black-and-white fountain

Q&A with Dr. V. Srinivas author of A TALE OF TWO FRIENDS

2026-01-26T08:15:00.003+05:30

For many years you were a high-profile doctor in Mumbai, writing scientific papers and a standard textbook. What were the experiences or reading that nudged you towards becoming a writer of fiction?

We had just started running a homestay in the Nilgiris (Raven’s Nest) and one of our early guests was an editor in Oriental Blackswan (textbook section). One day while listening to the various adventures we had faced in building Raven’s Nest, such as transporting wood from a ship-breaking yard in Gujarat, she was fascinated and suggested we write a book on our practical experiences as books on challenges faced in building a house in India are difficult to find.

Of course this suggestion was directed towards my wife who is a journalist. However this book was a non-starter. I tried reminding her about embarking on this book several times, but ultimately was told to stop being such a NAG!

So I decided to write the book myself in spite of not having attended any creative writing classes.

At about the same time, our apartment in Mumbai was facing some legal problems and possible demolition.

So I hit upon the idea of combining these two events – building a home far away, while current home faces demolition. Thus my first novel ‘A TALE OF TWO HOMES ‘ was conceived. I just continued with the ‘A TALE OF TWO … genre in my next two books.

How much of your protagonist – a South Indian urologist like you – flowed naturally from familiarity, and where did you have to consciously pull away from your own life?

In this book ‘A TALE OF TWO FRIENDS’ just a few incidents faced by me in school and college are woven into the story. However in my previous book ‘A TALE OF TWO MEDICS’ there is a fair amount of medical facts and personal incidents transformed into fiction as that book deals with ethical and unethical medicine.

The book engages closely with racism, immigration anxieties, and political polarisation in the U.S. Were these themes triggered by particular incidents you witnessed, or by conversations that stayed with you?

In May 2025 while visiting my elder daughter in Berlin, I had a lot of free time. I used to regularly call up my younger daughter in Vancouver and keep asking her what’s the latest goings on in her life as she was regularly auditioning for film roles. Finally she got fed up and said, “Dad why don’t you get a life!”

So then I turned my attention to the US news which had a new twist to it on a daily basis (eg tarriffs, Canada 51st state, illegal immigration detentions etc).

Thus a new idea sprung up and I started writing about two friends, where friendship made at a young age in India, lasted even when they moved to USA and had ideological differences at a later stage in life. I did not know where the story was heading, but kept writing a short chapter every day, weaving in what new news item was the flavour of the day in USA.

So by the time I got back to India in mid June, I had finished the book and it had taken me about six weeks to complete. Then it was a matter of checking it a couple of times before it got printed in mid-September 2025.

You divide your time between Mumbai and the Nilgiris – two very different worlds. Has moving between these spaces altered the way you think about power, privilege, and belonging as a writer?

Not really. Before Covid, I used to work in Mumbai and operate for the first 3 weeks in the month and then go and relax in the hills for the last week. But after Covid the schedule got altered and now I spend 3-4 weeks in the hills and only one week a month in Mumbai to see my old patients and any new consults. No major surgery now and I don’t miss it.

While in the hills, I just relax, take long walks, breathe fresh air, develop new friendships and realise how fortunate I am to have this opportunity to enjoy this lifestyle.

Having written medical textbooks, research papers, and now three novels, what does fiction allow you to explore that medicine never quite did?

Unfortunately my fiction writing style is still like that of a surgeon. Cut and dry or black and white with not many grey areas!

That’s why my chapters are not too long (short attention span) and once I have decided and completed a chapter, I don’t go back and do drastic chopping and alterations. Like I tell most of my friends, once you open up a person, you have to know precisely what you are doing and there is no time to fiddle around. So I suppose I have followed these same principles in my fiction writing for better or for worse!

What are you working on now – and does your next book take you into familiar territory, or somewhere entirely new?

No plans at the moment. Have to get word out to the public on this book. Also need to target the Indian diaspora in the USA as this book may resonate with them.

When people ask what is your next book ? I have a standard answer ‘A TALE OF TWO WIVES.’ But since I have not found a 2nd wife nor have I left my 1st wife , that book is a non-starter!

Appeared in Hindustan Times on 25 January 2026
https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/v-srinivas-my-fiction-writing-style-is-like-that-of-a-surgeon-cut-and-dry-101769153759565.html

Q&A with Rita Kothari about her new book ITTEHAD, her translation of a 1941 book by Guli Sadarangani

2025-11-04T21:56:00.000+05:30

An extraordinary book, translated by one of the very few English writers with admirably strong Sindhi skills as well – Rita Kothari. We had a very enjoyable zoom call together a few weeks ago, and the Q&A appeared in Hindustan Times yesterday. Read on!

Saaz: What drew you to this book and to translating it into English for a wider audience?

Rita: I’d known of Ittehad for at least 20 years. I’d come across references to it and always found it intriguing. I remember wondering, is Vimmi Sadarangani related to the writer Guli Sadarangani? And why doesn’t she appear anywhere? Not even in the two-volume 1993 anthology Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present edited by Susie Tharu and K. Lalita. That included Popati Hiranandani, Sundri Uttamchandani, and others – but not Guli Sadarangani.

And every small entry I came across called the book controversial. To me, that should have made her better known, not less. Why was this pioneering woman, who wrote such a courageous book in 1941, missing? I felt this was a historical imbalance. I wasn’t surprised when I learnt that even her son Kishore hadn’t read her work.

Finding a copy was a challenge, I finally got one from Sahib Bijani, Director of the Indian Institute of Sindhology at Gandhidham. And then finding a publisher – this was done through a collaboration between the Ashoka Centre for Translation and Zubaan. It’s called Women Translating Women. Zubaan is bringing out many other books in this series – and there will be other languages. I’m thrilled that this Sindhi novel is part of a community of women’s voices,

Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, Sindhi and others, not standing alone as an outlier.

Translation can be a small gesture, but it can have larger ramifications. At the very least, it was my way of paying homage to a pioneering and courageous woman writer, the first woman novelist of our language. Not many people know of Sindhi literature, let alone a woman writer in pre-Partition Sindh. So it’s a minoritization at several levels – woman, language, region, era.

Saaz: What were the problems that this 1941 novel, offering love and equality between religions as a social and political strategy in the years leading up to Partition, face when it was published and over the years?

Rita: Ittehad was ignored in its own time, the theme was distasteful. It wasn’t widely read or discussed, and over the years, it didn’t feature in literary histories in English.

What I found compelling was how Guli Sadarangani managed to be both conventional and subversive. There’s a clear valuing of romance and relationships, yes – but also a questioning of institutions like marriage, property, and patriarchy. The protagonist, Asha, isn’t looking for salvation through marriage. She’s invested in her friendships, in her own selfhood, in the idea that love can’t survive without independence.

There’s also a certain tenderness and idealism in how religion is portrayed – not as dogma, but as a journey. The book feels radical in its insistence on mutual respect and understanding, both between individuals and between communities.

Perhaps it was too gentle to be taken notice of, or too idealistic, or perhaps it didn’t fit the more strident narratives that came to dominate after Partition.

Saaz: What could it be about Guli Sadarangani’s life and background that led to her producing a book with ‘woke’ themes?

Rita: Guli Sadarangani was from an Amil family; the Amils are a Sindhi community with several generations of education. They tend to be more liberal, ahead of their time – as is this book, remarkably ahead of its time.

Her brother, Krishna Kripalani was an English professor at Shanti Niketan; in 1941 when Tagore died, he was appointed director. He is well known – but no one talks about the sister.

Guli also studied at Shantiniketan, which I believe was formative for her. That’s where her character Asha also goes to study, in the novel. Guli translated Gora, and I assume Tagore’s ideas influenced her. Another character, Aruna comes from a Brahmo Samaj background too – that’s the Bengal connection which was common among liberal Sindhis before Partition.

Clearly, her family was progressive. Sending a young woman across the country to study at Shantiniketan – those values must have shaped her deeply. She translated Gora, and wrote other novels too, which I haven’t worked with. But Ittehad felt like an important landmark.

Saaz: Russia comes across a shadowy ideal in this book, could you please tell us what made it special to Sindhi writers?

Rita: Most people in India see Sindhis as purely mercantile, without a cultural or intellectual life. But the truth is, prior to Partition, Sindh had a thriving intellectual scene. Many educational institutions were run by Hindu Sindhis. After Partition, that cultural identity appears to have drained away.

Today’s stereotype of Sindhis in India as only money-minded is post-Partition; in Pakistan, people acknowledge the role Hindu Sindhis played in creating cultural institutions.

My own father was not from an elite background, but names of Russian thinkers, communism – meant something to him. In his lifetime, he swung from attending communist meetings in Kalyan to eventually admiring the BJP. But those multiple ideological influences coexisted, it wasn’t just Russia.

You see those same ideological streams in the novel – Gandhi, Tagore, Brahmo Samaj, communism. At the heart of it is always the question: how does one become a good, ethical citizen? The novel doesn’t always make clear where its moral compass lies, so it feels utopian at times. Yes, the 1940s were a critical time in Sindh – communal tensions, the Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabha, RSS, and so much more. To write a novel like this during that time – it meant something.

Saaz: Translating across cultures is never easy – which parts of the book did you find difficult to convey in English?

Rita: Most of the language in Ittehad was urban and familiar to me, so not especially hard. But there were moments that gave me pause. One passage stands out: when Hamid tells his mother he doesn’t want to marry and she asks if he’s in love. He says he is, and she asks, who is she? “Khudaji bandi,” he replies, “A devotee of god!”

“Aren’t we all that?” she asks. “Tell me more, what abour her zaat-paat?”

And he says, “So now you want to know her zaat-paat!”

“Yes!” she replies, and when he reveals the girl is Hindu, her reaction is so interesting.

She says, “Really? Those people who consider us to be untouchable, who won’t even accept food from us, you’re going to marry one of those?”

Words that are used for a sect, or a caste, have become of huge interest to me in the act of translation. It shows how the vocabulary we assume is about religion is often really about caste. Words like zaat, sampradaya, panth – we use them across different contexts, and they often blur categories of religion, caste, and sect. This overlap has become a major area of interest for me, especially in translation.

