Sindh in books: breaking silence, rebuilding memory

A round-up of recent books about Sindh

Saaz Aggarwal

The story of Sindh has fascinating layers and nuances, but has largely been neglected or trivialised. The forceful scattering after Partition created confusion. The internet is clogged with wrong dates, misinterpretations, and one-sided accounts – enormous swathes of information that remain two-dimensional, insular, detached from historical reality, often shrouded in unappealing clouds of unresolved trauma. Those who work to create a coherent, reliable body of knowledge about Sindh are swimming against the tide. Those who grasp the breadth of Sindhi poetry, philosophy, music, architecture, cuisine – despair at how public perception has narrowed to a single icon, Jhulelal, and an annual festival, Cheti Chand. Yet, as newer generations respond to the call of their ancestry, a quiet resurgence has begun.

One of the most remarkable new titles is Lion of the Sky by Ritu Hemnani (HarperCollins, 2024). Written in free verse, it plunges the reader into pre-Partition Hyderabad (Sindh) and, through the eyes and heart of a young boy, brings the lost land and a vanished world alive. Each word creates a vivid image, each pause a moment of recognition.

If you break a kite string it’s bad
  If the stitches break, it’s bad
    If you can’t calculate, it’s bad
      If you block a railroad, it’s bad
        I may not know very much
          about the line this British man is drawing
            but I do know one thing.

              It’s bad.

In less than half a page, we are immersed in the domestic and political world of that time: a festive activity, the gendered expectations of a trader family, passionate participation in the freedom movement, and that ominous line which would end an era.

Another compelling title is SIM SIM by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan (Penguin, 2023). The protagonist – that peculiar old man, trembling and dribbling, half in the past and half in myth – embodies the haunting loneliness of exile, among the finest contemporary explorations of Sindhi displacement.

Long before these newer voices, Meira Chand (born 1942) brought the Sindhi presence into global literary consciousness. Writing from Singapore and Japan, her novels – some adapted for the stage in the 1990s – include well-drawn cameos of Sindhi characters.

For readers seeking an intimate understanding of Partition in Sindh, The Night Diary and Amil and the After by Veera Hiranandani offer rare insights. Through the eyes of children, they recreate what it meant to lose one’s home and to rebuild life amid confusion and resentment. These stories balance tenderness with historical precision: they bring out the complex relationships between communities, the moral disarray of that moment, and the struggle to make sense of a world suddenly divided. These are books for younger readers, and deal with themes of death and violence unflinchingly and with such care that they feel redemptive rather than traumatic. Friendship, family, and courage become the motifs through which history’s hardest truths are encountered.

Equally evocative is Mukund and Riaz, written and illustrated by Nina Sabnani, as it transforms her father’s late-life memory of friendship and loss during Partition into a thirty-page picture book and a short film. Using Sindhi appliqué motifs and luminous colour, Sabnani creates a tender meditation on a memory her father shared with her short years before he died, something he had never spoken of before: his best friend, and what happened to his cap. Using motifs drawn from Sindhi appliqué, every frame glows with colour, underlaid with sadness.

Other novels which explore Sindh’s landscape of loss and renewal include TRYST WITH KOKI by Subhadra Anand (Authors Upfront 2023), THE TATTOO ON MY BREAST by Ravi Rai (Bloomsbury, 2019), THE SWING by Isha Merchant (Notion Press 2023) written when the author was 12. Other novels which explore Sindh’s landscape of loss and renewal include Tryst with Koki by Subhadra Anand (Authors Upfront 2023) and The Tattoo on my Breast by Ravi Rai (Bloomsbury, 2019. The Swing by Isha Merchant (Notion Press 2023) is notable because it was written when the author was just 12 years old. You Have Given Me A Country by Neela Vaswani (Sarabande Books 2010) retails in India at ₹2514 but Murli Melwani (introduced below) called it “an excellent read,” particularly the chapter about her visit to India to meet her father’s family.

The most authentic glimpses into Sindh, though, come through translation. Ittehad by Guli Sadarangani (1928–2017), translated by Rita Kothari (Zubaan, 2025), resurrects a lost literary voice as well as the intellectual world that thrived in Sindh before its dismemberment. Written in 1941, this extraordinary novel brims with “progressive” ideas – the need for women’s financial independence, the right to choose one’s partner, religion as a path of spiritual growth rather than division, and the treatment of labour as partner rather than subordinate.

Another compelling contribution is The Pages of My Life, memoir of Popati Hiranandani (1924–2005), translated by Jyoti Panjwani (OUP 2010). It recounts her girlhood, education, Partition, and professional life as a writer and academic with candour and verve. One of the most memorable anecdotes describes a prospective suitor discussing dowry, to which she calmly replies that since she earns more than he does, perhaps his family should be paying dowry to hers.

Guli Sadarangani and Popati Hiranandani belonged to Sindh’s Amil community, which valued education, reform, and social consciousness, more about which in THE AMILS OF SINDH [black-and-white fountain (bwf) 2019].

Guli Sadarangani and Popati Hiranandani belonged to Sindh’s Amil community, which valued education, reform, and social consciousness. Their world is explored in my book The Amils of Sindh [black-and-white fountain (bwf) 2019], which traces the community’s history from its administrative roles in Sindh to its post-Partition adaptation in India.

Tales from Yerwada Jail (bwf, 2013), by the prolific Rita Shahani (1935-2013), deeply beloved even today in the lost homeland, is also significant. Through memories from within her family, the book offers a glimpse of the passionate involvement of Sindhis in the freedom movement – only to face permanent exile when Independence finally came. I cannot speak or read Sindhi, and translated this book in collaboration with the author. She read aloud the Sindhi text while I made notes, and we refined successive drafts together until both were satisfied.

