Introduction
Topandas, the protagonist of Gobind Malhi's Sindhi short story The Refugee, disliked his name: given by his widowed mother, it meant ‘devotee with a pierced nose’. It bothered Topandas that nobody in his village used his full name. Like his mother, people generally shortened his name to ‘Topu’ or ‘Topa’. Fatherless and poor, Topandas interpreted the general use of these familial nicknames as disrespectful. Topandas greatly wanted people to call him respectfully by his full name. It was only after partition, when Topandas fled Sindh for India, that he first heard people call him by his full name. Unfortunately, now he was a partition refugee and the sound of his full name brought him no joy.
As for Topandas, life in India initially brought little joy for Sindh's partition refugees.Footnote 1 For these diaspora Sindhis, it is common to interpret partition as a ‘critical event’ marked by cultural trauma.Footnote 2 Veena Das describes such events as historically instituting new modalities of identity.Footnote 3 While critical events drive identity shifts, Das maintains that such changes are not part of the ‘inventory’ that initially propels a historical experience. For diaspora Sindhis, language shift was a result, rather than a factor, that drove them to leave Pakistan after partition. This shift from a mother tongue to other languages should not be interpreted (as many diaspora Sindhis do) as leading to a loss of identity.
This article examines the relationship between language shift and identity among diaspora Sindhis in India and Southeast Asia. Language and identity are inextricably related. In diaspora studies, language-shift research addresses how demographics, institutional support, mother-tongue loyalty, and ethnolinguistic vitality contribute to whether communities discard or preserve their languages.Footnote 4 Christina Bratt Paulston, in Linguistic Minorities in Multilingual Settings, argues that such factors are vital to understanding how language helps to construct identity.Footnote 5 However, Paulston (like many other scholars) does not ask questions about how language shift can reproduce, rather than change, identity.
Through the looking glass of diaspora Sindhis, this article focuses on questions about how this community reproduces identity through language shift. The first part describes identity and language shift among diaspora Sindhis in post-partition India.Footnote 6 It argues that this group's identity propelled language shift (as well as intra-community debates about it). It also contends that language shift facilitates the reproduction of cultural modalities within this community. The second part of the article describes the history of diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia and analyses language shift. It argues that language shift enables diaspora Sindhis to suspend a connection between mother-tongue proficiency and identity. We maintain that this suspension, in conjunction with other factors, helps Southeast Asian diaspora Sindhis to reproduce a core cultural modality. The article concludes with remarks about how the diaspora Sindhi experience retunes the interval that conventionally connects language shift to cultural change.
Identity, history, and language among diaspora Sindhis in India
Before partition in 1947, non-Muslims constituted a significant part of Sindh's population. They were at least 19 per cent of the people in southern Sindh, 24 per cent in central Sindh, and 21 per cent in northern Sindh.Footnote 7 The majority of these people were urban: Karachi was no less than 39 per cent non-Muslim, Hyderabad 41 per cent, and Shikarpur 46 per cent.Footnote 8 Most non-Muslims belonged to one of several groups: the Amils, Sahitis, Bhaibands, Bhagnaris, or Chhapru.Footnote 9 Hierarchically arranged by occupation, these groups were part of a broader community: the Lohana.Footnote 10 The Lohana were 46 per cent of the non-Muslim population in southern Sindh, 60 per cent in central Sindh, and 75 per cent in northern Sindh.Footnote 11 Like other non-Muslims in Sindh, the Lohana were disproportionally urban. They represented 73 per cent of the non-Muslim population in Hyderabad, 23 per cent in Karachi, and 73 per cent in Shikarpur.
The dominant groups among the Lohana were the Amils and Bhaibands. Amils—hereditary government administrators in colonial and precolonial Sindh—‘wielded a measure of prestige and considerable political clout’.Footnote 12 Amils were the most prestigious Lohana group but were frequently poorer than Bhaibands. The Bhaiband, or ‘brotherhood’, were businessmen and moneylenders.Footnote 13 Regardless of group, the Lohana were spiritual eclectics who worshipped at Sikh gurudwaras as well as Sufi shrines, and did not regularly employ Brahmins for rituals. After partition, these eclectic habits resulted in increased hostility toward them on the part of Muslims in Pakistan.Footnote 14 This hostility was a significant factor in turning the Lohanas into partition refugees after 1947.
Life in India was initially hard for Sindh's partition refugees. Indians did not receive Sindhis well.Footnote 15 In ‘Alienation, Displacement, and Home in Mohan Kalpana's Jalavatni’, Trisha Lalchandani argues that a lack of a regional-linguistic identity within India after partition accounts for this poor reception. She cites an exchange between Mohan, the protagonist in Jalavatni, and a non-Sindhi refugee officer: ‘You [Sindhis] are neither in Hindustan nor in Pakistan [the Bombay administrative officer stated to Mohan]. You are a refugee—refugee! Here you have neither mulk (homeland), nor home. You are the washerman's dog who belongs nowhere.’Footnote 16 Mohan subsequently concludes that ‘there is no place for Sindhi Hindu refugees like him in the new Indian nation’.Footnote 17
More inclusively, Rita Kothari describes Sindhis after partition as ‘a beggarly linguistic minority’.Footnote 18 She, like Nandita Bhavnani in ‘Unwanted Refugees: Sindhi Hindus in India and Muhajirs in Sindh’, discusses how cultural practices (such as eating meat and writing in Naskh, the Arabic writing system) made the community ‘irksome’ to India's Hindus (namely vegetarians who wrote in Devanagari, the Sanskrit script used for Hindi).Footnote 19 Kothari and Bhavnani conclude that Indians discriminated against Sindhis.Footnote 20 The community felt this discrimination all the more poignantly since—unlike refugees from Punjab and Bengal—their homeland was entirely located in Pakistan.
