaz Aggarwal talks about her book 'Losing Home, Finding Home', a culmination of 10 years of her research into the Sindhi diaspora.

Written by Parthasarathi Biswas

Writer Saaz Aggarwal created ripples with her book Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland, which talked about the plight and fate of Sindhi refugees who came to India post Independence. Ten years down the line, she revisits the topic in a different format in her new book Losing Home, Finding Home. Aggarwal speaks to The Indian Express about how her new book treats the issue and why she felt the need to revisit the topic.

1) Tell us about this book. How different is it from Sindh: Stories from a Vanished homeland? Why did you feel the need to revisit the topic in this fashion?

I wrote SINDH: STORIES FROM A VANISHED HOMELAND ten years ago. At that time, I knew nothing about Sindh or the Sindhi diaspora. My mother was Sindhi, this much I knew. But nobody in the family ever talked about what life had been like in Sindh, or any other aspect of their Sindhiness. Even the language was restricted to those who had left Sindh – everyone else heard it spoken around them, but it was never spoken TO us. Yes, the food in my grandparents’ home was Sindhi food – but in our home, we ate food from all over and Sindhi dishes only occasionally. In fact, my mother would have to threaten violence before I could be convinced that saeebhaji-khichdi – a traditional Sindhi meal comprising dal, rice and a basket of vegetables – was good for health!

Well – over these years I have read a lot, and interviewed around 300 elderly people who shared their memories with me. I’m much more familiar with the subject than I was when I wrote the first book, more comfortable with my thoughts and feelings about it.

Why I chose this format, with so many high-quality images, is the knowledge that reading habits are transforming – as they have always done over the centuries – and a visual aspect is essential to communication with coming generations. I was very fortunate to find a senior artist, Subhodeep Mukherjee, who has created detailed and historically authentic illustrations to accompany each story. Also, the text is very simple to read. And it tells pretty much the whole story, with all the messages that I want to pass on!

2) Historical research about exodus of Sindh is far and few between. I think yours would be the first such book which looked into this incident of Indian partitions. Why have the community and historians been lukewarm in research the human and historical angle of this?

The Sindh Partition story paled into insignificance for various reasons, most crucial of which is that Sindh was never partitioned. It was given intact to Pakistan.

Sindh also faced far less violence than Punjab, where almost every single family experienced barbaric atrocity. The widespread exodus from Sindh took place some months after Partition, when Sindh was occupied by large numbers of Partition-affected refugees from other parts of the newly-divided India. This may be the main reason why people who left Sindh considered themselves the lucky ones and did not feel they had a story to tell. In any case – nobody was listening, nobody wanted to know, nobody cared.

The Sindhis addressed their trauma with stoic acceptance. They were role-model ‘refugees’ who started from scratch. They found opportunities to earn their living by filling gaps and providing necessities, and became useful citizens, contributing to the communities they settled in. They integrated seamlessly into these communities, adapting to new ways of living. These attributes – shown by an overwhelming majority of the community – made them invisible.

While things have now changed and there is a lot of interest in Sindhis, both from within the community as well as from others who have begun to notice this tremendous phenomenon with new respect, the Sindhi voice is unlikely to carry much weight in public life for the simple reason that they are too few in number to form a significant vote bank.

3) What were the main sources of information for this book? How difficult or easy was for you to pen this? Can you share some incidents or excerpts which touched you more as a human than say an author?

This book is the culmination of my 10 years of research into the Sindhi diaspora and I’ve tried to include in it all that I’ve learnt, in particular all the messages I want to pass on to future generations! This includes social, historical and anthropological aspects of Sindhis as a community, and various aspects of the Sindhi identity.

One of my biggest insights in this journey has been the way the language was lost. Parents stopped speaking to their children in their mother tongue, perhaps knowing that to have a better chance in the world, they needed to be expert in local languages. I realise now that most of us were never spoken to in Sindhi, never expected to reply in Sindhi. However, there is a poignancy in the fact that Sindhi is a language that you only hear in the homes of relatives. It is the language of intimacy, the language of the lost country. It is the language you hear your grandparents speak to each other and to those of their children who knew Sindh – never to you. Because you had never known Sindh, and it would be impossible to explain anything as important, as essential, and as complicated as that.

4) How personal is this book? Is it just a relook at the exodus, or is it a personal journey about losing and finding home?

The book is a collection of personal accounts. It attempts to convey all that Sindh was to the Hindus who lost their homeland, the journeys they undertook when they lost it, the heroic rebuilding of their lives, the way they adapted, they way they ignored the prejudice and stereotypes they faced, the way they contributed.

