Sindh is a province with rich traditions, customs and cultural heritage. The people of Sindh take pride of their values which have evolved through centuries. In the year 1947 many Sindhis had to undergo the pain of emigrating from their ancestral homeland to altogether a new location, just like the people from many other parts of sub-continent. Saaz Agarwal has collected some stories from those who were native to Sindh before the partition and has tried to portray the pre-partition culture of Sindh through this book. She has saved the memories of some of those who were affected with the partition but hoped that a time would come when the circumstances would revive and they would get back to their homeland. But the history tells that the time of revival never arrived.
The book contains a number of different stories from those people who were the inhabitants of Sindh before the partitioning of sub-continent and the way they have narrated their stories gives a feeling as the reader is walking into the streets of old Sindh. The book provides the good information about the Sindhi lifestyle and the behavioural attitudes of the people at that time.
The book states that despite the fact that the Hindus were in minority in Sindh, they lived in accord with each other and expected this lifestyle to continue. The book depicts the stories of this group of minorities and tales that after the partition, the Hindus left the province they grew up in and they set forth from Pakistan and reached India where they slowly began to find a sense of belonging and began trade activities to support their families. The community had to adjust to several cultural changes along the way.
In their new, and often resentful, environment, they did not pause to feel sorry for themselves or to contemplate what they had lost. All their energy went into establishing themselves and restoring the lives of dignity and comfort they had been accustomed to. As the Diaspora scattered around the world, they never looked back, never told their stories, intent on adapting to their new lives. Soon they had established themselves and even improved their situation. This book is also a wake-up call to the Sindhi community that says, hey, enough time has passed; now they can look back without those feelings of hostility and betrayal, to see who they are and where they came from.
The book serves as a memoir to the grit and determination of a community going through drastic change. The author manages to capture the emotions of the people, and brings the past alive through maps, traditional recipes, newspaper cuttings, photographs, and more.
The book is a good contribution to the history literature with a distinct element that its narrator is not any historian but the people who underwent the pain of leaving their homes and undertook the journey to a different land, leaving behind the memories.
Title: Sindh: Stories from a lost homeland | Writer: Saaz Agarwal | Genre: History, Culture, Memoir | Pages: 326 | Price: Rs 895 | Publisher: Oxford University Press