Discrimination after partition contributed to language shift and attrition among diaspora Sindhis in India. C. J. Daswani states that language attrition ‘deals with the phenomena of gradual or sudden language decay resulting from a significant change in the use of that language as a regular vehicle of communication by its speakers’.Footnote 21 He discusses how partition forced refugees from Sindh to live in culturally and linguistically alien Indian communities. Life in these communities required them to communicate in languages other than Sindhi. Daswani maintains that this situation produced language shift and that it severely diminished diaspora Sindhis’ use of their mother tongue. The language's domains of use became so constrained that he concludes: ‘It is evident that many third generation Sindhis in India do not identify with Sindhi language and culture.’Footnote 22
In The Burden of Refuge: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat, Kothari confirms Daswani's conclusion about language shift and attrition. She interviews a young Sindhi woman named Bhumika Udernani. Bhumika refuses to speak the Sindhi language with her parents. She is so intent on not speaking the language that she convinces her parents to stop speaking it: ‘It used to irritate us [Bhumika and her siblings] when they [the parents] spoke to us in Sindhi. So even they have switched over to Hindi [the dominant language of North India].’Footnote 23 Kothari describes Bhumika's antipathy toward Sindhi as so strong that ‘she not only shed her language but also finds it repulsive when a young Sindhi of her age appears ensconced in the language’.Footnote 24 Kothari quotes Bhumika as stating: ‘When I see a girl of my age speaking Sindhi, I feel, “Oh my God, what have her parents done to her”.’Footnote 25 Kothari maintains that such negative sentiments are widespread among third-generation diaspora Sindhis. Kothari interviews Deepak Bhavnani, a third-generation Sindhi who attends a Gujarati-medium school. He states to Kothari that he refuses to speak Sindhi due to discrimination. He bluntly states that ‘people in my college think Sindhis are some kind of inferior people … they say that Sindhis are dirty, they eat meat and their homes stink’.Footnote 26 Kothari concludes that such sentiments are ‘hegemonic’ in Gujarat and widespread in India.Footnote 27
Negative sentiments by diaspora Sindhis about their mother tongue are not exclusive to the third post-partition generation. Maya Kodnani, a second-generation Sindhi politician from Gujarat, is (despite regret) negative about the language. Like Daswani, she describes how language shift after partition negatively constrained the mother tongue use by diaspora Sindhis:
I was myself never fluent in Sindhi. I grew up in a Gujarati locality and spoke only Gujarati. When we can't send children to Sindhi-medium schools, because there is no future (where are the Sindhi colleges?), we can't force them to speak Sindhi. They need to know Hindi or English. I feel sorry about what is happening; it is almost as if to know Sindhi is to be backward.Footnote 28
In The Burden of Refuge, Kothari describes a second-generation diaspora Sindhi who aims to escape discrimination by linguistically modifying his surname. Sindhi surnames are often easy to identify since they frequently end with the ‘-ani’ suffix. This suffix means ‘belonging to the family of’.Footnote 29 The surname ‘Hiranandani’ literally translates as ‘belonging to the family of Hiranand’. Kothari observes that some diaspora Sindhis drop their surname suffixes to avoid negative appraisals and to get ahead:
A journalist with a prestigious English paper in Ahmedabad states that he dropped the suffix ‘ni’ from his name because he sees himself as a non-Sindhi, ‘merely an Indian’. His last name now gives the illusion that he is a South Indian, an identity that evokes in Gujarat the image of someone who is well-educated and has good English skills.Footnote 30
Daswani also describes second (and third)-generation diaspora Sindhis who choose to obliterate the ‘-ani’ suffix as a marker of identity.Footnote 31 He records how, after partition, some Sindhi families shifted their surnames from Chandiramani to Chandi, from Kewalramani to Kelly, from Uttamchandani to Uttam, and from Hiranandani to Hira.Footnote 32
Among India's diaspora Sindhis, debates about language shift began soon after partition.Footnote 33 Refugees from Sindh wanted their language included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. This part of the Constitution listed languages that the Indian state promoted. This promotion aimed to ‘develop’ languages so that they ‘grow rapidly in richness and become effective means of communicating modern knowledge’.Footnote 34 Woven into the question of including Sindhi in the Eighth Schedule was a debate about shifting the language's writing system from Naskh to Devanagari (namely from Arabic to Hindi's Sanskrit-derived script).
Debates about the proper writing system for Sindhi extended back to the British colonization of Sindh in 1843. As part of a general policy on governing through vernaculars, the British shifted the state language from Persian to Sindhi.Footnote 35 After this shift, they debated what writing systems were best for Sindhi. Before colonization, Sindhi-speakers from different groups wrote their mother tongue in multiple scripts. The British whittled these scripts down to two: Naskh and Khudawadi (a Devanagari-related script).Footnote 36 In 1856, they declared that Naskh, rather than Khudawadi, would be the writing system for the Sindhi language. In addition to its use by the state, the British adopted Naskh as the writing system in Sindhi schools and textbooks. A significant result of this adoption was that Sindhi books—before partition—were mostly written in Naskh.