As a writer and oral historian, I specialise in working with people to write their memoirs. It was this that led me to write my first book on Sindh. For LOSING HOME FINDING HOME, I had planned to write each story in the voice of its central character. However, as I wrote, my mother’s thoughts and ideas began to enter each narrative. I lost my mother nearly 8 years ago – and here she was, piping up insistently and inserting her opinions, much as she had always done!

I soon decided to let her tell the story, and the book is written in her voice. I’m really glad this happened, because I found myself writing things that would not have occurred to me without her inputs, essential aspects of the losing and the finding. It’s extraordinary how parents leave traces of themselves inside one, long after they are gone.

So yes – the book is intensely personal. But at the same time, it is also as mainstream and comprehensive as anything can be.

First appeared here on 7 Nov 2022

Kindness in the time of Partition in USAWA LITERARY REVIEW

Kindness in the time of Partition

by Saaz Aggarwal

It is common knowledge that the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent was a time of extreme violence between the Hindus and Muslims. In Punjab, men even killed their own daughters and wives, believing that they were protecting them from a fate worse than death. Every family experienced loss of life and limb, rape, abduction, separation and various forms of trauma.

Even as desperation and inflamed emotions led to a maniacal frenzy of vicious destruction, other, softer, human emotions continued to manifest, all along the new border as well as the areas in which riots and conflict prevailed.

In my ten years of interviewing Sindhi Partition survivors, one of the things that has struck me most is the many examples of kindness and affection between the communities. The Sindh story is different for many reasons, most significant of which is that Sindh was never partitioned. Sindh also saw less violence. A turning point took place on 6 January 1948, when a pogrom was conducted. Of the many who were saved by members of the other community who went out of their way to help and protect them, at risk to their own lives, here are a few.

Kartar’s story:

I was born in 1934, in the village Taib in Larkano district, a small village belonging to the Jaisinghani families. We were zamindars. The Bhutto family’s lands adjoined our village and we had frequent disputes over water, which was sometimes scarce, but there was friendship and congeniality between us too. The houses were made of brick – there was no concept of cement or concrete in those days. We were well off, had a horse-driven cart with seats for four, and a motorcycle, and employed a number of farmers who lived on the land and tilled it. The house was large and our rooms were upstairs. Downstairs was the autaak, a big room where the menfolk gathered. Their food was served to them there. In Taib, we ate our meals sitting on cots. Women sat separately in their section of the house. We had kitchen, bathroom, and toilets inside the house. During the hot weather, we slept in the angan, the courtyard.

My father Jessaram Jaisinghani studied in Shikarpur and then worked as a teacher in Dharamsabha High School. My mother and we children were taken to live with him in Shikarpur when I was six years old. I had my primary education in Shikarpur.

We spent our holidays in Karachi and on 14 August 1947 when Pakistan was born, that is where we were. We had been thinking about migrating to India but were still there on the fateful day of 6 January 1948.

That morning, my elder brother Nand was to take our chachi to the city. Our neighbours on the ground floor were Muslims who had migrated from Bihar a few months earlier. They must have known something was going to happen, because they rushed to Nand and begged him not to leave the house that day. They invited us to come and hide in their house where they would protect us from harm. We were grateful, but what could we do? How could we go and stay with people we hardly knew, who were of the other community?

These Muhajirs – as the migrants to Pakistan during Partition are known as – understood our dilemma. They came to our house, hung curtains on the windows and hoisted the Muslim League flag in the balcony. They assured us that if a mob came they would point to the balcony and say that no Hindu lived in the house. The mob came twice, but our kind neighbours saved us.

That day I saw terrible things that I will never forget. People were being butchered in the streets. The Muhajirs told everyone who came that there were only Muslims in the building and nobody disturbed us.

We left Karachi for good, sailing to Okha port in Saurashtra. From Viramgam, we got into the Bombay train. But it was 30 January 1948, the day Gandhi was assassinated. Our train was terminated at Ahmedabad station and everything was at a standstill. We stayed for one week on Platform Number One. There were curfews. After some days, we moved to a sesame oil mill which had been converted into a camp for refugees.

My father rented a house on the outskirts of Ahmedabad and joined Mahatma Gandhi High School as a teacher. We had to walk twelve miles every day to the school. It was a hard time but we never felt a sense of poverty since we were always aware that we belonged to a noble, zamindar family. As the years went by, our lives improved. My father became the widely-respected principal of the school. I became an engineer and worked in the corporate world. None of us ever forgot the Muhajirs who saved us on that terrible day.