So there were interesting aspects – but nothing really challenging in the act of translation.

Saaz: That couldn’t have been the case with your translation of Shah Abdul Latif into Hindi?

Rita: No it wasn’t – and I’ll admit that was a project I care about even more. It’s called Kahé Latif and comes out next month. I selected about 450 of his poems. The translation felt like a lifetime wish – something I didn’t have the confidence to take on for a long time. It’s coming out from Vani Prakashan.

As you know, Sindhi is one of India’s important literary languages, with a 600–700 year-old tradition. This is almost unknown in India, even amongst Sindhis. If you ask an average person to name a Sindhi writer, they won’t know anyone. Popati Hiranandani may be translated, but how many have heard of her? And there are so many other fine writers, writing on a range of themes.

So my Kahé Latif is another attempt at reclaiming our literary tradition. It’s a Hindi translation, done directly from Sindhi – not from English, and not as a prose rendering, but in poetic verse. There are many English translations of Shah Latif, but we don’t have versions that retain the alliteration and rhythm of the original. Hindi allowed me to do that. I hope people will read it aloud in Hindi, quote it the way Latif is meant to be quoted.

Saaz: You once told me that you find the Sindhi community very patriarchal. My experience has been quite different. What could be the reasons for this?

Rita: That’s interesting, and I think it points to how diverse and heterogeneous the Sindhi community is. My sense of the community comes from growing up in Kachchh, where I saw strong male dominance – in trusts, institutions, and family decisions. Patriarchy was embedded in everyday life. But in your experience, perhaps among Sindhis in urban centres or in the diaspora, there’s more fluidity and exposure to other ways of being.

It’s a difference worth thinking about. Maybe there are multiple Sindhi worlds – and they’re shaped by region, class, mobility, and memory in very different ways.

First appeared in HT Premium on 3 November 2025 on https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/rita-kothari-the-vocabulary-we-assume-is-about-religion-is-often-about-caste-101762174156436.html

Sindh in books: breaking silence, rebuilding memory

2025-10-25T18:46:00.005+05:30

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

Interview with Ramya Sarma about her book Asha Bhosle: A Life in Music

2025-08-27T12:53:00.003+05:30

Ramya Sarma
Courtesy Neeta Kolhatkar

Saaz: You’ve been associated with ‘Bollywood’ for a long time without an actual association with it – what’s that been like?

Ramya: I've been part of creating websites on Bollywood and its associations. It's been a lot of fun. Incomprehensible at times, annoying at times, and hilarious very often. It's a world I would normally never step into wearing any mask I might think of, but it's a very colourful, whimsical, crazy yet terribly intense and demanding world which can be daunting if you don't set good sense, logic and schedules aside and leap in, without thinking too hard or too straight. Running websites is not about knowing that world, but about knowing the audience that wants to know that world. And ‘people’ is a far more interesting realm, one that makes me want to know more. I've never been glamour or star struck, so the desire to meet stars or even watch films has never been strong. I have always been curious about the people who make up that starry world - like the determination, hard work and charisma that has carried Asha Bhosle, Shahrukh Khan and others of their quality to the places they now hold. As far as interviewing filmi types, doing film reviews, watching shoots, et al...no, not for anyone who is a little OCD about time and place!

Saaz: And now you’ve written a book about someone you never met and yet you managed to create a very vivid, lifelike impression of her within a few pages, which keeps growing through right till the end. How?

Ramya: My editor-publisher Bidisha Ganguly and I have worked really hard to make this book something special. I aimed for the unexpected, which is what makes me want to read a book. It's really very simple: when you know nothing or close to nothing about something, your perspective is unbiased. You dive in and explore, learn, question, without preconceived notions or preconditions. It's like eating those filled chocolates...what they're filled with, you never know until you bite in. And AB is a PERSONALITY, someone who has done fabulous things with the life she has lived. What I admire is her resilience and that chutzpah to keep going, and going higher. If I conveyed that, great! But a lot of people don't see that she's not just a star, she's a human being, with very human reactions and behavioural quirks. In glorifying her, that aspect rarely comes through. And while she's earned the right to that glory, there's so much more to her. Talking to people who are not obviously connected to filmbiz brought out that part of her, I think...I hope.

Saaz: Why Asha Bhosle of all people?

Ramya: It kinda landed in my lap, honestly. And I agreed to do it because it was a challenge and I was bored of the same old, same old. And on the way I found that she's the kind of woman I'd like knowing, someone who has talent, intelligence, sass, strength and, yes, frailties that have only given her power. I think that is an embodiment of Shakti, power, a realm that rules. I like the concept of feminine power, of Shakti!

Saaz: What was your most memorable event in the process of writing this book?

Ramya: Well there were some very fun and some very memorable stories. Like learning about AB eating crisps with Shujaat Khan in London. Like her sitting and snacking in the car in Delhi with Parveen Khan. Like her delight at being recognised at the airport for a non-filmi work. Like her first meeting with Boy George, and admiring how he did his eyebrows. But my favourite moment, apart from the friends I made – by the way, almost every interview I did was food linked somehow! – was that email I got from Boy George. I opened it as soon as I woke up at 5.30 am one dawn and squeaked! Woke up lots of people – who really didn't care – and chirped excitedly at them...Why was that so special for me? It's a little silly, but when I was a teenager and trying to figure out how to be a girlie girl without overdoing it, I got an album of Boy George and Culture Club; BG was on the cover, with glorious eyes made up beautifully. And that is still my ideal when I do my face!

Saaz: And the most challenging?

Ramya: There were two aspects that were not just challenging, but plain hard on me, playing tricks with my self-worth and my mind. One was the delay that the project went through (if that's the right way of putting it?) at every stage, almost every page, with the first publisher. That was frustrating, hurtful, annoying, all those negative emotions that have been, frankly, scarring. The second was to pin down the few film types that I did get to speak to me. One of them made up for it in style, for which I am forever grateful and a fan – Sonu Nigam, who changed his mind about meeting me often, even when I was right outside his house. But he made up for it by doing the whole interview and singing fabulously on WhatsApp voice messaging! The others...that would make one of those really funny personal memories books that so many people are writing. I've mentioned some of them in the book’s intro.

Saaz: Looking back to the time you started working on this, what has changed in you, what did you learn?

Ramya: That life may throw you stinkers and more will come out of left field, but you will eventually do what you set out to do if you really want to do it. I guess it's like Asha Bhosle herself, hard work, grit and determination gets you to the end line. What changed in me is very little, I'm still me, albeit with more silver and less hair and a few extra lines that don't come from giggling, usually inappropriately!

Saaz: How about sharing a few stories that didn’t make it to the book?

Ramya: There are many … like the time my sandals broke right outside Lesle Lewis' studio and I trudged through the building barefoot. Seeing my woeful state, he made me put my feet up on his squishy sofa, talked to me for ages and then sang songs from his new album, then offered me a pair of oversized rubber chappals to get me back to my car! Then there was Sumit Dutt, who was in a meeting but came out for "ten minutes" and then sat with me for over an hour telling me stories about Ashaji singing under a large yellow umbrella in a waterfall! People surprised me with their generosity, kindness and plain niceness.

Saaz: Asha Bhosle is writing her autobiography. What do you expect that to have which your book doesn’t have?

Ramya: Obviously, a great deal, since it's her own life that she will write about. But the book has been announced many times and shelved many times. In fact, when I was with Poonam Dhillon, she called Ashaji to ask if she may speak with me. The lady agreed, telling her she could say what she wanted, since her own book was almost done and would be out soon. A couple of months later, she announced that she had decided that her life was her life and she saw no reason for other people to know about it, so her book would not be published. If it ever is, I'd line up to buy it!

Saaz: Finally, what do you expect from the release of this book?

Ramya: Obviously good sales, since that would make my publisher happy! And, of course, for readers to learn something new about Asha Bhosle, something that they had never seen or heard of before. Because that's what we were looking to do!

This interview was published in Hindustan Times on 27 Aug 2025.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/ramya-sarma-i-admire-asha-bhosle-s-resilience-and-chutzpah-101756123445691.html

Ramya and Saaz at the launch on 12 June 2025

Daneesh Majid: “History has mostly been written by those in power”

2025-06-11T12:03:00.007+05:30

What struck me most about Daneesh Majeed’s book about what transpired during princely Hyderabad’s integration into India in 1948, is its parallels with the Sindh story. People did not consider their experiences worth documenting, eclipsed as it was by the much larger-scale violence elsewhere. Despite the dramatic lifestyle changes, colonization by dominant cultures, being sidelined in the administration and left to fend for themselves, they faced their plight with bravery and stoic acceptance. The book also exposes caricatures showcased through pop culture, media, and India’s many film industries.

Saaz: Why now, Daneesh? What gave you the courage to address this important piece of our history and the unjustifiably long gap in public discourse? And how did you approach writing about that politically sensitive moment?

Daneesh: It wasn’t necessarily courage. An epiphany back in early 2020 propelled me into action. A little before Covid, a video interview I conducted with Arshad Pirzada crystallized something I had been thinking about when carrying out some Hyderabad-centric features for The Hindu Business Line’s weekly magazine two years earlier. Pirzada is a former Gulf NRI whose family came from a priestly lineage and had ties to the bureaucratic Asaf Jahi establishment. Post-1948, they had to adjust to life as numerical minorities in a democratic landscape unlike the old feudal setup in which the ruling Muslim minority held sway. The hen Siasat.com chief editor, Ayoob Ali Khan, chided both of us for not emphasizing this fall and rise aspect of Pirzada’s journey, one which included him becoming an economic migrant to Saudi Arabia and paving the way for his family’s economic revival.

SThere are plenty of such stories in Hyderabad that have remained undocumented (not only because many elders are no longer with us) and diluted through generations. A lot of these accounts have not been brought to the fore through crisp, timely and accessible narratives in the vein of works by authors like Urvashi Butalia, Anam Zakaria, Aanchal Malhotra and yourself.

As for my approach, I could not solely rely on oral accounts. Besides my own enormous bookshelf, I scoured various bookstores, accessed personal libraries and found some academic articles to recreate the eras and build worlds that that the 11 different families lived in. My editor Vikram Shah’s nudges in the right direction were key to this.