Partition was a critical event for not only diaspora Sindhis, but also their use of Naskh. Influenced by Jairamdas Daulatram, a prominent Sindhi freedom fighter and Congress Party politician, the Sindhi Sahitya Sabha (Sindhi Literature Assembly) convened a sammelan (conference) in December 1948.Footnote 37 The sammelan resolved that Devanagari should replace Naskh. The idea that India, after partition, would be a territory of different linguistic states greatly influenced Daulatram's arguments in favour of Devanagari. It linked linguistic groups to ‘states of their own’ to bind India's diversity into a more singular unity.Footnote 38 However, the idea (later formalized in the States Reorganization Act of 1956) had no room for diaspora Sindhis. Unlike other linguistic groups in India, the community could not conflate language and territory. Considering this fact, Daulatram argued that Sindhi was a language of ‘national’ importance. He maintained that Sindhi, like Sanskrit, had to be approached ‘from the national point of view’ because of its ‘basic ancient links with various languages of the country’.Footnote 39 Sindhi's links to Hindi were particularly important because the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution promoted its growth and enrichment. Letters between Daulatram and Ghanshyam Shivdasani, a fellow Sindhi freedom fighter and Congress Party politician, illustrate a plan to use Hindi to get Sindhi into the Eighth Schedule: ‘The languages mentioned in the schedule are the languages from which help can be derived for enrichment of Hindi. Sindhi can be included in the schedule because Sindhi also can enrich Hindi in some respect.’Footnote 40
Implicit in this plan, as well as in Daulatram's arguments to the Sindhi Sahitya Sabha, is that Sindhi should be, like Hindi, written in an ‘indigenous’ script like Devanagari rather than a ‘foreign’ one like Naskh.Footnote 41
Following the Sindhi Sahitya Sabha endorsement of Devanagari, the All India Sindhi Displaced Persons’ Convention also recommended a shift from Naskh in August 1949.Footnote 42 During Daulatram's tenure as a Cabinet minister, the Sindhi Sahitya Sabha approached the Ministry of Education (under freedom fighter Abu Kalam Azad) to make shifting Naskh to Devanagari a government policy. The ministry endorsed this request on 9 March 1950. The endorsement stated:
The Government of India in consultation with all the State Governments has decided to accept a proposal of responsible Sindhi scholars and educationists to change the Arabic script for the Sindhi language into that of Devanagari. The State Governments have been requested to take necessary steps to implement the above proposal so far as education in schools is concerned.Footnote 43
However, as early as July 1949, there were protests against shifting the Sindhi script from Naskh to Devanagari. One group of diaspora Sindhi educators officially complained against the shift to the Ministry of Education.Footnote 44 Several educators threatened to challenge the ministry's endorsement of Devanagari in court. After critics collected 100,000 signatures against it, the government modified its support and recognized both Naskh and Devanagari in 1951.Footnote 45 However, some state and city governments failed to implement this modification. A group of diaspora Sindhis took the Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay to court over this failure. Since the Corporation did not offer Naskh as an option to Sindhi students, they argued that it violated the Ministry of Education's 1951 recognition of Naskh and Devanagari. While neither a petitioner nor a respondent in the case, Jairamdas Daulatram did submit an opinion in favour of Devanagari to the court. Nonetheless, Justice K. K. Desai of the Bombay High Court ruled against the exclusive use of Devanagari for Sindhi:
Now, I have not understood the attitude of the Corporation as to why the Arabic-Sindhi script which was in fact continuously used for impartation of education should contrary to the desire of a large section of the public of the locality be changed to Devanagari script. Why in that connection the large section of public and parents of students who desire that education should be imparted in Arabic-Sindhi script should not be treated with equality in the matter of impartation of education in primary schools like Maharashtrians, Gujaratis, Kannaris, Tamils, and Telugus? That students whose parents are Sindhis and whose language has been according to their own opinion written in Arabic-Sindhi script are not entitle[d] to the same consideration and treatment as the other communities are entitled, I have not understood … these Sindhis are entitled to equal treatment like other communities. The treatment meted out to them in this compulsory change-over had been grossly discriminatory as contended on behalf of the petitioners.Footnote 46
Desai found the Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay guilty of violating Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which provides equal protection under the law.
Inspired by pro-Naskh protests, diaspora Sindhi educators—along with authors such as Gobind Malhi—formed the Sindhi Sahitya Mandal (Sindhi Literature Group). This group later changed its name to the Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli ain Sahit Sabha (All India Sindhi Language and Literature Assembly) and led efforts to include Sindhi in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. After a long lobbying campaign, the Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli ain Sahit Sabha succeeded: the Indian government recognized Sindhi as part of the Eighth Schedule in April 1967.
After Sindhi's inclusion in the Eighth Schedule, the Government of India awarded the language a large development grant. The Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli ain Sahit Sabha debated how this grant should be spent. During these discussions, questions about shifting the Sindhi writing system from Naskh to Devanagari re-emerged. Debates about this shift were so contentious that two factions developed: one exclusively pro-Naskh and one completely pro-Devanagari. These factions divided diaspora Sindhis and led to the establishment of a new pro-Devanagari group headed by Jairamdas Daulatram: the Sarva Bharat Sindhi Boli Sahitya Kala Vikas Sabha (All India Sindhi Language and Literature Arts Development Assembly). In response, the Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli ain Sahit Sabha (along with 94 other literary and cultural organizations) submitted a memorandum to India's prime minister. It asserted that the Sindhi language's legitimate writing system was Naskh. It also requested that the Ministry of Education withdraw its order recognizing Devanagari. The Sarva Bharat Sindhi Boli Sahitya Kala Vikas Sabha also appealed to the Ministry of Education. It demanded that the ministry's 1950 order to shift from Naskh to Devanagari be made government policy. The government's position on this demand was and still is that diaspora Sindhis need to resolve their language debates. Until such time (which, according to Rita Kothari, has not yet arrived), the Indian government would remain neutral by supporting both Devanagari and Naskh.Footnote 47