Triveni’s story:

Before marriage, my mother was Saraswati Ramchand Malkani. The family lived in Malkani Ghitti, Hyderabad, Sindh. They were landlords, wealthy for seven generations, owners of bunnyoon and buildings. In c1941 they moved to live in Karachi, in Malkani Mansion on Bunder Road, opposite a Muslim cemetery.

Saraswati was the youngest of three sisters. Her father, Ramchand, had died when she was just forty days old. The head of the family was his brother Dr Sahijram. My mama Gurbaksh went to London to study and became a barrister, and the other mama Ajit Singh was given charge of the family lands, a holding of more than 3000 acres.

When Partition came, Malkani Mansion was attacked by a mob. They ransacked the doctor’s clinic on the ground floor. As they climbed to the next floor, loot maar kayoon – they pillaged the houses on the first floor, then attacked the second floor.

On the third floor they met a Muslim who stopped them, saying that there were no Hindus on the fourth floor. When they refused to believe him, he swore on the holy Quran, insisting that there were no Hindus upstairs. It was this false promise, made on the Holy Quran, that saved my mother and her family. If it hadn’t been for that Muslim, I would not be here today.

Motilal’s poem

The experience of the 6 January 1948 Karachi pogrom is also beautifully depicted in this poem by Motilal Jotwani, a child when the incident took place. His father was a teacher in Karachi and they rented two rooms in a building belonging to a devout Muslim. He was huddled that day along with other members of the family in a small storeroom of the house, old enough to imagine the consequences although his younger brother and sister were not. Allahdino – which means ‘given by god’ – let the rioters take what they wanted, and then spent the rest of the day singing songs of Kabir with the author’s father.

Cities Ran Amuck

by Motilal Jotwani

Streets roared: “Allah-o-Akbar!”

“Har har Mahadev!”

In Karachi, on 6 January 1948,

huddled in a store room,

we waited with bated breath.

The world, it seemed,

would come to a sudden end.

“Hand over the kafirs in your house,”

the rioters demanded.

God’s good man, God himself,

Allhadino lied to them:

“The people you are looking for

sailed to Bombay yesterday.”

Allahdino was an ordinary man,

Sindhi and Sanskrit dino in his Muslim name.

Allahdino lied once again:

“The poor creatures migrated to India,

leaving behind their precious belongings.

Do you want those instead?”

And we waited with bated breath …

The number of individual positive acts between members of the two communities during Partition far outnumbers the violence. While the repercussions of the latter were inestimably higher, inestimably more damaging – the support and kindness received from members of the other community must be memorialized too.

A visit to a Hindu village in present-day Pakistan

I spent a week in Sindh with my family when my first book on Sindh was launched at the Karachi Literature Festival in February 2013. On our last day we were driven into rural Sindh on a special visit to the Hemrajani family in the hamlet of Tando Ahmed Khan, close to the well-known Thano Bula Khan in Jamshoro District, an area that continues to have a large population of Hindus.

A village dargah which commemorates the ruler Raja Vikramajeet who abdicated his throne for the life of a monk displays of symbols of Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism, typical of the age-old syncretic religion of Sindh.

At Tando Ahmed Khan, we enjoyed devotional music and Sindhi hospitality at a Hindu temple, received blessings from a 100-year-old ‘Mata’, ate a meal in the Hemrajani home that tasted like my grandmother had cooked it – and drove away laden with presents, including ‘kharchi’ – a tradition of gifts of money – for my children.

Although situated off the Karachi-Hyderabad superhighway and just under two hours from each of these cities, Thano Ahmed Khan has remained remote and a small rural world unto itself. To us it provided the extraordinary experience of stepping back in time to the world of my ancestors.

What makes it a fascinating study to all, however, is that during Partition when the Hindus were leaving Sindh to settle in other parts of India and the world, not a single family left Thano Ahmed Khan. They continue to live and work here, following age-old lifestyles and traditions. They have prospered and live in peace and plenty. The Hemrajani family has lands in the village where onion forms the major crop. They also have cotton ginning factories and mills near Hyderabad, as well as agricultural lands, including banana and guava orchards, there. The brothers and their grown-up children travel to manage these businesses but the ancestral village is their home and they live their in a joint family.

Says Bhagwandas Hemrajani, the second of six brothers:

We have never had any problem. We continue to celebrate their festival days and family events and live happily and with brotherhood.