The most exceptional translation yet is Rita Kothari’s Unbordered Memories, a curated anthology of post-Partition short stories. It presents the Sindhi experience from various vantage points – departure, wrenching farewells, humiliation in refugee camps, and the desolation of those left behind in Sindh. The stories are filled with pain and nostalgia, emotions almost never expressed in Sindhi families. Freedom and Fissures (Sahitya Akademi, 1998), a collection of Partition poetry is similar, translated by pioneers Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani, working with Sindhi poet Arjan “Shad” Mirchandani. Like me, neither translator can read or speak Sindhi. These collaborations reveal the paradox of a language that survives largely through mediation; a poignant commentary on Sindhi’s fractured afterlife.

Other books weave family histories, oral traditions, and lost geographies into personal testimony. My Sindh by Shakuntala Bharvani (bwf, 2022) blends essays, family stories, and musings on colonial texts into a mosaic of nostalgia and scholarship. Refugees In Their Own Country by Sunayna Pal (bwf, 2022) distils the Sindhi Partition experience into illustrated verse – graceful, dignified, grief-struck. Sunrise Over Valivade by Susheel Gajwani (bwf, 2025) sets the Sindhi resettlement story within a Kolhapur camp originally built for Polish refugees, linking it to a global narrative of displacement.

In Sindhi Tapestry: An Anthology of Reflections on the Sindhi Identity (bwf 2020) I received contributions from sixty contributors of different ages, backgrounds, and professions, exploring a wide range of themes around heritage, displacement, and belonging. Several recalled being taunted: “If you see a Sindhi and a snake, whom should you kill first?”

Many books on this list are self-published, by no means vanity or lack of competence, rather the valiant efforts of survivors of a catastrophe to keep their culture alive. The most notable exception is The Making of Exile by Nandita Bhavnani (Tranquebar Press, 2018). A comprehensive and nuanced account of the Sindhi experience of Partition, it meticulously examines every dimension – political, social, and psychological. Her narrative is precise and compassionate, and through its measured prose, the reader feels the full emotional weight of dislocation. Among its most affecting sections are those describing the despair of Sindhi writers who, after Partition, lost not only their homes but also their readership, their sense of audience, and, in many cases, their will to write. Many died heartbroken.

Among newer finds is The Son-in-Law from Sindh by Premilla Rajan. The title suggests a humorous cultural study of the much-pampered Sindhi son-in-law – and the cover, the mugshot surrounded by stamps from around the world, heightens that anticipation. What emerges, however, is a patchwork comprising affectionate anecdotes, lists of information some wildly inaccurate, and a few priceless glimpses into the Sindhworki world. 

Who were the Sindhworkis? Soon after the British annexation of Sindh in 1843, groups of young men began to board steamships laden with “Sindh work” – intricately crafted goods, textiles, and curios – and sailed out to trade across the Empire. Long before Partition, they had established mercantile networks, a remarkable history documented by the French scholar Claude Markovits in The Traders of Sindh: From Bukhara to Panama (2000).

Among the earliest fictional treatments of this world is Beyond Diamond Rings (Pustak Mahal, 2009) by Kusum Choppra. Daring and emotionally charged, it portrays the anguish of Sindhworki women whose husbands lived in distant lands and who, when Partition erupted, had to flee alone with their children and elderly. The most luminous portrayal of the Sindhworki world, however, is Beyond the Rainbow (bwf, 2021) by Murli Melwani, which won the International Impact Book Award in 2025. Its eleven short stories, set in Chile, Hong Kong, Canada, Thailand and other countries, trace the arc of Sindhi enterprise and endurance. Murli, who grew up in Shillong, studied English Literature and became a professor – and later a diaspora businessman – writes with precision and empathy, exploring the deeper themes of a homeland that no longer exists, the fragility of language, and the moral codes of a people who survived upheaval through work and faith.

Sindhwork and Sindhworkis (1919) was written by Tekchand Karamchand Mirchandani after a long career in Sindhwork. It describes the drab lives of the young men who toiled abroad, exploited by the capitalists comfortably ensconced in Hyderabad. It describes the drab lives of young men who toiled abroad, exploited by capitalists comfortably ensconced in Hyderabad. Sarla Kripalani (1920-2022) translated it in 2001, preserving a rare and invaluable record. The translation is included  in Sindh Bani (Rupa, 2025), with two other works also long in the public domain: Short Stories of Sindh – shared digitally on Sarla’s ninetieth birthday in 2020 – and Aaya Pir, Bhagga Mir and Other Sindhi Proverbs, published in 2008. The beautiful cover, displaying “Kutch” rather than “Kachchh”, inadvertently shows how regional identities can be altered in print. Sarla was a passionate storyteller and it’s unfortunate that public acclaim of her work was withheld from her.

Traces of colonisation, the blurring of idiom, the subtle drifts of meaning that erode a culture from its own vocabulary appear in many of the books listed here: sethia for setha, maike for peko, Ramadan for Ramzan, dupatta for ravo; a lost diary never returned because its pages were needed for cleaning backsides, a claim at odds with lived practice in South Asia.

When Sindhis say they “came to India” or “our roots are in Pakistan,” they are reiterating the absurdity that Pakistan existed before their expulsion. Sindh is often described as having escaped the full fury of Partition’s violence. But the violence of Sindh’s Partition was insidious – social, linguistic, psychological – and continues to echo through generations.

 

Appeared in Hindustan Times on 23 October 2025 https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/from-sindh-in-books-breaking-silence-rebuilding-memory-101761212246870.html