The positions of the Akhil Bharat Sindhi Boli ain Sahit Sabha and Sarva Bharat Sindhi Boli Sahitya Kala Vikas Sabha on shifting the Sindhi script involved questions of identity. In addition to the false assertion that the Sindhi language's original script was Devanagari, the latter organization argued that Naskh failed to reflect diaspora Sindhis’ new cultural realities in India. Supporters of this argument—like Jairamdas Daulatram—noted that people in India mostly wrote Indo-Aryan languages (like Sindhi) in Devanagari or related scripts.Footnote 48 This fact contrasted with Muslims (in both India and Pakistan), who used a Semitic writing system derived from Naskh (nastaliq). Those who supported the use of Naskh denounced such contrasts as anti-Muslim communalism.Footnote 49 In Sindhi Bolia Jee Lipi Keri?, T. T. Wadhwani stated that arguments that maintained Naskh was symbolic of ‘Muslim domination’ were ‘gandi zehniyat’ (a dirty mentality).Footnote 50 He asks:
It is in the Arabic [Naskh] script that our Gita, Yoga Vashisht, Ramayan, and Mahabharata exist. Are they any less sacred because they are in the Sindhi script? On the other hand, if there are awful books in devanagari script, do they become beautiful because they use devanagari?Footnote 51
Well-known diaspora Sindhi writers such as Kirat Babani and Popati Hiranandani also argued that a shift from Naskh to Devanagari would alienate diaspora Sindhis from their cultural past.Footnote 52 They maintained that this alienation would lead to language attrition and identity loss.Footnote 53
It is undeniable that diaspora Sindhis experienced language shift and, subsequently, attrition after partition. In ‘Problems of Sindhi in India’, Daswani writes:
Faced with the choice of a language, the Sindhis have tended to gradually give up their language in economic and public domains and adhere to some major language other than Sindhi. Most middle and upper-class parents send their children to non-Sindhi schools. In many homes, as a result of younger generation pressure, home-language Sindhi is being replaced with either English or another Indian language.Footnote 54
Daswani maintains that this shift and attrition result in a loss of identity. He concludes: ‘Most linguistic aspects that reflect [Sindhi] cultural identity have been lost or replaced by features from other Indian languages.’Footnote 55 This conclusion is most evident at the regional level of dialects. Before partition, Sindhi had six dialects: Vicholi, Sindhi Saraiki, Lari, Lasi, Thareli, and Kutchi. People from different regions spoke these dialects: Vicholi in central Sindh, Sindhi Saraiki in the north, Lari on the Indus River's south-eastern bank, Lasi on the south-western bank, Thareli in the eastern desert, and Kutchi in the south-east. Since these dialects are mostly no longer perceived by diaspora Sindhis, Daswani concludes that they have lost the ability to differentiate once unique regional identities: ‘Most Sindhis in India today do not perceive the actual dialect distinctions which were stable regional variation markers in Sindhi.’Footnote 56 He argues that this loss is due to Sindhis from different regions living in proximity to each other after partition.Footnote 57 He concludes that this proximity helped to fuse dialects so that ‘some of the established markers of social distinctions [among Sindhis] have become de-emphasized’.Footnote 58 The Government of India—on account of the Naskh–Devanagari debate—exacerbated this fusion when it froze the language-development grant that it gave after including Sindhi in the Eighth Schedule: a lack of government funds curtailed support for recording and promoting Sindhi dialects. Daswani contends that this lack of funds also created a generation of illiterate diaspora Sindhis: unable to read Naskh and having no Sindhi books printed in Devanagari, they shifted their mother tongue to other languages.
While this shift does result in language attrition after partition, it does not necessarily lead to a loss of identity among diaspora Sindhis. If identity solely depended on language and literature, a causal relationship between it and mother-tongue attrition would have considerable merit. However, identity is culturally complex. In addition to language and literature, it can include beliefs, morals, and customs.Footnote 59 Identity not only involves what people say and write, but also what they do, both symbolically and literally.Footnote 60 It is a social process that connects people to membership (or non-membership) in groups by establishing cultural similarities and differences.Footnote 61 This process includes both adequation and distinction. In ‘Language and Identity’, Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall state that adequation denotes social relations of likeness while distinction is a ‘mechanism whereby salient difference is produced’.Footnote 62 They argue that ‘distinction is therefore the converse of adequation, in that in this relation difference is understood rather than erased’.Footnote 63
While frequently playing a role in adequation and distinction, language and literature do not exclusively ascribe identity. Before partition, diaspora Sindhis hierarchized identity by occupation. The two most significant of these occupational groups (namely Amils/government administrators and Bhaibands/businessmen) placed the pursuit of state power and capital power at the centre of their identities.Footnote 64 When the formation of Pakistan ripped diaspora Sindhis from their pre-partition positions of political and material power, it undermined the community's influence and affluence. It also fundamentally challenged two of its core cultural modalities. These modalities’ drive for state and capital power facilitate one reason why diaspora Sindhis shifted to languages other than their mother tongue: In India's non-Sindhi environment, this shift helped to reproduce pre-partition identities based not on language and literature, but on occupation. While language and literature may have informed these identities, they were not its primary vehicles. The fact that only ‘litterateurs’ increasingly promoted the Sindhi language after partition supports this interpretation. This group's inability to harness enthusiasm for its publications in Sindhi reflects how the cultural modalities of their community did not require their mother tongue to reproduce themselves in India: ‘The only group of people who continue to maintain support and espouse the cause [for Sindhi] are the litterateurs. They have been fighting a losing battle. Publications of books and periodicals in Sindhi has ever remained a small-time private enterprise with the writer, often times, being his own publisher.’Footnote 65
The limited involvement of diaspora Sindhi businessmen in the Eighth Schedule movement and script debates also illustrates how the community disconnects its mother tongue from cultural reproduction. This lack of participation demonstrates: ‘The realization on the part of the Indian Sindhis that their language performs a limited role of intra-group communication, and it, in no way, contributes to their economic survival.’Footnote 66 For post-partition diaspora Sindhis in India, this survival was not just material, but part of their identity and its cultural modalities. With this fact in mind, Daswani concludes: ‘The Sindhi language will continue to be a minority language which performs a limited function.’Footnote 67 Given their mother tongue's limited function, diaspora Sindhis increasingly use other languages to reproduce their identity—in particular, English and Hindi.Footnote 68 By being the major languages of the Indian state and business, English and Hindi are ideal vehicles for reproducing cultural modalities that historically define diaspora Sindhi identity.