Part of the reason is because in this area we have had very good landlords and leaders. At the time of Partition, it was the presence of the local chieftain Malik Sekander Khan, that gave us the reassurance that we needed to remain in our homes. When he passed away in 1985, his son Malik Asad Sekander Khan took over and he is extremely cooperative, attending all our functions and giving us every support.

Allah tala hamari madad karta hai. Bahut khushi hoti hai aur sukoon hai.

Thano Bula Khan also has a dargah which commemorates the ruler Raja Vikramajeet who abdicated his throne for the life of a monk. This shrine displays of symbols of not just Hinduism but also Islam and Sikhism, typical of the age-old syncretic religion of Sindh. This, combined with good-quality local governance created a wall of kindness that protected the people and kept them safe.

 

The parting present

In this picture, taken in the home of Dr Gul Metlo in London in April 2017, you can see Mir Hassan Malkani and his wife Farzana with the rug Moolo gave his grandfather Ali Gohar Malkani, with the name Valeccha Kodumal woven in.

Another touching example of peace, affection and kindness is of Mir Hassan Malkani and the rug entrusted to him by his mother Izzat Khatun.

Mir Hassan’s grandfather, Ali Gohar Malkani of village Malkani near Sehwan, had any number of Hindu friends, but none as dear as Moolo. His being Hindu had never been of consequence – until Partition.

Before Moolo and his family left Sindh for good he came to bid Ali Gohar farewell. Ali Gohar was distraught and begged his friend not to leave but there was nothing anyone could do. Moolo pressed Ali Gohar to use the things from his home that he could not carry – kitchen utensils, rugs and knick-knacks. There was a beautiful metal tray engraved with designs and fitted with gold handles. When special guests visited, the children would be told, “Moolay varo tray khani acho – bring the Moolo tray”.

One of the rugs had been woven with Moolo’s father’s name: Valeccha Kodumal. Ali Gohar preserved it lovingly, hoping that a day would come when he would be able to return the heirloom to his friend. Right until the war of 1965, Ali Gohar and Moolo exchanged letters. Later that year, Ali Gohar died. The letters stopped.

Ali Gohar’s daughter, Izzat Khatun, treasured the rug and when the time came, entrusted it to her son Mir Hassan Mir Hassan grew up in Sindh. He became a doctor and settled in London. His practice on Harley Street established him as London’s foremost hair-transplant specialist. The rug is safe with him as he continues trying to find the family of his grandfather’s dearest friend so that he can return it and tell them how much the friendship meant to his family and how much they mourned its loss.

Credits

Kartar’s story is excerpted from Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland by Saaz Aggarwal black-and-white fountain 2012

Triveni’s story is excerpted from The Amils of Sindh by Saaz Aggarwal black-and-white fountain 2019

Cities Ran Amuck translated by Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani in Freedom and Fissures: An anthology of Sindhi Partition Poetry (Sahitya Akademi 1998)

A visit to a Hindu village is excerpted from Look back in nostalgia, Mid-day, 11 April 2013

The parting present is excerpted from Losing Home by Saaz Aggarwal black-and-white fountain 2022

About the author

Saaz Aggarwal has a Master’s degree in Mathematics, but over the years established herself as a writer and artist. Her body of work includes biographies, translations, critical reviews and humour columns, as well as themed painting collections and mixed-media installations. Her books on Sindh are in university libraries around the world, and much of her research contribution in the field of Sindh studies is easily accessible online, for example in the links sindhstories, sindhworkis, talks, and free downloads.

First published https://usawa.in/issue-8/non-fiction-8/kindness-in-the-time-of-partition on October 29, 2022

About REFUGEES IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY by Sunayna Pal

Refugees in Their Own Country distills the immense trauma of Partition into seventy-five short, illustrated verses — one for each year since 1947. What makes the collection remarkable is the distance of its author from the event itself. Writing as a third-generation descendant of refugees, Sunayna Pal inhabits the inherited pain of displacement with startling immediacy.

The poems are compact, pared-down, and visual — each a snapshot of memory and loss. Using simple English, they reach readers of all ages while evoking powerful emotional and historical layers. Pal writes of ordinary objects — sand, bricks, doors, toys, papads — yet through them captures a civilization’s unmaking. Her voice is not that of witness but of listener, piecing together fragments from grandparents and survivors, and transforming them into accessible, moving verse.

There is deep empathy in these pages, but also clarity. The poet does not dramatize suffering; she humanizes it. By naming the unspoken and evoking the silenced, Refugees in Their Own Country becomes both memorial and mirror — a gentle yet piercing reminder that the story of Sindh, and of Partition’s refugees, remains incomplete until it is truly heard.

