What makes for Sindhiness ?
by Anju Daswani
[Reproduced from sindhinet.com]

I want to start off by saying you guys are doing a great job. It is great to see a website such as this (sindhinet.com) growing over time rather than fizzling out.

I have thought of submitting an article several times but just never got around to it. What pushed me to write is Haresh Mirpuri’s "What makes for Sindhiness?" I think his article truly represents a whole generation of younger Sindhis like myself whose only link to Sindhiness is close family.

I live in the United States and am in my 20s. I am one of those many Sindhis to whom several articles refer, second and third generation Sindhis who are more at home in their adopted countries than they are in India or in Sindh. I am an American and have never been to Sindh - and frankly I never want to go there. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, etc. refer to cities in Sindh all the time and to me it sounds like a war zone.

I was very pleased with Haresh’s article because for once I feel someone has represented my generation’s point of view. I was born in Hong Kong and have lived in the US for most of my life. I have visited India often and found that I really have nothing in common with the general Indian populous and the more I travel to India, the more I realize I am an American - in thoughts, ideas, opinions, everything. I know that many Sindhis of my generation feel the same way, whether they are from the UK, Australia, Jamaica, wherever. Their identities are stronger with their new homelands.

Several sindhinet.com articles focus on religion and language - and several articles discuss how Sindhis are losing their "identity". But from my perspective, I completely disagree. For me, being a Sindhi has very little to do with religion or language. And, funny though it may sound, being a Sindhi has very little to do with Sindh. I read of partition stories and I understand that was a painful time for many. But as a people it is time to move on. The attitude of "let’s move on" is the thing I find most to be "Sindhi". As a people, Sindhis have had hardships, been moved from house and country, become penniless. But rather than dwell on that, Sindhis took over a new culture and a new identity of their new land, whether it was the US or Zimbabwe. We fit in, no matter what. We do better in "foreign" countries than the natives do in a lot of cases. And I for one am very happy that my family were made to leave Sindh. Our forefathers and foremothers lost all of their property, everything. But because of that, Sindhis are successful no matter what country they live in. Sindh is no longer what it used to be and there is no reason to mourn its loss. Because of the partition I am here in the US. That was the best thing to happen to me. In the US a woman is equal to a man, not so in the Sindh of today. Women in the Sindh of today do not share the same freedoms that women of other countries do, whether it is Bombay, India, or London, England, Sindhi women are better off outside Sindh.

I have cousins and friends in the US who, like me, consider themselves Americans first, Sindhis second, but I do not in any way think the Sindhi "culture" is dying. Culture and identity transcend religion, they transcend language. I have found Sindhis in Calcutta. I have found Sindhis in New Jersey. We may speak in English but we are still Sindhi. I even found my second cousin who working for a mutual fund company when he answered the phone. He recognized my name as Sindhi and a whole conversation ensued till we realized we were related. Now if that is not identity, I don’t know what it.

I understand the need for the older generations to want to keep the language alive. But realistically, it probably will not happen.I mean Sindhis in Bombay and Calcutta would rather speak in English so how are we in the US, UK, etc (where English is the main language) expected to keep up with Sindhi ? Most Sindhis of my generation do not even marry Sindhis.

Anyway, I think it would be great if we had more articles like Haresh’s. I think we need more people of our generation to write articles before the teenaged subsribers get bored of religious and partition articles and stop logging onto sindhinet.com. That would be a true loss of our identity.