History, identity, and language among diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia
After partition, diaspora Sindhis not only settled in India, but also across the globe. Many Sindhis now live in non-South Asian environments.Footnote 69 Anita Raina Thapan, in Sindhi Diaspora in Manila, Hong Kong, and Jakarta, writes that, for Sindhis, their ‘communities around the world represent a “homeland” without a territory’.Footnote 70 One such ‘homeland’ is Southeast Asia, which hosts multiple diaspora Sindhi communities.Footnote 71 The second half of this article describes the history of these communities and details language shift. It argues that language shift, by suspending a connection between mother-tongue proficiency and being Sindhi, facilitates a continued sense of identity. We also detail how diaspora Sindhis utilize sentiments of adequation and distinction to sustain identity in Southeast Asia. The article concludes by using the diaspora Sindhi communities of India and Southeast Asia to reflect on the connection between language shift and cultural change.
History, identity, and language shift
The origins of Southeast Asia's Sindhi communities pre-date partition in 1947. In The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama, Claude Markovits illustrates how Sindhis have long conducted business outside South Asia.Footnote 72 However, there was an intensification of migration from South to Southeast Asia between the mid-nineteenth century and the Second World War.Footnote 73 These migrations coincided with the rise of Great Britain as a colonial power in Southeast Asia. As British subjects, South Asians could migrate to other regions under imperial control. In Southeast Asia, they wove themselves into the region's economic fabric as traders and merchants. Often already familiar with the English language and British business practices, many South Asians became economically influential in Southeast Asia. Colonial legal and trade agreements furthered this influence by including South Asians as British subjects.
Until their homeland's colonization in 1843, Sindhis generally conducted business in and with Central Asia and western India.Footnote 74 As British subjects, Sindhis increasingly looked toward Southeast Asia for economic opportunities after 1843. Along with other migrants from South Asia, Sindhis gained a toehold in the economies of Southeast Asia and then expanded their influence until the Second World War. The first two businesses established in Southeast Asia by Sindhis were Wassimall-Assomull and Co. and K. A. J. Chotirmall and Co. in the 1870s.Footnote 75 Another influential Sindhi business was Pohumal Brothers. Established in the late nineteenth century, this business was an important player in Singapore and Southeast Asia's textile markets.Footnote 76 Sindhis called those who worked for such firms sindhworkis.Footnote 77 Sindhworkis’ increasing economic importance impacted Sindhi cultural practices. Arranged marriages with male sindhworkis became increasingly prestigious and desirable.Footnote 78 Working abroad in Southeast Asia was also viewed positively through new Sindhi idioms like jay vya Java say thya yava (whoever goes to Java comes back rich) and the use of ‘Java’ as a verb (java tho karain) to signify extravagant spending.
Sindhi businesses in Southeast Asia generally flourished.Footnote 79 Until the early 1930s, these businesses were of a particular type: large firms with offices in multiple cities.Footnote 80 During the Great Depression, sindhworkis increasingly established smaller businesses that were less capital-intensive. Less prone to risk and failure, these businesses often focused on local niche markets. The Second World War expedited this change to smaller firms by destroying the economies of Southeast Asia and doing away with legal and trade agreements that benefited sindhworkis as British subjects. Partition also facilitated this change. Forced to leave a substantial amount of their wealth in Pakistan after partition, many Sindhis—now refugees—had less capital to invest in large-scale enterprises.
In addition to its economic impact, partition intensified cultural distinctions among diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia. Most sindhworkis were Bhaibands rather than Amils. The term ‘Amil’ derives from amal—a Persian word meaning ‘to administer’. Starting in the eighteenth century, non-Muslim government administrators in Sindh took the title ‘Amil’ and, as a symbol of their elite status, stopped intermarrying with Bhaibands.Footnote 81 In contrast to Amils’ identification with state power, Bhaiband identity oriented toward the pursuit of capital. Thapan writes that Bhaibands ‘tended to specialize in specific enterprises and often had a monopoly on certain kinds of trade (e.g., hundis [bills of exchange], textiles, grains, cotton, and oilseeds)’.Footnote 82 She also writes that ‘hierarchy among the Bhaibands was based on wealth’.Footnote 83 Their division into sahukars (merchant-bankers) and hatawaras (shopkeepers) symbolically reflects how wealth shaded hierarchy among Bhaibands.
