Saaz Aggarwal started the process of collecting Sindhi stories more than a decade ago, and very soon realised how much had been lost when Partition took place in 1947.
It wasn’t just material loss and loss of dignity! Sindhis also lost their language. And they lost their culture. Even their history was lost and distorted.
To be deprived of one’s past is to inherit an impoverished future.
For Sindhis, this podcast is the opportunity to reconnect with a precious long-lost legacy, gain a better understanding of who you are, and claim a more secure identity.
If you are not a Sindhi, here is a piece of Indian history – world history – which will enrich you with learning and inspiration, even as it engages and fascinates you.
If you have enjoyed her podcast, you can email Saaz on saaz@seacomindia.com
This podcast brings you facts, opinions, insights and images, put together in a way that’s meant to keep you hooked! Collecting the material, building relationships with experts in the field, reading, writing, thinking, and talking about Sindh, has taken Saaz long years of research, and hundreds of interviews of Partition-affected Sindhis. She has enjoyed the process, and felt very fulfilled by the way people responded to her interviews. She has also received a huge number of appreciative responses from readers and listeners around the world.
If you would like to show your appreciation and support for Saaz’s work, you can send her a gift by scanning this QR code. If you face any problems with sending your gift to Saaz, you can connect with her directly on saaz@seacomindia.com.
Shamlu Dudeja was born in Sindh, and in this episode she talks about her life as a child there, going to school in Karachi, and visiting the family’s pir Nasir Faqir Jalalani, in his village. One of her spectacular memories is of 14 August 1947 and seeing the flag of Pakistan being hoisted for the first time in history.
In this final episode of the Tapestry podcast’s first season, you are going to enjoy mirchi pakoras a long way from home, samosas as a starter at a Chinese restaurant with devoted Sindhi customers in Iquique, and Indonesian gado-gado – where else but in Chile.
This is a conversation that takes us beyond papad. It takes us beyond saee bhaji, kadhi, kok pallo, dal pakwan, singhar mithai, gheyar and the other familiars. Step in and travel across Sindh along with Sindhi pop-up chef Sapna Ajwani and get a whiff of flavours that you are going to find familiar, nostalgic even, even when you’re encountering them for the very first time.
People think of Sindhis as committed to business and money. This episode is about how important education was in Sindh, the thrust for women’s education and the yearning for a life of the mind. People strived for education for their children, knowing that it paved the way for a better life. After Partition, Sindhis set up schools and colleges in the places where they settled so that the education of their own children would not be interrupted and their teachers and educationists would continue in their professions.
Even 75 years after Partition took place in 1947, and despite the huge number of Sindhis affected by it, Sindh has not yet been accepted as an essential part of the mainstream narrative. This episode is a conversation with expert Nandita Bhavnani whose research on the topic, and her book The Making of Exile, cover the chronology of events as well as the many layers of experience, loss, and feeling that the Sindhi community underwent. The large range of topics discussed in this episode indicate the extent to which Sindhis, even down to the present generation, were affected by Partition.
Sindh was the final frontier of the British empire. This episode is about how the Hindus fared under British rule, the changes that laid the ground for Partition – and how freedom was won. As always, there are many stories from different sources including some really dramatic ones of life at the time and how people stood up to fight for freedom. A very special guest, Dr Subash Bijlani, joins us and speaks about life under the British and his family’s contribution to the freedom movement, with many light-hearted moments as well as some solemn ones.
This episode, about the centuries-old global trading networks centred on Sindh, has stories and a lot of light-hearted conversation, as always. But the high point is an interview with the reclusive Claude Markovits, who speaks about how he embarked on his pathbreaking research as well as various other topics from Gandhi to the plight of the women left at home, and his own experiences with some members of the community he rescued from obscurity by documenting it.