Saaz: Hyderabad is a city of syncretism, but also of stark divides – linguistic, religious, and class-based. How did you navigate these complexities while telling its story?

Daneesh: Some of these divides existed pre-1948.

For instance, many people believe that the Mulki agitation which began surfacing in the early 1950s was the earliest harbinger of the Telangana-Andhra divide. One story an acquaintance told me was about his father, a participant in the anti-Nizam and eventually anti-Indian government struggle. When his father was hiding out among Andhra Telugu cadres and interacting with ordinary citizens during the late 40s in Bapatla, Madras Presidency, some of them either wondered how he was able to articulately communicate in Telugu while many poked fun at his Telangana dialect outright. That too, despite the fact that the Andhra Jana Sangham which helped foment revolt in Telangana brought the Telugu populations from Madras Presidency and Telangana together on the basis of language. He also spoke of how Andhraites monopolized decision-making out of a sense of organizational superiority.

So rather than only looking at these divisions through post-colonial, contemporary lenses, finding and citing primary/secondary sources that mention previous iterations of these divisions helped in navigating those present-day discords.

Saaz: Could you tell us about your most important sources, and share any stories that surprised you or changed your thinking?

Daneesh: Two important ones which altered specific notions come to mind—both my own and commonly held ones.

Dr. Rafiuddin Farouqui’s compilation of the Aurangabad (then a part of the Nizam state)-born Maulana Maududi’s letters, in which he beseeches Qasim Razvi to negotiate the best terms of accession with the Indian government. It showed a more farsighted, accommodating side to someone that many, including my own great-grandfather who served as a Director in the Religious Affairs Department of Princely Hyderabad, saw as a hardliner.

Chukka Ramaiah, the now 98-year-old activist who participated in the early days of the Telangana Revolt not only abhorred the ruled Hindu vs. ruler Muslim angle of looking at the anti-Nizam struggle, but a cruder version of the Andhra versus Telangana binary too. He was all praise for a class of Andhraites who arrived in Hyderabad state during the early 50s, not as monopolisers of the commercial and ruling dispensations. This group of egalitarian-minded teachers from Andhra uplifted Telangana Telugus who previously didn’t have access to education, especially in their mother tongue.

Saaz: Our respective works (mine on the Sindhis) trace the afterlives of two distinct but parallel communities deeply affected by the reshaping of India after Partition. What does this say about how we remember the ‘unwritten histories’ of India – the ones lived not by governments, but by people?

Daneesh: History has mostly been written by those in power. Today, various political figures have been rewriting history especially through their election rhetoric. Since 2018, state, municipal and national polls saw certain opposition factions referring to then Chief Minister KCR as the “New Nizam.” They recasted national figures as reincarnations of the Iron Man who humbled Osman Ali Khan. The “Nizam culture” was blamed entirely for the city’s so-called inability to become a global IT hub.

All this amounts to a constant rewriting of the past by the powers that be as they evoke the powers that were! But it is the ordinary citizenry of today, the majority of which doesn’t have the time nor resources to (re)evaluate bygone eras, who gets polarized as a result. Cinema, social media reels and WhatsApp forwards, backed by a robust ecosystem don’t help either.

Yes, the Nizam possessed his shortcomings, and princely Hyderabad had a dark side to it. But this us-versus-them prism, with the Nizam and the Razakars being equated as the sole aggressors, has gained too much currency.

I was told first and second-hand stories from Kayasthas and Telangana Hindus about Osman Ali Khan’s personal generosity and his patronage of temples. A lot of Telugu and Urdu literature chronicles how religious Muslims took to the onset of leftism against a feudal set up spearheaded by their “own.”

Micro-histories that ask the “big” questions about historical occurrences, in the “small” places are the need of the hour.

Saaz: Food, tehzeeb, language, architecture – Hyderabad’s cultural distinctiveness is legendary. Which elements do you think are still thriving, and which are slipping away?

Daneesh: Shervanis as well as Rumi topis are still worn at weddings and various functions. The food for the most part is still around. The feudal mentality that makes things more hierarchical while also inducing inertia among Hyderabadis won’t disappear anytime soon. That being said, to varying extents, these elements certainly haven’t been immune to the onset of McDonaldization.

The Dakhani dialect, which isn’t in danger of being fully cannibalized by shuddh Hindi or khaalis Urdu yet, can still be heard widely. But the nastaleeq script in which one can read Dakhani and standard Urdu literary gems, is rapidly fading away.

Signboards on streets as well as government offices and Urdu “jashns/anjumans” that often take place are in no way indicative of any substantive revival.

Unless the prose is translated, which to some is code for “diluted,” so much literature risks becoming obscure or an exotic relic of the past. In the past three years, some of my favourite Old City bookstores have closed or aren’t selling non-religious content.

Saaz: Did you find yourself having to leave certain things out – whether due to space, sensitivity, or complexity? Are there stories you wish you’d been able to tell more fully?

Daneesh: Yes. Throughout my research and fieldwork, I learned of some interesting reasons regarding why some Hyderabadis did or didn’t undertake life-altering migrations to the West, the Gulf, other Indian cities, certain parts of Telangana/AP, or even Pakistan.

There are some intriguing anecdotes about why some Muslims decided to either stay in India or make the move to Pakistan. After 1948, even the apolitical, professional class of Hyderabad’s Muslims, regardless of whether they had ties to the nobility, considered settling in Pakistan. Despite the 1965 War, which put spokes in the wheel of Indo-Pak travel, many left for Pakistan in the 1970s out of personal grievances.

Including such sagas would have provided a more personal, interior context as to why people decided to leave their families and native soil. However, if an interviewee requests for the omission of any detail or anecdote, out of respect and sensitivity, I have to oblige.

Saaz: Who did you imagine as your ideal reader while writing this book – and what do you hope they will take away from it?

Daneesh: My ideal reader was always someone who wants to look at how people remember tragic episodes alongside common, sometimes militantly mainstreamed interpretations. Irrespective of whether the reader approaches my first book as such, at the very least, I hope that they get to experience the flavour of Hyderabad through its 11 diverse families. After all, a city’s cultural distinctiveness isn’t only defined by its monuments, cuisine and languages, but also by those who call(ed) it home.

This interview was published in Hindustan Times on 10 Jun 2025.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/daneesh-majeed-history-has-mostly-been-written-by-those-in-power-101749471874844.html

Interview with Kishore Mahbubani for Hindustan Times

2025-04-30T10:46:00.002+05:30

Saaz: Your childhood was marked by hardship, malnutrition, and poverty. You’ve spoken of the strength and skills this gave you – how did you develop them? As a diplomat, what solutions would you suggest for helping children in similar situations?

Kishore: Since Singapore is now one of the most affluent countries in the world, many Indians are unaware that at independence, Singapore was one of the poorest countries in the world. In 1965, its per capita income was the same as Ghana in Africa: $500. I experienced this poverty personally. I was put on a special feeding programme when I went to school at the age of 6 as I was technically undernourished. Our home had no flush toilet. Debt collectors would come to our house regularly. My father went to jail. Yet, I was able to overcome many of these adversities because I had an unusually strong mother who never broke down under all these pressures. The resilience I developed in my life was a gift from her to me.

One reason why I wrote my memoirs is that I wanted to give hope to young people who may be suffering the same kind of difficult childhood I had experienced. It’s good for young people to understand that people like them have overcome difficult circumstances.

Saaz: Your book praises Lee Kuan Yew (who often gave you a tough time) extensively. What measures from his leadership could India adopt for better development?

Kishore: Singapore’s exceptional success as a country was due in large part to three of its exceptional founding fathers: Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee, and S. Rajaratnam. One of the great privileges of my life was getting to know all three of them well. From them, I learnt a lot about how countries could succeed in development. I distilled many of the lessons I learned from them into the acronym “MPH”. In this case, it doesn't stand for “miles per hour” but for “Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty”, which is the secret formula for Singapore's success.

Meritocracy is about choosing the best people to run your organisation, society or country. Lee Kuan Yew was insistent that only the best should be selected to serve in the government.

Pragmatism is about being willing to learn best practices from any source anywhere in the world. Dr Goh Keng Swee once said to me that no matter what problems Singapore encounters, somebody somewhere must already have encountered it. Hence, Singapore should proactively learn lessons from other countries. Dr Goh also pointed out that since Japan was the first Asian country to succeed, Singapore should study Japan carefully if it wanted to succeed as well. India could also learn lessons from Japan's development.

Honesty is about eliminating corruption. This is crucial as trust and stability are essential for an economy to thrive. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest principle to implement.

I believe that any society in the world, including India, would succeed and do well if it implemented the secret Singapore MPH formula.

Saaz: Could you tell us something about the different diplomatic communities you encountered?

Kishore: Walking into the UN headquarters and experiencing a real global village of representatives from 159 countries was always a thrill for me. Though we all came from strikingly different cultures and traditions, we were able to forge many close friendships with each other based on our common humanity.

When I joined the UN in 1984, some of my Arabian colleagues declared that I belonged to their tribe because my surname, Mahbubani, comes from an Arabic/Persian word, “mahbub,” which means “beloved.” Most Sindhis are Muslims. Due to my Sindhi roots, I felt some degree of cultural affinity with both the Arab countries and Iran. And since I sported a beard then, I was occasionally mistaken for an Iranian diplomat when I was seen without a tie.

The ambassadors from the five founding member states of ASEAN—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—came together like comrades in arms to defend our common interests. I also became very close to the African ambassadors, whom I found to be incredibly reliable and trustworthy. If you became friends with them, they would remain steadfast and stick with you through thick and thin.

I also worked with US ambassadors who were polar opposites: Ambassador Vernon Walters was incredibly warm and generous and won many friends for the US, while Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick was harsh and condescending towards the UN community in a bid to win favour with right-wing politicians at home. While American diplomats could be very direct and candid, they could also mingle easily with all nationalities. By contrast, European diplomats seemed to have an irrepressible desire to preach to other countries about human rights issues. I was therefore shocked to witness the incredible evasive skills of the Western diplomats when I chaired the oversight committee of the UN Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development (UNPAAERD). They expertly avoided making any concrete and binding commitments to help the African countries despite the passionate speeches they had given in the UNGA about wanting to do so.