Following Sindh's colonization by Britain, Bhaibands experienced increased socio-political conflict with Amils as well as an economic decline.Footnote 84 These two factors encouraged Bhaibands to look outside of Sindh and toward Southeast Asia for economic opportunities. Very few Amils joined Bhaibands in establishing businesses in Southeast Asia. The Amils who did served Bhaibands as accountants and business administrators. This service arrangement shifted the traditional hierarchy between Amils and Bhaibands:
When the Sindh Workies set up trading offices in different parts of India and abroad, some Amils joined them to serve as business executives and accountants. This represented a major shift in Amil and Bhaiband equations. Whereas formerly both had functioned independently of each other, the Amils now became the ‘service class’ of the prosperous Bhaibands.Footnote 85
Partition furthered this shift by ripping Amils away from their association with state power in Sindh. As partition refugees, diaspora Sindhis shifted more toward the pursuit of capital—rather than state power—as a modality for marking elite status. This shift was more significant in Southeast Asia than in India, where being an Amil still retains an elite connotation.Footnote 86 Following partition, refugees used their existing business relationships with diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia to help them to migrate to the region. These migrations numerically grew Southeast Asia's already dominant Bhaiband population more rapidly than it did for Amils. In a reflection of this numerical (as well as economic) dominance, Amils in Southeast Asia—unlike in India—increasingly acknowledged Bhaibands as elites. Thapan writes that ‘wealthy Bhaibands, traditionally merchants and traders, constitute the elite group par excellence’ and that ‘it is their way of life that most young Sindhis aspire to’.Footnote 87 In some communities, this hierarchical shift was so significant that Amils now pass themselves off Bhaibands.Footnote 88 In Malaysia, it led to the ‘eradication’ of cultural distinctions between Amils and Bhaibands among diaspora Sindhis.Footnote 89 Symbolic of this eradication is the fact that arranged marriages between Amils and Bhaibands are no longer taboo in Southeast Asia. Maya Khemlani David, in The Sindhis of Malaysia: A Sociolinguistic Study, writes that ‘marriages between Amils and Bhaibunds [sic], which at one time were not encouraged, are no longer considered undesirable’.Footnote 90
In addition to cultural changes after partition, diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia experienced language shift. The shift away from Sindhi and toward other languages occurred at different rates in different communities. Regardless of locale, this process generally entailed code-switching. In Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction: Socialization, Self, and Syncretism in a Papua New Guinea Village, Don Kulick defines code-switching as a ‘type of verbal behaviour involving the alternate use of different languages within a single stretch of discourse or within an utterance’.Footnote 91 Jane and Kenneth Hill, in Speaking Mexicano: Dynamics of Syncretic Language in Central Mexico, argue that code-switching is not a ‘disorderly’ blend of languages. Instead, it is structured:
Linguists would like to be able to specify systemic constraints on code-switching, just as we can specify the systemic handling of borrowings. The reason for this is that linguists believe that bilingual code-switching is not disorderly, but is instead part of a rule-governed linguistic competence. There should be a difference between meaningful and appropriate code-switching and disorderly usage of the type which has been called ‘code-mixing’.Footnote 92
In Language Shift: Social Determinants of Linguistic Change in Bilingual Austria, Susan Gal maintains that code-switching's orderliness manifests itself by being ‘closely tied to explicitly defined social contexts’.Footnote 93 Depending on social context (as well as generation), diaspora Sindhis in Malaysia code-switch differently.Footnote 94 This code-switching reflects progressively lower levels of Sindhi proficiency as well as an ‘intermediary step’ toward language shift.Footnote 95 In the context of Austrian bilinguals, Gal similarly concludes that code-switching, if progressively systematic, can result in language shift.Footnote 96
Southeast Asian diaspora Sindhis use their mother tongue in a progressively limited fashion. They no longer utilize it in professional contexts such as business and administration.Footnote 97 Depending on the location of a community, diaspora Sindhis increasingly employ non-mother tongue languages to communicate with each other.Footnote 98 With language shift in their public and private spheres, diaspora Sindhis are linguistically very heterogeneous. In Jakarta, most diaspora Sindhis speak Bahasa Indonesia. While many second-generation members of this community remain partially proficient in Sindhi, they do not use this language at home, school, or work.Footnote 99 For this community, Bahasa Indonesia ‘is, in fact, their mother tongue for all intents and purposes’.Footnote 100 Unlike many other diaspora Sindhis, those living in Indonesia (a former Dutch rather than British colony) have a decidedly weak grasp of English. Due to this weakness, diaspora Sindhis from outside Indonesia tend to view the community as ‘backward’. Symbolic of this view, diaspora Sindhis use the word jattu—a noun derived from the peasant jat caste—to pejoratively describe individuals from this community as lacking sophistication.Footnote 101
In Malaysia, a shift to English and Malay increasingly characterizes the use of language by diaspora Sindhis.Footnote 102 This shift derives from Sindhi having ‘no practical or utilitarian role to play in the larger Malaysian context’.Footnote 103 Diaspora Sindhis often split on the cultural impact of language shift. In an online survey of diaspora Sindhis, we posed the question: ‘Does not using Sindhi make you feel any less Sindhi?’Footnote 104 Out of 33 respondents, 14 replied that not knowing the Sindhi language did make them feel less Sindhi. One respondent, who knows the language, stated that not knowing Sindhi would make him feel somewhat less Sindhi. The remaining 18 respondents answered that not knowing their mother tongue did not make them feel less Sindhi. This disconnect between mother-tongue proficiency and identity is particularly strong among diaspora Sindhis in Malaysia: ‘The Malaysian Sindhis, although a community fiercely proud of its ethnicity and concerned with maintaining its distinctive culture, do not appear to see language maintenance as critical for the preservation of their culture and identity.’Footnote 105
Language, culture, and identity are inherently connected. However, in Malaysia, diaspora Sindhis do not view language shift as negatively leading to identity loss. David writes that ‘the Malaysian Sindhis [sic] reduction in the use of the ethnic language [Sindhi] does not appear to have affected Sindhi culture … even with a decline in the use of the Sindhi language, the Sindhi culture has been maintained’.Footnote 106
A critical factor in understanding why Malaysian diaspora Sindhis do not connect language shift with a loss of identity is that Bhaibands overwhelmingly make up this community. Thapan writes that ‘it is common to hear Sindhis refer to the “Amil mentality” and “Bhaiband mentality”’.Footnote 107 Amils, due to their associations with state power, value not only professional expertise, but also education. In contrast, Bhaibands do not:
Academic degrees have little relevance in his [Bhaiband] life and represent a waste of time and effort. Even today, when most businessmen agree that ‘higher education’ is a must, they do not mean anything higher than an undergraduate degree and that, too, only in subjects such as commerce or business studies. More than anything else the BA degree is regarded as an experience that broadens the vision and gives self-confidence. It does not provide an individual with a business sense nor is it a guarantee of success in business—that comes only from actual experience and exposure. Professional qualifications, such as a postgraduate degree in finance or an MBA, are considered unnecessary.Footnote 108
Grounded in a cultural modality based on the pursuit of capital, Bhaibands are materialistic: ‘The Sindhi Bhaiband's purpose in life is to make money.’Footnote 109 In Malaysia, where the languages of moneymaking are not Sindhi, but Malay and English, the reproduction of Bhaibands’ materialistic ‘mentality’ demands language shift. Malaysian diaspora Sindhis do not view this shift as negative because, in the context of Southeast Asia, it functions to facilitate—not change—their money-minded Bhaiband identity.Footnote 110
Reproducing identity and replacing mother-tongue proficiency
Jane and Kenneth Hill state that ‘language shift is only one example—although it may be the most important—of the abandonment of a marker of “indigenous’ identity”’.Footnote 111 This statement is not entirely the case for diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia. While economic or linguistic expediency may lead individuals to discard their mother tongue, this shift also enables diaspora Sindhis to continue, rather than abandon, their identity as Bhaibands. In this sense, language shift not only empowers this group in their pursuit of capital, but also assists in the reproduction of their identity.