Review of Maverick Effect by Harish Mehta in Hindustan Times

A book that weaves together the personal journey of one of India’s earliest tech entrepreneurs with his role in founding and growing NASSCOM

Not that long ago, we lived in an India where businesses could not run if they followed the rules. Traditional firms were large and family-run, perceived as greedy, self-serving, intent on gaining profits and evading taxes. Corruption was so ingrained that when politicians worked with businesses, they could only do so secretly.

And we were a population that waited patiently for telephone lines, gas connections and scooters for years at a time – offering them as tempting dowry components, greasing palms to get ahead in the queue, believing that things were never going to change because this was our karma.

When did the page turn? When did we start to value professionalism and aspire to prosperity with a more relaxed confidence? And who or what pressed the button?

While there is a tacit understanding that the global IT opportunities were responsible for the social and economic changes of the last few decades, the transformative role played by NASSCOM has never been properly acknowledged and this book attempts to do so.

It is a book that weaves together Harish Mehta’s personal journey, his life as one of India’s earliest tech entrepreneurs, and his role in founding and growing NASSCOM. And it has received lavish endorsements from the senior leadership of the corporate world and Indian bureaucracy.

The Maverick Effect walks us through that soon-to-be-forgotten terrain, a time when INDIAN EXPRESS carried a headline about ‘Softwear’. A time when a customs officer asked for samples of what was being exported, Harish Mehta handed him a floppy disk, and the officer thrust a stapler pin through the disk to attach it to a form, blithely uncaring that he had ruined it. And once, when a senior bureaucrat was told that the software business’s potential could be $1 billion, his guffawed retort was, “Young man, do you know how many zeroes are in one billion?”

Bureaucracy was that nasty barrier which forced young entrepreneurs into paperwork battles in government offices, draining away energy that should have been reserved for innovation. However, this book showcases the many officials who helped achieve their goals, year after year, without a single incident of bribery. It is equally subjective in documenting the resistance to NASSCOM’s efforts by MAIT, another more traditional industry body.

When NASSCOM was established, its aim was government-industry collaborations that would fuel intelligent economic strategy and give the Indian IT capability access to world markets. Perhaps what made it unappealing to powerful lobbyists was that these efforts were never restricted to favoured members but on benefits for the entire industry. There were bureaucrats who welcomed this new approach of a level playing field and an ‘India first’ strategy. Even the dissenters soon saw that when the pie increases in size, each slice is going to be larger too.

The new culture that developed inadvertently drew from the non-hierarchical US business environment and its related efficiency, the Jain teachings Harish Mehta was brought up with, and partly the influence of the European Union where competing entities collaborate for the greater good. A cohesive team came together with no personal agenda and a ‘growth mindset’; with no room for elderly statesmen or a laddering system. What a welcome wind of change!

It was a time of transition when it suddenly felt like the future had arrived – data transfer that once took days got done in hours! But it was still an India where a telecom minister might inquire, “Yeh bandwidth kya cheez hai”. The dawning of India as a ‘technology destination’ took place in this flurry of opportunity, confusion, continuous activity, and persistent effort from NASSCOM.

This book also examines larger issues, condensed in time by the extra-swift passage of this significant historical era. Why were software services and outsourcing essential to incubate an ecosystem and build a critical mass before moving to IP-driven output? Would MNCs entering India be the ruin of us, or help us move to a higher and more stable ground? Were the Indian engineers working in the US, struggling to cope with an unfamiliar climate, the lack of domestic help and vegetarian food, the fire-alarms that rang out when they tried to cook – really stealing jobs or simply enhancing the efficiency of the US business environment?

One of the most dramatic events this book describes is the 2009 scandal when the gentle and endearing Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam Computer Services, then India’s fourth-largest IT company, stood up and publicly confessed to a massive accounting fraud. NASSCOM immediately rallied round to protect Brand India (which it had struggled to establish), ensuring that Satyam would continue to deliver its client commitments, and forbidding competitors from poaching.

There is also an in-depth profile of Dewang Mehta, for a long time the face of NASSCOM but with the kind of personality which made him unpopular among some. The author’s paean to Dewang’s commitment to growing the Indian economy through IT, and Dewang’s fundamental patriotism and love for India, is moving indeed.

This, book written by an engineer-entrepreneur, conveys emotion with skill. Its nuances and creative metaphors reflect the author’s exposure to poetry from a young age.

first appeared here on Aug 25, 2022