Saaz: Please tell us about your visit to Sindh.

Kishore: When Shaukat Aziz, whom I had met in New York and Singapore when he was the Vice President of Citibank, became Prime Minister of Pakistan (2004 to 2007), he invited me to visit Pakistan. I went to Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad and Lahore. It was a fascinating visit. Then Pakistani High Commissioner to Singapore Ambassador Sajjad Ashraf also arranged a special visit to Hyderabad, where my mother had grown up. While my mother was sadly no longer with us, her brother, Mr Jhamatmal Kripalani, was able to draw me a map to their childhood home. Fortunately, we were able to find it.

Since I had grown up listening to stories of how Muslims and Hindus had killed each other during Partition, I expected to encounter hostility in Hyderabad when I went to search for my mother's home. Instead, every Muslim person I met in Pakistan received me very warmly and was delighted to see me. The reception could not have been warmer. I was glad to learn that a lot of the hostility from the Partition days had dissipated.

Saaz: As someone who has made Sindhis proud with your exceptional success, please suggest measures by which members of your community could enhance the way they are perceived.

Kishore: Sindhis are a remarkable people. There are very few ethnic groups in the world who have managed to succeed in all corners of the world. The Sindhis are one of them. Having visited most of the major cities in the world, I'm always pleasantly surprised to see members of the Sindhi community thriving and succeeding in all corners of the world. Indeed, I have first cousins in all corners of the world: in Suriname and Guyana in South America, in Texas and Florida in North America, in Ghana and Nigeria in Africa, in Japan and Hong Kong in East Asia, and of course in Mumbai and Kolkata in India. I also have relatives in Europe. The entrepreneurship of the Sindhi community is truly admirable.

In the next chapter of its development, India will have to engage the rest of the world more. Its trade and investment links with other countries will also increase. One of its major assets as it plunges ever more deeply into globalisation will be the strong and successful ethnic Indian communities overseas. Undoubtedly, the Sindhis will rank among some of the most successful Indians overseas. Their contributions should receive greater recognition within India.

Saaz: Your advice for young people who wish to follow a career in diplomacy?

Kishore: Diplomacy is one of the best professions in the world to join. Since we live in a small and shrinking world, all countries must now make a major effort to understand other countries and cultures all over the world. And the people who are best placed to do so are diplomats.

As I explain in my memoirs, I had no intentions of staying on in diplomacy, as I wanted to return to academia after graduating. However, I discovered diplomacy to be a more fulfilling profession than academia. I realised that in trying to defend the interests of a small country like Singapore in the international community, I was defending an underdog. Ambassadors from smaller countries have to work harder than ambassadors from larger countries. Fortunately, with the help of reason, logic and charm (as I describe in my memoirs) I managed to succeed in furthering Singapore’s interests in the United Nations and in the ASEAN community.

Golf proved to be very useful. Indeed, one reason why Southeast Asia, the most diverse corner on planet Earth, has had no wars in 50 years is that many of the Southeast Asian diplomats and leaders play golf with each other. This is also a lesson that South Asian countries can learn from Southeast Asian countries: it’s important to invest time in developing personal connections with each other. Trust building and cooperation at the national level is incredibly difficult when there is no warmth or trust on the interpersonal level.

This interview was published in Hindustan Times on 30 April 2025.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/kishore-mahbubani-india-will-have-to-engage-the-rest-of-the-world-more-101746012772995.html

The launch of Susheel Gajwani's memoir Sunrise Over Valivade

2025-04-06T18:52:00.001+05:30

When Susheel Gajwani sent me a manuscript with stories of his childhood in the Sindhi refugee camp at Valivade, Kolhapur, I knew that this was an important piece of Sindhi history and decided to work on it with him and publish it. Here is what I said when we launched the book at NCPA, Mumbai, on 5 April 2025.

You can read what Sindh studies scholar Nandita Bhavnani said about what makes SUNRISE OVER VALIVADE an important book at the launch on this link

There's a reading by Menka Shivdasani, Susheel Gajwani and Nandita Bhavnani here

And here is a performance by Susheel Gajwani himself at the event.

Publisher Saaz Aggarwal’s first-person account of Susheel Gajwani’s book, ‘Sunrise Over Valivade’ in scroll.in

2025-02-05T19:17:00.014+05:30

Saaz and Susheel on one of their many
zoom discussions during the course of
preparing the book for publication
in Jan 2025

Susheel Gajwani’s book, Sunrise Over Valiwade, opens with the milk queue in a refugee camp. Mothers and grandmothers have brought their little ones – a ragged, squalling lot, some naked – and are waiting in line as milk is doled out from a large, dirty, aluminium vessel. A man in a khaki uniform is pouring milk into dented and tarnished tumblers with mechanical precision, filling each glass swiftly and purposefully. The children grab their glasses and empty them hungrily. Another man stands beside them, snatching the empty glasses back and rinsing them in a bucket of water. Hundreds of glasses are ‘washed’ in the same bucket. Susheel is waiting his turn.

What happens next you must read for yourself in the book, all I can reveal for now is that the words and the descriptions bring alive much more than the wretched, forlorn existence, the grime, the pushing and shoving, the language barrier, the unfamiliar geography, the helpless dependence on others’ goodwill and charity. Susheel’s dismay, his attachment to his grandmother, the way she responds – especially the way she responds, an iconic manifestation of the Sindhi identity – made me want to cry and ended up making me laugh. The first story in the manuscript Susheel sent me some months ago, it filled me with delight, and energized me to put everything aside and start preparing it for publication.

Kolhapur’s Gandhinagar Camp for Sindhi Partition refugees is largely unknown except to those associated with it. The most commonly referred list of Sindhi refugee camps in India at the end of 1948 is from Dr. UT Thakur’s 1959 book Sindhi Culture (Sindhi Academy, New Delhi):

1. Ajmer Merwara at Deoli 10,200

2. Bombay 2,16,500

3. Baroda 10,700

4. Bikaner State 8,900

5. Jaipur State 33,200

6. Jodhpur State 11,800

7. Madhya Bharat 3,400

8. Former Rajasthan 15,800

9. Saurashtra Union 45,500

10. Vindhya Pradesh 15,400

11. Madhya Pradesh 81,400

Total 4,52,800

The Gandhinagar Camp is absent in this and other research about Sindhi refugees, as are many other locations of the scattered population. In time, it would grow – as did the other camps – into a community of solid citizens who contributed substantially to the economy of the region. And this is where Susheel Gajwani was born, in the barrack his family had been allotted, delivered by a daee from another refugee family.

Growing up in the camp, hearing the sounds of his mother tongue – and even the melodies of Master Chandur and other Sindhi singers – spoken around him was one thing; integrating into the wider world outside was another. This book covers interesting aspects of both.

Susheel’s family came from Shahdadkot in Sindh and, growing up, he heard the elders reminisce with nostalgia of the places they had left behind. I peered into maps of Sindh to locate the towns and villages Susheel named and found them all – except Korayoon. I asked around with no success and, finally, requested Nasir Aijaz. The award-winning Pakistan media personality and founder and director of the redoubtable Sindh Courier https://sindhcourier.com/ could find no trace of it.

“Seriously, Susheel? Korayoon?” I asked.

“Yes, Korayoon,” he replied firmly.

“Qambrani?”

“No.”

“Karira?”

“No!”

“Chakiyani?”

“Of course not, Saaz! Korayoon – that’s the name they spoke about. Often. Korayoon.”

Nasir reported back that village Korayoon was not even on the survey list of the Revenue Department. Perhaps, he said, the name had been changed. Yes – perhaps it had. Because, when the non-Muslims left Sindh, much changed. A new population arrived, making things difficult for those left behind, regardless of their religion. Sindhi culture was mocked, Sindhi people were colonized, their efforts derided. Across the border, Hassomal had turned into Haresh; Sati into Sita. Kripps was emerging from Kripalani. How could we know what names were being changed in Sindh?

As adults, Susheel and his brother Shashi became professionally associated with different formats of mass media. Discussing their childhood in a refugee community, the trauma of their people, and the courageous way in which it had been faced, they began asking round and reading up, and something they had always known came into focus. Their childhood home had in fact been built for Polish refugees of the Second World War, on land given by the Maharaja of Kolhapur, one of the Indian princes who followed the lead of the Maharaja of Nawanagar, in arranging for shelter to the Polish women and children who had lost their families to the war.

Susheel’s family had arrived in Valivade completely devastated. Wrenched from lives of comfort, they were thrown into wretched living conditions, and forced to live on charity. But the Polish refugees had arrived in Valivade a decade before them, after even more intense ordeals in slave gulags.

In the 1990s, Susheel and Shashi made an effort to find local people from nearby villages who had been associated with Valivade camp, and came across Dadoba Lokhande, who introduced them to Maruti Dashrath Bhosale, Shiva Gawli, Bandu Hari Awale and others who had worked with the Polish refugees. They shared their memories, and these form a charming adjunct to this Sindhi story. Barbara Charuba kindly gave permission to use her photos; more can be seen on https://www.polishexilesofww2.org/valivade-camp-india-part-4

Occasionally, dates came into question. When exactly did the Gajwani family leave Sindh, when did they arrive in the Bombay docks, when were they herded into trains that took them to Valivade?

Clarifying dates is always a challenge while tracing the history of families from a beleaguered community whose focus was on surviving and moving on. Over hundreds of interviews, I’ve met people who did not want actual years to be known, sometimes for legal reasons, sometimes social appearances. Fudging years was an easy way out. Most commonly, as with Susheel’s family, overwhelmed by the demands of survival and daily existence, people simply did not kept track. We turned to archival accounts.