In Southeast Asia, this reproduction involves suspending views that differentiate language as either a purist or a power code. In linguistics, ‘codes’ are sets of ‘principles for selecting variants from a range of possible [language] choices, in order to construct an utterance’.Footnote 112 The purist code maps a language into a singular domain of identity characterized by an ‘ideal native speaker in a homogeneous community’.Footnote 113 It is socioculturally restrictive and characterizes language shift as a ‘mongrelisation which leads to a degeneration of the pure line’.Footnote 114 Rather than emphasize a restricted view of identity, the power-code approach examines language as a resource for material gain.Footnote 115 For diaspora Sindhis in Southeast Asia, language shift represents a process that blends purity and power codes by suspending the difference between linguistic identity and material gain. This suspension makes it possible for Bhaibands to delink the reproduction of their identity from proficiency in Sindhi and shift it to other ‘moneymaking’ languages. It also helps to explain why many diaspora Sindhis do not view language shift as alarming. Rather than leading to the abandonment of identity, this linguistic process enables its continuity.
The delinking of identity from mother-tongue proficiency frequently results in diaspora Sindhis utilizing sentiments of adequation and distinction to mark identity. A diaspora Sindhi who replied to our online survey stated:
Speaking in English (or any other language) regularly, as opposed to Sindhi, does not make me feel any less Sindhi. There are enough Sindhi customs/practices (call it what you will) established to the extent that not speaking the language does not make me feel as though I am missing out on anything.Footnote 116
Other replies to our survey reflect this respondent's sentiment of adequation. Of the respondents who believed that not knowing their mother tongue did not make them ‘less Sindhi’, most gave numerous examples of non-linguistic factors that did make them feel Sindhi: surnames, socio-economic status, dressing, religion, history, biological roots, socio-personality, food, and networking. Survey replies frequently repeated ‘networking’ with other community members as a factor. A diaspora Sindhi from Singapore states:
Maybe it's more of Sindhi gatherings than traditions [feeling Sindhi]. In Singapore, I suppose, these would be the gatherings at [the] Sindhi Merchants’ Association, gatherings at the Singapore Swimming Club (the Sindhi hangout) and the High Street Centre (where the Sindhi trading/import and export businesses are). The Sindhis in Singapore are a small but closely-knit community I'd say. We see lots of familiar faces during [the] Diwali Ball, sometimes at Singapore Swimming Club and during weddings especially.Footnote 117
Literature on Southeast Asia—which characterizes diaspora Sindhis as having a ‘dense’ social network—echoes this view.Footnote 118 Social networks play an important role in promoting feelings of adequation. David writes: ‘Interactions [among Malaysian Sindhis] are now more on a social plane, at ceremonies like the chati (a naming ceremony for a new-born), munan (a baby boy's first hair cutting ceremony), birthdays, engagements, and weddings.’Footnote 119 Participating in such events can result in intense social-network interactions that reaffirm adequation. In Malaysia, this intensity is so great that diaspora Sindhis still practise ‘many of the customs and rituals described in the Government Gazetteer of the Province of Sind, 1907’.Footnote 120
Reaffirmed by non-linguistic factors, sentiments of adequation among diaspora Sindhis promote strong in-group/out-group distinctions. In Southeast Asia, diaspora Sindhis are often an insular community: ‘But, for the most part, at least in the region with which I am concerned [Asia], they [Sindhis] remain endogamous in marriage and social intercourse, are confined to particular occupations, and show ethnic cohesiveness born out of a fear of being absorbed by the native populations.’Footnote 121
Even when assimilated, non-linguistic factors remain important to diaspora Sindhis for distinguishing themselves from other communities. Despite Bahasa Indonesia now being their mother tongue, diaspora Sindhis in Jakarta mark their identity as distinct by ‘restricting marriage and social intercourse within the community’.Footnote 122 The clustering of Sindhi businesses in particular areas of Jakarta (such as Pasar Baru, Kota, and Sunter) reflects the community's desire to identify itself as distinct.Footnote 123 The residential patterns of diaspora Sindhis also reflect this desire. Thapan writes: ‘“Kinship neighbourhoods” facilitate friendships and social interaction within the community. Group activities are characteristic of social life, even among the youth, and therefore, there is constant peer pressure to conform.’Footnote 124
These ‘kinship neighbourhoods’ characterize the residential patterns of Malaysian diaspora Sindhis. In Kuala Lumpur, there are clusters of Sindhi residences in the suburbs of Gombak and Brickfields-Bangsar. In Penang, around 50 per cent of the city's diaspora Sindhis live in the neighbourhood of Tanjung Bungah, while 25 per cent live in Pulau Tikus. Concerning this pattern of distinction in Malaysia, David concludes that ‘the early patterns of residential clustering still remain … local Sindhis tend to buy homes in the suburbs where other Sindhis live’.Footnote 125 This type of residential clustering is not exclusive to Southeast Asia. It is also evident in India, where diaspora Sindhis—as in Malaysia—often mark themselves off from other communities by living in particular neighbourhoods. Shaktinagar in Udaipur (Rajasthan) is one such area. Sindhi Colony in Bangalore (Karnataka) and Secunderabad in Hyderabad (Telangana) are additional examples. In Mumbai, residential clustering occurs in the lower/middle-income suburb of Ulhasnagar. In Mumbai's expensive city centre, wealthy diaspora Sindhis distinguish themselves by ‘colonizing’ apartment buildings or housing societies rather than neighbourhoods.
