By Saaz Aggarwal
How did you manage all this research during lockdown?
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.
Was it really the Sindhi
businessman Bhojoomal and his sons who founded Karachi?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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. “Poppadums”? Seriously 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.
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?
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.
Did you observe cultural
differences between the solidly Sindhi communities in Panama, Hong Kong, the
Canaries (and other locations) through local influences?
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.
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.
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.
Published on 11 November 2022 in Hindustan Times
https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/interview-mark-anthony-falzon-author-the-sindhis-selling-anything-anywhere-sindhi-women-play-an-important-part-in-the-making-of-networks-101668184240034.html
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