After the 6 January 1948 pogrom in Karachi, the Bombay docks became overrun with refugees who had fled their ancestral homeland and wished to live close to Bombay where they could earn for themselves rather than in faraway Ulhasnagar on government doles. According to a news report on 28 February 1948, more than 5000 were squatting on the quaysides of No 18 and No 19, Alexandra Dock. Crime was escalating, and the sanitation situation put the entire city’s health at risk. On 4 March 1948, the Directorate of Evacuation was preparing to receive 5000 refugees per day. There were 12,000 awaiting dispersal, and on an average about 2000 were being removed daily. Do the figures quoted really add up? Either way, oral history interviews confirm that mass accommodation was being identified in other parts of India, and the railways were arranging refugee-special trains to Aswali (Deolali), Avadi (Chennai) and other places. It was a news report which indicated the month and year in which Susheel’s family – his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and the extended families – arrived at Valivade.

Very soon after Sunrise over Valivade went online a few days ago, I received an email forward, strongly opinionated and responding with authority to the excerpt on https://blackandwhitefountain.com/sunrise-over-valivade/#. It lamented the incident as questionable and reflecting the writer’s urge for self-aggrandisement. The Sindhis, the email went on, were greatly appreciated by other communities, and India as a whole! Not only that, but Sindh stands at the very centre of the Indian national anthem and even forms the stem of the word India and Hindu! The writer of the email himself, an important person, specified that, as a Sindhi, he had received nothing but affection and respect across the state even though he is not fluent in Marathi.

I will admit that I rolled my eyes a bit but phoned Susheel at once to check, “Was that the only time anyone hit you?”

He replied indignantly, “It was not. I was beaten up many times when I was in college!”

“Ok – were you the only Sindhi who faced that treatment, Susheel?”

“No, no, no, there were others who did.”

“Ok – did all the Sindhi youngsters get beaten up?”

“Of course not, Saaz! Most of them tried to stay out of trouble. But there were some of us who stood up for ourselves.”

This episode made me ponder (yet again) how very little I know about this fascinating community despite all the years of listening, thinking and trying to understand. Yes – by and large they wanted to be low key and just get on with the job – but does that mean we should pretend that people who are poised to bite back when provoked do not exist? That we can’t make space for that mantra of our times, ‘diversity’?

It took me back to the time when Susheel, 5 or so years old, stood clutching his beloved Amma’s loose-flowing pajama as they waited in line. The spectre of this hungry child, craving for milk, the ultimate luxury, haunted me right through the process of working with him on the book. How had he survived? What traces of those years remained within?

First appeared in https://scroll.in/article/1078447/a-publisher-recounts-her-experience-of-working-on-a-memoir-about-the-sindhi-refugee-camp-in-valivade on 4 February 2025

Review of Sunrise Over Valivade in Hindustan Times Jan 2025

2025-02-02T10:09:00.002+05:30

‘Sunrise Over Valivade’: a historical record and an intimate family account

After Partition, the Gajwani family left their business and lands near Shahdadkot in the north of Sindh, travelling through a tormented, blood-stained terrain to Karachi, where they boarded a ship to Bombay along with crowds of others like them. In Bombay, they remained for several days on the Alexandra Docks, where the ship had discharged them, somehow eking together a living, unsure of what to do next. One day, they were removed, along with the large group of others who had also made a temporary home on the docks, herded into a train, and deposited in Valivade. It was in the Sindhi refugee camp at Valivade that Susheel Gajwani was born and raised. His memoir, Sunrise Over Valivade, is a historical record and an intimate family account.

While capturing the resilience, struggles, and identity of Sindhi Hindus displaced from their homeland, this book is also the first recorded instance of the presence of a Sindhi refugee camp near Kolhapur, reflecting the sad absence of comprehensive information about the Sindh Partition experience and the glaring gaps of accurate knowledge about it.

Another fascinating aspect of the book is that the camp was originally built for Polish refugees during World War II. The context of this from online sources, appended with Susheel’s interviews of local people who had served in the camp during that time, provide the opportunity to muse on the two sets of refugees rendered homeless in the same era of history. While the Poles experienced more atrocities during the war than the Sindhis did during Partition, the Poles were given a chance to rebuild with dignity, while the Sindhis had to fight for even basic recognition and make their own way.

Susheel was born in the Valivade refugee camp, a world where Sindhi culture and traditions were kept alive, but where the reality of having lost their homeland was inescapable. His family and other refugees had fled escaping violence and uncertainty. Many had left behind their land, homes, businesses, and even close relationships. He recalls growing up in a purely Sindhi environment within the camp – where everyone spoke Sindhi, ate Sindhi food, and celebrated Sindhi festivals – and experiencing the feeling of stark alienation outside the camp. This paradox of being in their own country yet clearly not accepted, is a recurring theme. Sindhi refugees were not given a province of their own, unlike other displaced communities after Partition. The Indian government saw them as temporary settlers, refusing to grant them official recognition as a linguistic group with rights.

Despite these challenges, Sindhis rebuilt their lives. Susheel’s family, like many others, started small businesses, with his father and uncles selling onions, potatoes, and ginger in Kolhapur's markets. They worked hard to earn respect, but ingrained prejudice persisted.

By grounding his narrative in small, intimate moments, Susheel makes history personal, allowing readers to feel the heartbreak, humiliation, and resilience of the displaced community. Through a series of vignettes, he captures the sounds, smells, and emotions of refugee life. In A Glass of Milk a child’s anxiety over whether there will be enough milk for him in the government ration line serves as a metaphor for uncertainty and scarcity. Other vignettes, such as Laundry and The Photograph, bring out the small yet significant aspects of life in the refugee community, showing how people tried to preserve their dignity and traditions despite their circumstances. Eyyy Nirvashya! highlights the social stigma that followed Sindhi refugees long after they had left the camps. Susheel’s graphic description of verbal abuse by a policeman, followed by a physical assault when he answered back, reveals another untold aspect of the Sindhi story.

Susheel also details the adaptation to Maharashtrian customs, as Sindhi women began wearing saris and cooking local dishes. Over time, the displaced Sindhis integrated into the local society, but never stopped longing for their lost homeland. A crucial moment in the book is the realization that Sindh had changed too. The land left behind had been transformed, with migrants from other regions replacing Sindhi Hindus. This severed the last ties to their roots, making return impossible.

While this book contributes to the neglected history of Sindhi refugees, it also highlights larger themes of displacement, cultural erosion, and resilience, making it a valuable contribution to Partition literature and diaspora studies.

If I had to look for inadequacies – well, it lacks women’s perspective and women’s stories. It overlooks the internal class and caste divisions within the Sindhi community. Many wealthier Sindhi Hindus were able to migrate to Mumbai, Pune, or settle in other countries where Sindhi traders have had a presence since the 1850s, while poorer refugees were left in camps for years. Sindhi Hindu society is not homogeneous, and social hierarchies existed even in exile. However, these are gaps that must be filled by other books.

It was a pleasure for me to work with Susheel on his stories, weaving historical research into the personal vignettes and oral histories, igniting an awareness in him that could be passed on to his readers, of the evolving identity of a community for which multi-faith worship was once the only way of life they knew.

It also brought me a strong reminder of the realities of the day, impossible to deny, yet waved away as inconsequential by many in this materially successful community:

- Why did the Indian government refuse to grant Sindhis a state?

- Why were Sindhis not included in the linguistic reorganization of India?

- How did early government policies contribute to the decline of Sindhi language and identity in India, and can the sincere efforts being made today ever compensate?

- Will the shallow stereotypes with which Sindhis are perceived in India – and as a consequence many other countries where the diaspora is settled too – ever be replaced with the nuanced realities, which books such as these provide?

First appeared in Hindustan Times on 29 January 2025

Sindhi showcased as a regional language at Hyderabad Literary Festival January 2025

2025-02-01T21:20:00.001+05:30

In January 2025, the Hyderabad Literary Festival (HLF) featured Sindhi as its regional language — a gesture that meant a great deal to us, as there is no region in India today that Sindhi is native to. At noon on the festival’s opening day, scholars Rita Kothari , Nandita Bhavnani, and moderator Soni Wadhwa led a deeply engaging discussion titled Fragmented Selves: Sindhi Language, Literature and History.

Their conversation traced the journeys of Sindhi identity, displacement, and memory. Rita reflected on her students’ growing interest in Sindh Studies; Nandita shared insights from her research, including her 2003 visit to Sindh, where she realised how many pre-Partition trends were already shaping the changes that Partition later intensified. The audience — both Sindhi and non-Sindhi — joined in with thoughtful questions and perspectives.

Later that afternoon, Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani spoke in a session on Story, Voice, and Verse, reading from their English translations of Sindhi poetry. Moderator Soni Wadhwa closed by reading a Sindhi poem herself, to the audience’s delight.

That evening, delegates gathered for a dinner hosted by the Lithuanian Embassy — a warm opportunity for exchange among participants including Nandita Bhavnani, Rita Kothari, Menka Shivdasani, Anju Makhija, Subhadra Anand, and Saaz Aggarwal, with festival directors Vijay Kumar Tadakamalla and Amita Desai, and Lithuanian Ambassador Her Excellency Diana Mickevičienė.

A Shared Heritage — in Hyderabad, India

What moved me most was how the Sindh Courier covered the event. Its editor, Nasir Aijaz, wrote that the festival took place in “Indian Hyderabad” — because of course, there is another Hyderabad, in Sindh, where many of our ancestors came from. My mother was born and grew up there, and experienced firsthand the loss that Partition brought. How poignant, then, that the first Indian literary festival to celebrate Sindhi should be in a city of that same name.

Even so, the irony remained: the HLF banner had Sindhi written in Devanagari script, because few on this side of the border can now read the original Sindhi script.

Our Session: Rediscovering a Scattered Identity

On 26 January, Subhadra Anand and I (Saaz Aggarwal) spoke on Little-Known Aspects of Sindhi Culture — touching on:

The prejudice and stereotypes Sindhis still face.
The Partition experience, and how little of Sindh finds mention in mainstream Partition narratives.
The irony of this neglect, given Sindh’s multi-faith culture, its early global trade networks, and its scattering a century before Partition.
The loss of history and language, alongside the poetry, philosophy, and visual and performing arts that shaped Sindh.
The Sindhi community’s enduring qualities: adaptability, resilience, hard work, hospitality, and philanthropy.
And the ongoing efforts to restore cultural identity, including Dr. Anand’s ambitious Jhulelal Tirthdham project in Kachchh.