Final comparative remarks: cultures and languages
Prasenjit Duara, in ‘Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times’, states that ‘for the twentieth century, the paradigm of large-scale production of social space was the territorial nation-state’.Footnote 126 He adds: ‘In the national model of space, there is an effort to make culture and political authority congruent.’Footnote 127 Driven by a sense of being ‘incongruent’, diaspora Sindhis fled the nation state of Pakistan after its creation in 1947. However, as refugees and linguistic minorities, diaspora Sindhis mostly remained culturally incongruent with the nation states to which they fled. In Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction, Kulick states that such situations can lead to stigma and language shift:
The process of language shift is one in which a vernacular language becomes closely linked to a stigmatized ethnic identity. Once this link becomes salient, the possibility opens for members of the stigmatized group to signal their abandonment of their ethnic identity by giving up their minority language in favour of that spoken by the dominant groups.Footnote 128
In the eyes of many diaspora Sindhis, partition remains a critical event because it led to stigma, discrimination, and language shift. This shift may have made some diaspora Sindhis more congruent with their post-partition homelands, but it also produced language attrition and feelings of identity loss. However, language does not solely determine identity or its cultural reproduction among diaspora Sindhis.
In The Graves of Tarim, Engseng Ho illustrates how Handrami Sayyids in the Indian Ocean region reproduce identity through genealogies that circulate within their community's diaspora rather than ‘simple linear narratives that point back to origins’ in Yemen.Footnote 129 Similarly, if one emphasizes diaspora Sindhis’ cultural practices rather than their region of origin, feelings of identity loss appear inconsistent with continuities found in the spiritual life of the community. The denotational meanings of religious texts and songs (such as the Guru Granth Sahib and Dhule Sai assa Pujai) are usually fixed in the community by reciting them in their original languages (such as Punjabi and Sindhi).Footnote 130 However, the languages used in lectures that explain texts and songs vary. By code-switching (for example, to Hindi or English), diaspora Sindhis utilize the locally most familiar language to pass down and continue connotational meanings. This use of language echoes the community using non-Sindhi Gorakhnath iconography (Gorakhnath was a Shiva follower) to promote the worship of Jhulelal (the Indus River deity and a Vishnu incarnation). Anita Ray argues that linking a widely known Hindu yogi (Gorakhnath) to Jhulelal promotes cultural continuities that ‘strengthen community cohesion among second- and third generation diaspora Sindhis’.Footnote 131 In their study of Jhulelal worship in Pakistan and India, Michel Boivin and Bhavana Rajpal describe similar continuities. Their research finds that ‘despite the upheavals related to Partition and the diversity of elements associated with Jhulelal's tradition, it [Jhulelal worship] still constitutes a continuum between Pakistan and India’.Footnote 132 The fact that community members are generally unable to return to Sindh informs this continuum. Notwithstanding feelings of loss, Bhavnani writes that most do not view the region as ‘a place to which they would wish to ultimately “return”, either as a physical homeland or as an imaginary construct’.Footnote 133 So, according to Bhavnani, the community ‘arranged to “transplant”’ spiritual practices and sites (like those of Jhulelal) from Sindh to India.Footnote 134
While language shift can lead to feelings of identity loss, the cultural practices of diaspora Sindhis do not always support such sentiments.Footnote 135 Even if ‘foreign’, these practices can enable identity reproduction. Kulick illustrates this fact in Papua New Guinea, where he analyses the shift from Taiap (a mother tongue) to Tok Pisin (a pidgin language). He describes how people in the village of Gapun ‘do not really seem to care very much that their language [Taiap] is dying out’.Footnote 136 At the root of this lack of concern is colonialism. Following this ‘critical event’, colonial officials forced men from Gapun to work on plantations. The lingua franca of these plantations was Tok Pisin and not Taiap. Subsequently, Taiap became stigmatized in favour of Tok Pisin as the preferred language for continuing to express male identity.Footnote 137 In Gapun's increasingly male-oriented society, this preference resulted in language shift from Taiap to Tok Pisin among men as well as women. Kulick's analysis demonstrates how ‘the element of continuity in change is essential to account for in cases of language shift’.Footnote 138 In doing so, he convincingly shows that language shift can lead to identity reproduction rather than attrition.
If analysis places history, culture, and identity at the centre of the diaspora Sindhi story of language shift, it becomes possible (for example, as it did for Kulick) to illustrate how not speaking a mother tongue can aid in the reproduction of identity. In Kulick's view, language shift is ‘caused, ultimately, by shifts in personal and group values and goals’.Footnote 139 The shift in diaspora Sindhi values and goals has not been as rapid as their movement away from their mother tongue. Although freighted differently in India and Southeast Asia, the pursuit of capital and state power remains a core cultural modality for this community. The interdisciplinary analysis of these modalities works to retune not only the interval that geographically separates diaspora Sindhis in India and Southeast Asia, but also the relationship between language shift and cultural change.