It was a privilege to share the stage with friends and colleagues who have long worked to preserve and reinterpret Sindhi culture — and to witness the growing recognition of Sindh’s place in India’s and the world’s story.

Launch of Sunrise Over Valivade at Hyderabad Literature Festival 2025

2025-02-01T21:04:00.003+05:30

Sunrise Over Valivade by Susheel Gajwani was launched at HLF on 1 Feb 2025.

Event organizer, audience member, Saaz Aggarwal, Susheel Gajwani, Menka Shivdasani, Barkha Khushalani, Subhadra Anand, audience member

The Partition and beyond: Saaz Aggarwal on Indian Explorers Podcast

2024-01-28T10:16:00.000+05:30

The Partition and beyond: Sindhi Stories, Struggles, and Success with Saaz Aggarwal

Embark on a captivating conversation with Saaz Agarwal, a prolific writer and artist, as she unveils the profound impact of the partition of India on the Sindhi community.

In this episode, Saaz shares personal narratives that illuminate the violence and chaos of that turbulent period. She passionately advocates for preserving personal stories, emphasizing the resilience that defines the Sindhi community. Explore the intricacies of Sindhi culture and language loss, along with the lingering stereotypes.

Join Sabrina Scott and Amit Nawalrai on an eye-opening journey that delves into the triumphs, struggles, and untold stories of the Sindhi community worldwide.

Prejudices can only be overcome when we understand realities and face the truth

2024-01-26T08:25:00.002+05:30

Talk given at the Willingdon Club in January 2025

On January 24, 2024, I spoke at the Willingdon Club, at the invitation of the club library. My friend Shahsultan happened to be in Bombay and she attended too, as my guest – she’s a member of the club but when she registered for the event, was informed that it was full and even the waiting list was full, which I found very flattering. Of course the club has many Sindhi members, but it was good to see that the audience had non-Sindhis too. One of them, a professor at a university in Canada, told me after the talk that I had missed speaking of an important point: the “bad name” that Sindhis have. He suggested that in future, if I did not want to talk about it, I include a disclaimer on the lines of “today I will not be speaking about the fact that Sindhis have a reputation for being crooks”.

His kind advice made me remember my primary motive in writing and speaking about Sindhis – the conviction that prejudices can only be overcome when we understand realities and face the truth. I believe that offering a body of true stories could work towards this.

One of the lovely moments at the event yesterday was when I spoke of Harchandrai Vishindas and mentioned his work as a city father of his hometown, Karachi, and found that there were 4 members of the audience who were his grandchildren! I requested them to stand up so I could take this photo.

I usually don’t bother to speak about the prejudice against Sindhis, but many of the people I’ve interviewed do, and many ask me about it. When I invited a range of Sindhi academics, businesspeople, artists, professionals and others, truly wonderful people, to contribute to my book SINDHI TAPESTRY: AN ANTHOLOGY OF REFLECTIONS ON THE SINDHI IDENTITY, it was very surprising to find that 4 of their excellent essays mentioned “The Sindhi and the Snake”!

In October 2013, at the fag end of a book tour in the south of Spain, I spoke to a gathering of 80 Sindhis in Gibraltar, showing photos, sharing insights, and explaining why I’d called it SINDH: STORIES FROM A VANISHED HOMELAND. At the end of my talk, Suresh Nagrani stood up to share something.

“When I was young,” he started, “I thought all Indians were Sindhi.”

This was greeted with a ripple of laughter, but it was no less than a fact: the Indians native to Gibraltar are indeed Sindhis. Suresh Nagrani went on: “Then I went to ‘uni’ in England. There I met Indians who were not Sindhi, from different parts of India. That was surprising. Even more surprising was that one of them said to me, ‘Oh, so you are a Sindhi. Let me ask you a riddle. If you meet a Sindhi and a snake, which one should you kill? You should kill the Sindhi!’”

The audience broke into guffaws.

First appeared in Sindh Courier on 25 January 2024

Review of LOSING HOME FINDING HOME by Rehana Alam | Published in Dawn, November 5, 2023

2023-11-06T20:51:00.001+05:30

NON-FICTION: STORIES OF BELONGING

Losing Home Finding Home by Saaz Aggarwal looks like a picture book. It is a slim volume, the size of a legal pad, and has equal measures of text and black and white illustrations. The appearance of the book beckons the reader toward itself. The title too speaks to the modern mind, which tends to look for new homelands, losing identity in the process and then frantically searching for roots once again.

Saaz Agarwal, an established writer and artist, has made the migration of Sindhi Hindus her main focus. She has written two previous books, Sindh, Stories from a Vanished Homeland (2012) and Sindhi Tapestries (2021). Both the books deal with the Sindhi Hindu diaspora and the Sindhi identity.

When asked why she felt the need to write another similar book, Aggarwal says that since the Sindhi refugee story has started to come out only about a dozen years ago, it still has only a shaky place in established Partition literature.

Losing Home Finding Home concentrates on a historical sliver, a really thin slice, from the traumatic events of the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947 — namely, the displacement of Hindu Sindhis and their rehabilitation.

A collection of personal accounts of Sindhi Hindus, who had to uproot from their homeland after 1947 and replant themselves in India and elsewhere, is a modest but important addition to Partition literature

This one-way Sindhi migration was quite small in scale when compared to the two-way migrations of Punjab and Bengal. Yet Agarwal’s effort has brought to the fore the circumstances of those who had been largely forgotten because of their relatively insignificant numbers, the lack of violence at their departure and their subsequent astronomical success.

A glance at the history of Sindh at the time of Partition shows that people of all creeds generally lived in religious harmony. Even as sectarian sensibilities were inflamed elsewhere in the country, there were very few incidences of bloody disturbances in Sindh. In Karachi, only one such instance was recorded.

Agarwal’s account is also largely devoid of civil disorder. When relating the Karachi incident, the author mentions how a Muslim family protected Sindhi Hindus during the riots. In the narration of the departure of the author’s own family, an unnamed friend features as the collaborator who helps the family reach Keamari safely. The accompanying illustration, however, shows a very Muslim looking figure aiding them.

The departing Hindus either went to Bombay by ship from Keamari or they went by train to Rajasthan. In both cases, according to Aggarwal, they took ample baggage with them, another proof that they were not fleeing for their lives. In some instances, books, lab equipment and even furniture were taken along to facilitate the opening of educational facilities on the other side.

Losing Home Finding Home does not presume to be a scholarly discourse about Partition. It is a collection of stories of actual people who were uprooted and it is the authenticity of these reports that captivates the interest of the reader, as do the excellent illustrations by Subhodeep Mukherjee. The stories, themselves, are not of trauma but of shared experiences.

An anecdote about Ali Gohar Malkani and his Hindu friend Moloo is quite fascinating. The friends bade a tearful farewell as Moloo left in 1947. Moloo asked his friend to make use of all the things he was not taking with him. The Ali Gohar family did respectfully use some of the things. But to this day, an heirloom carpet with Moloo’s father’s name woven into the pattern is in the safekeeping of Ali Gohar’s grandson. He is still trying to locate the rightful heirs.

Most of the migrating Hindu families seem to have been financially comfortable. Agarwal’s father was a lawyer. Once in Bombay, he needed only a bit of initial support from Bhai Pratap (a Sindhi philanthropist), to settle comfortably in the new city. Even bad times are not so bad for the well-to-do.

Other Sindhis, who ended up in Bombay, whether professionals or businessmen, were housed by the government in Kalyan Camp. Kalyan had been a British army transit camp used by departing or arriving British troops. After the British left, the vacant camp was used for sheltering the refugees. Initially it was both uncomfortable and inconvenient.

The refugees had to huddle together with only fabric stretched between families for privacy. But, Aggarwal writes, no one complained. Not even those who were so rich in Hyderabad that they used to serve wine to their guests with gold guineas in each glass, as gifts. After several months, the government built housing blocks. Makeshift schools were started and Sindhi was kept as the medium of instruction.

The Sindhi Hindus were entrepreneurs by nature. They soon discovered ways to earn money wherever they found themselves. Slowly but surely, they regained their old status. Aggarwal claims that even the skyline of Bombay changed as the homeless refugees turned to building abodes for themselves. Cooperative housing societies sprung up and the Sindhis constructed building after building, changing the look of their adopted city.

Hundreds of Sindhi Hindus leaving their homeland at the time of Partition in 1947 |Ilustration from the book

The Sindhworkis, those Sindhi Hindu merchants who had set up trading businesses in foreign ports, were also affected by Partition. In many cases, their families had continued to live in Sindh and so had to migrate in 1947 led only by women.

Aggarwal laments that, by leaving Sindh, the Hindu refugees lost their land, culture and language. The refugee Punjabi, on the other hand, whether Muslim or Hindu, did lose his possessions but not his language and culture. And the same is true of the Bengali.

The book lists the cultural icons of Sindh which are perceived as lost to the refugees. River Indus merits a whole section. The other places appear amazingly non-Hindu to us, such as the principality of Khairpur, ruled by Muslims, Bhit Shah, Sehwan Sharif and Pir jo Goth (the home of Pir Pagara). For a Pakistani in 2023, it is baffling that Hindu Sindhis are nostalgic about fundamentally Muslim sites more than 75 years after their departure.

Aggarwal mourns the loss of her mother tongue also. Even though the early schools that were opened for the Sindhi refugees taught in Sindhi, the language was forgotten as time passed. She contends that the present descendants of Sindhi refugees do not know their language any more.

This is indeed a loss. It could easily have been remedied if the significance of the mother tongue had been realised in time. A close parallel is found in those Pakistanis who emigrate to the West and neglect to teach the next generation the language of their roots.

The author has compiled this short book with love. She has delved into the lives of many Sindhi refugees to present the reader with a collage of stories. All the stories glorify the Hindu Sindhi, his resilience, integrity and industry. Everyone seems to have prospered and made good. Many have become citizens of the world by migrating to other countries, especially the families of Sindhworkis.

Losing Home Finding Home is eminently readable. Even though the subject matter is not necessarily of universal interest, the book is brief enough to keep the reader engaged. The illustrations and photographs add to the readability.

The author achieves her goal of documenting events for present and future generations.

Aggarwal’s ode to Sindhi Hindus is an addition to Partition literature, albeit a small one, in its own modest way.

The reviewer is a freelance writer, author of the novel The Tea Trolley and translator of Toofan Se Pehlay: Safar-i-Europe Ki Diary.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, November 5th, 2023

https://www.dawn.com/news/print/1786602

Losing Home Finding Home

By Saaz Aggarwal

Illustrations by Subhodeep Mukherjee

Black-and-White Fountain

ISBN: 978-93-83465-32-3

112pp.

Hidden Histories event at SOAS on Losing Home Finding Home

2023-05-31T15:44:00.001+05:30

The page is not copied adequately so it may be easier to read this on https://blogs.soas.ac.uk/decolonising-soas-library/blog/hidden-histories-10-losing-home-finding-home/

Hidden Histories #10 – Losing Home: Finding Home

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Hidden Histories #10 – Losing Home: Finding Home

April 24, 2023|Events, Hidden Histories|9 comments

Hidden Histories

A seminar series curated by the Library Decolonisation Operational Group, led by Farzana Qureshi, Dr. Ludi Price, Amma Poku and Angelica Baschiera.

Tuesday 30th May 2023 at 5:30-7:00pm (BST)

Venue: Hybrid

In person: Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT), Lower Ground Floor of Main Building, SOAS.

Online: Zoom

Title: Losing Home: Finding Home

75 years after the Partition of India, who owns the narrative? This question has been pondered at length in different forms on different forums, and the Sindh story has been markedly absent. It’s hard to understand why this is so, as it is a big story affecting a large and diverse population, with many remarkable features.

When Partition gave the province of Sindh intact to Pakistan, it was believed that the non-Muslims would continue as a peaceful and prosperous minority, as they had been for centuries. And when the trouble escalated, they faced their abrupt exile with courage and enterprise.

In these 75 years, Hindu Sindhis – while centred largely in Mumbai and its environs – have made their homes in places all around India as well as other countries around the world. They adapted and integrated, put the past firmly behind them, and indeed have never been seen as people who came from somewhere else.

Perhaps it is the patina of distrust – derision even – at their unmistakable prosperity, which obscures some very interesting facts. Some of these have been showcased in Losing Home, Finding Home a book of personal narratives by Saaz Aggarwal (black-and-white fountain, Pune, 2022) and will be presented here.

The event will be chaired by Professor Navtej Purewal (Political Sociology and Development Studies).

Speaker:

Saaz Aggarwal

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 libraries of the best universities around the world.

Chair:

Navtej Purewal (she/they) is Professor of Political Sociology and Development Studies at SOAS University of London. She has done field-based research over the past two decades in Punjab across India and Pakistan looking at borders, gender, caste and vernacular/popular religion and social change. She is currently AHRC India Fellow and is PI on an AHRC-funded project ‘Border Crossings: Exploring community and history at the 75th anniversary of the partition’.

Seminar Video:

9 Comments

Rajesh DodejaMay 1, 2023 at 6:10 PM
I will attend in person
Amrita ShodhanMay 9, 2023 at 8:10 AM
I would like to attend in person, but the link to register in person is not working.
Amrita ShodhanMay 9, 2023 at 8:11 AM
Sorry – the link worked just now. So please ignore my previous comment. I will attend in person.
Anini ReejhsinghaniMay 26, 2023 at 4:56 PM
Will attend online
Subhodeep MukherjeeMay 27, 2023 at 6:04 AM
Heartiest Congratulations Saaz ! Already registered.I will be there virtually from India,for sure.Deep regards
Parshotam P. HiraniMay 29, 2023 at 4:18 AM
Please register my name:
Cell # +91 9870723731
WhatsApp
Send me zoom link
@ USA ET
@ VA/DC
1. Ludovica PriceMay 30, 2023 at 10:12 AM
  Hi Parshotam,
  If you want to attend in person, please register using this link.
  If you want to attend online, please register using this link.
RBMay 30, 2023 at 9:28 AM
My friend & I have both registered on the 13th of May, no confirmation received. We are planning to attend. Please update if the event is full or cancelled. Thanks
1. hi7@soas.ac.ukauthorMay 30, 2023 at 9:50 AM
  Hi, you will not receive any type of the confirmation email. Please attend the event if you’ve already registered.

The mother tongue Partition consumed intact: article in scroll.in

2023-01-29T15:56:00.004+05:30

After my session at the Jaipur Literature Festival on 21 January 2023, I sat in the author-signing hutch, and one of my visitors was a young woman who had grown up in the US. She shared with me her distress at not having a mother tongue, and I spent a little time trying to reassure her that there was actually no such thing, that whatever she did have was all she needed. I had serendipitously learnt this the previous day from the generous genius Ranjit Hoskote, co-worker at Times of India in the early 1990s, when I told him that my session was on “The call of the mother tongue: loquations and dislocations”. He smiled and explained that “mother tongue” was a philological invention of German Romanticism, and that in India, for millennia, we have been multilingual subjects, our home languages one of several at our disposal. I will admit that the concept of “home language” made me feel better about my own situation, and I tried to pass this along to her.

When Partition gave Sindh intact to Pakistan, it was believed that the non-Muslims would continue as a peaceful and prosperous minority there as they had been for centuries. And when they found themselves exiled, a large majority of Sindhi parents stopped speaking to their children in their own language, wanting them to have a better chance in the new world by mastering local languages wherever they settled. The government of the newly-truncated India played its part in the annihilation of Sindhi, by not listing it as an Indian language. The writers and intellectuals of the community – a large number at the time – took the help of a young lawyer (later the most famous lawyer in India, Ram Jethmalani) to contest the horrid omission. In 1967, Sindhi was accepted in Schedule VIII of the Indian Constitution as an Indian language. It is a consequence of those 20 lost years that, today, only a handful who had the benefit of a ‘Sindhi-medium’ education, still survive.

Life-support

Today, of course, the Indian government (and literature festivals around India) uphold Sindhi wholeheartedly. The Department of HRD, Government of India, even has a well-funded body called NCPSL, the National Council for the Promotion of Sindhi Language. Sindhi is taught in a few schools and colleges in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan; Bombay University has a full-fledged department of Sindhi which offers MA, MPhil, PhD. However, Dr Baldev Matlani, former HOD, informed me that there has been a steady and continuing decrease in numbers.

I also asked my dear friend Vimmi Sadarangani, Professor of Sindhi at Tolani College of Arts & Science, Gandhidham, an internationally renowned poet who writes in both Sindhi and Hindi, a person of extraordinary creativity and incisively rational mind. She spoke to me extensively about the state of Sindhi literature in India and here is a little of what I gathered:

“Yes, there is a new generation of writers in Sindhi. But nobody publishes Sindhi books, nobody buys, India has no bookshops where you can buy Sindhi books. Writers print the books with their own funds and distribute them to their friends. They read each other’s books. And the pool of senior writers who write the forewords has now dwindled to just 3 or 4.”

Vimmi also reminded me that the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar, instituted in 2011, had been received by young Sindhi writers only from 2015. And I told her about the Sahitya Akademi conference in March 2022, on Sindhi writers who have contributed to the literature of languages other than Sindhi, where I was invited to present a paper on the life and work of Dr Murli Melwani, whose book of short stories Beyond the Rainbow, a riveting collection set in the global Sindhworki diaspora, I had published.

At the end of our two-hour chat, we decided to get together to identify Sindhi writing that we could work together to translate and publish. And here I must reveal further droll (if poignant) information about the state of Sindhi language and literature in India: 3 of us who have translated important works from Sindhi into English – Anju Makhija, Menka Shivdasani and I – cannot read or write the language. We can barely speak it, and did the translations working with elderly writers who read and write Sindhi. Yes – the support from that generation has been tremendous.

Devnagari vs “Perso-Arabic”

The painstaking – and painful – attempts to revive Sindhi in India has taken many forms, and they have all been blighted by the battle of the scripts. After Partition, some felt it would make it easier to pass on the “mother tongue” in Devnagari. The Sindhi script was renamed the “Perso-Arabic” script. Most students, and often for very good reasons and by well-meaning teachers, are only taught the former. As a result, they are deprived of the riches of Sindhi literature, since most of it is not transcribed in Devnagari. And when prescribed texts are only available in Sindhi script, teachers painstakingly transcribe it themselves for their students.

Wouldn’t be easier, I think to myself, to teach your students the script? Little children learnt it in Sindh, how can it be considered “difficult”? But I don’t ask because it’s a complex situation, overshadowed by legacies of Partition which further fractured the scattered community, distancing young Sindhis even more from their heritage of poetry and philosophy. Few even know that it exists.

Sindhi literature has a long history and there were many masters of poetry and philosophy, the greatest known being the 17^th century Shah Abdul Latif whose work permeated society. It was taught in schools, and his thoughts and beliefs also pervaded the everyday language of the masses through folk tales as well as pahakas – the kind of life sayings that most languages have. Sindhi pahakas urge people to aspire to common sense, respect for all religions, and essential goodness. I’m always fascinated when I interview a young person who unknowingly reflects these attributes, untarnished by Partition and the loss of the language.

From what I’ve understood through the course of my interviews, Sindhi literature was of overarching importance to the Hindus of Sindh, with their large population of writers, academics and intellectuals. In the lead-up to Partition, many of them were freedom fighters involved in writing, printing and distributing literature to create awareness of the importance of freedom from British rule – this was propaganda against the Crown and a serious view was taken of it. Many of them spent substantial time in jail for these “seditious” activities. Sadly, when the goal of freedom was achieved, they themselves lost their homeland for good.

Glory, but strewn with mortification

I was delighted and gratified when JLF invited me as a speaker for the 2023 festival. The democratic space of JLF, its festive energy, earnest readers, well-loved writers, colour, light, music, inventive displays, eager volunteers – a planet of book-lovers – was always an unimaginably lovely time of year back when JLF was new and I had the good fortune of writing a books column for Sunday Mid-day. It was a place where you could be standing behind Alexander McCall Smith in the lunch queue; even share a shuttle to your hotel with Hanif Qureshi! One day at an overcrowded session, a member of the audience stood up and observed indignantly that Madam Vasundhara Raje was standing. Festival director Sanjoy K Roy politely suggested that he offer her his seat.

An opportunity to be on the other side of the table there made me so very happy. But also sad to have to convey, in my session, on “mother tongue” the story about how Partition depleted Sindhi language and Sindhi culture. While Archana Mirajkar spoke of the vibrancy of Marathi Literature and her solidly glorious discourses, Granthyatra, all I could do was whine on and on about how no language can be expected to survive among a people who never hear it spoken on the street.

My work is not IN Sindhi. It's about heritage, storytelling, lost nuances, and conveys messages from our shared ancestry to coming generations.

Sindhis form a global diaspora with a large majority settled in Mumbai and its environs. There are small communities settled in various parts of India – but also in and around many ports around the world. These were trade outputs which started coming up soon after the British illegally occupied Sindh in 1843. After Partition, the families were able to set up homes there and local communities burgeoned. Another fascinating aspect of the Sindhis is their tendency for multi-faith worship. In Sindh, religious ritual and religious boundaries did not form tight defining borders for worship. And yet, when push came to shove, they found themselves on the wrong side of the fence.

Invisible but all-pervasive

On 26 December 2022, The New Yorker carried a delightful, evocative essay, Seventy-Five Years After Indian Partition, Who Owns the Narrative. The word Sindh was not mentioned even once.

This is not unusual: Sindh is invariably absent from Partition narratives; sometimes it earns a patronising mention. The only 2 exceptions I know of that have embraced Sindh as part of mainstream Partition are the 1947 Partition Archive and the Partition Museums in Amritsar and Delhi. Very few independent researchers – notably Aanchal Malhotra, Rashi Puri, Ishika Chatterjee – have pursued Sindhi interviews along with Punjabi ones.

Why the largescale boycott?

Could it be because there was less violence in Sindh, could it be that the absence of trains full of dead bodies, the absence of acts of barbarism from the Sindhis themselves that disqualifies them?

Could it be that a province that was not partitioned cannot consider itself a part of the Partition narrative despite the huge, complex and fascinating repercussions Partition brought to it?

Could it be that a community that has no access to its motherland has no right to its Partition identity even though Partition is what now underlies the identity of every Sindhi?

It’s not because they were too few. Though the actual numbers will never be known, it is believed that nearly a million non-Muslims were displaced from Sindh; around 2.5 million from Bengal; around 5 million from Punjab. The Sindhi story is huge. And it’s a truly extraordinary one with a lot of adventure, a lot of diversity and some remarkable features such as the extraordinary manner of dealing with refugee status – quietly picking up the pieces, moving on, making it big. Could that even be considered particularly relevant in today’s world?

At JLF too, there were Partition sessions – without a single acknowledgement of Sindh. Until – suddenly and unexpectedly! – a mention arose. It was by Sudha Murthy, introducing Chitra Banerji Divakaruni and Aanchal Malhotra at the launch of the former’s book Independence. Voicing her appreciation that they had both written on Partition, she pointed out that they had only covered Bengal and Punjab and she now exhorted Chitra Banerji Divakaruni to write her next book on Sindh.

Now is the time

Sudha Murthy spoke at the right moment, for we stand at the beginning of a new era! Young people yearn to know more. Social media handles with “I am proud to be a Sindhi” hashtags have huge and growing populations of followers. There are easily-downloadable apps from which you can learn the Sindhi alphabet. Sindhi singers, and more and more are emerging, are assured of huge enthusiastic audiences. Creative output in Sindhi is nascent but with technology supporting the growing interest, good things surely lie ahead. When I started writing about the Sindhi diaspora 10 years ago, there were just 7 or 8 of us in the space. Today there are more than a 100 and the number is growing.

Loquations and dislocations

When I'm asked about my mother tongue, I generally end up holding forth on the marvellous story of Khushiram Kundnani, founding principal of National College, Mumbai, who carried his college with him from Hyderabad Sindh. That's where my parents met, brave pioneers of that fledgling institution "love marriage" practiced by brave rebels. They did not know each other's languages, Sindhi and Konkani, we lived in the Nilgiris where my third language at school was Tamizh. When filling forms I despondently inscribe "English" in the "mother tongue" field.

Some months ago I came across this quote by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

“If you know all the languages of the world but not your mother tongue, that is enslavement. Knowing your mother tongue and all other languages too is empowerment"

it made me ponder the brazenness with which I cope with my disability. And it reminds me of the enormous number of times I’ve heard people I’ve interviewed say

- I wish I had learnt the language when I had the chance!

- If only I had made the effort to speak to my children in Sindhi!

- They used to speak Sindhi to each other, never to us. When we heard them speaking Sindhi, we knew that they were saying something they didn’t want us to understand!

My mother was 13 years old when Partition took place. When I was born, 13 years later, she gave me the pen name she had chosen for herself – but could never use because she had lost her language. Why would any young person want to write in a language which nobody could be bothered to read?

But I am grateful. It is a pen name that gives me a distinctive by-line.

Saaz Aggarwal

"The idea of a 'mother tongue' is a modern idea, a philological invention of German Romanticism, wedded to that movement's obsessions with unique linguistic roots for every nation. 'Nation', too, is an invention of this period. In India, for millennia, we have been multilingual subjects, our home languages one of several at our disposal. The words matru-bhasha and madari-zubaan only come into being after the encounter with colonialism and European philology. They are calques, formed on the basis of the German Müttersprache."
- Ranjit Hoskote

First appeared in scroll.in on 28 Jan 2023

The Call of the Mother Tongue | Loquations and Dislocations at JLF 21 Jan 2023

2023-01-22T17:30:00.000+05:30

Saaz Aggarwal and Archana Mirajkar in conversation at Jaipur Literature Festival 2023

A session that invokes the spirit of the mother tongue, evoking memory, heritage and legacy, where Archana Mirajkar and Saaz Aggarwal discuss cultural and linguistic roots that inform their work.

Writer and translator Archana Mirajkar writes in both English and Marathi. Her recent book Swayamsiddha tells the stories of rebellious women from the Mahabharata. She hosts a YouTube series titled ‘Granthayatra ‘ that showcases Marathi Literature. Saaz Aggarwal is an author, editor, biographer and oral historian who has curated Sindhi Tapestry and other works on the culture and identity of Sindh and the Sindhi diaspora. Together with Neeta Gupta, the two participants provide a unique flavour of their mother tongues and the literary culture and social traditions they embody.

Saaz Aggarwal:- has a master’s degree in Mathematics but has established herself as a writer and artist. Her work includes biographies, translations, critical reviews, humour columns, themed painting collections, and mixed-media installations. Her books on Sindh are in university libraries around the world.

Archana Mirajkar:- is an author who writes in English and Marathi. Her books include Swayamsiddha, All the way… Home and Hello, kon?. She has translated many distinguished authors from English into Marathi. Her YouTube series ‘Granthyatra’ showcases hundred outstanding books in Marathi literature. Archana has worked as a communications specialist and journalist for 26 years. Currently, she is Senior Media and Communications Officer at a foreign mission in Delhi.

Uncovering Urban Legacies: Tracing the Sindhi and Parsi Heritage of Bombay

2023-01-18T21:13:00.000+05:30

An Avid Learning event at Durbar Hall, Asiatic Society of Mumbai on Tuesday, 17 Jan 2023

Mumbai’s diverse urban fabric is built on the cultures and lifestyles of communities that call it their home. The communal diversity can be traced back to the 17th century which saw a flock of traders and merchants landing on the shores. In the sixth edition of Uncovering Urban Legacies, our eminent speakers explored the rich heritage of the Sindhi and Parsi communities to understand their indelible legacy on the city and its surroundings. They traversed through Bombay’s historical, geographical, and sociocultural influences while illuminating the lesser-known ones, pivotally shaping the city. Come and be a part of this fascinating journey to discover and re-discover the stories of not one but two communities that embraced and enriched Bombay. Biographer and Oral Historian, Saaz Aggarwal Assistant Professor of History, S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Dinyar Patel in conversation Author & Bombay History Fellow at Gateway House, Sifra Lentin

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

2022-12-26T21:23:00.004+05:30

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

2022-12-20T21:45:00.001+05:30

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

2022-12-04T18:19:00.002+05:30

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

2022-11-28T10:53:00.001+05:30

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

2022-11-23T10:57:00.017+05:30

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

2022-11-20T11:08:00.001+05:30

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

2022-11-12T00:00:00.000+05:30

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

black-and-white fountain

Q&A with Dr. V. Srinivas author of A TALE OF TWO FRIENDS

Q&A with Rita Kothari about her new book ITTEHAD, her translation of a 1941 book by Guli Sadarangani

Sindh in books: breaking silence, rebuilding memory

Interview with Ramya Sarma about her book Asha Bhosle: A Life in Music

Daneesh Majid: “History has mostly been written by those in power”

Interview with Kishore Mahbubani for Hindustan Times

The launch of Susheel Gajwani's memoir Sunrise Over Valivade

Publisher Saaz Aggarwal’s first-person account of Susheel Gajwani’s book, ‘Sunrise Over Valivade’ in scroll.in

Review of Sunrise Over Valivade in Hindustan Times Jan 2025

‘Sunrise Over Valivade’: a historical record and an intimate family account

Sindhi showcased as a regional language at Hyderabad Literary Festival January 2025

Launch of Sunrise Over Valivade at Hyderabad Literature Festival 2025

The Partition and beyond: Saaz Aggarwal on Indian Explorers Podcast

Prejudices can only be overcome when we understand realities and face the truth

Review of LOSING HOME FINDING HOME by Rehana Alam | Published in Dawn, November 5, 2023

Hidden Histories event at SOAS on Losing Home Finding Home

Decolonising SOAS Library

Hidden Histories #10 – Losing Home: Finding Home

Seminar Video:

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The mother tongue Partition consumed intact: article in scroll.in

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Glory, but strewn with mortification

Invisible but all-pervasive

Now is the time

Loquations and dislocations

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

Episode 308: Saaz Aggarwal Enters a Vanished Homeland

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

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

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

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

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