From Sindh in books: breaking silence, rebuilding memory
While there has been a great resurgence of interest in the Partition, the story of Sindh and the exodus of Hindu Sindhis from the region is still understudied. A look at books on the Sindhi experience of the schism and what it meant for the community
The story of Sindh, despite its fascinating layers and nuances, is generally neglected or trivialised. The forceful scattering after Partition created confusion, clogging the environment with misinterpretations, one-sided accounts, and unattractive nostalgia shrouded in unresolved trauma. When newer generations responded to the call of their ancestry, a quiet resurgence began.
One of the most remarkable new titles is Ritu Hemnani’s Lion of the Sky (HarperCollins, 2024). Written in free verse, it brings the lost world of pre-Partition Hyderabad (Sindh) alive through a young boy’s eyes. On page 143, as the story progresses:
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.
The Hong Kong-based author, who has never lived in India, vividly conjures up the domestic and political world of pre-Partition Sindh: a festive activity, the gendered expectations of a trader family, passionate participation in the freedom movement – the treacherous line.
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. This classic Sindhi tale stands among the finest contemporary explorations of displacement.
For readers seeking an intimate understanding of Partition in Sindh, Veera Hiranandani’s The Night Diary and Amil And The After (Penguin 2018, 2024) offer rare insights. Written for younger readers, they balance tenderness with historical precision, portraying friendship, family, and courage amid the fear and confusion of Partition and deal unflinchingly and sensitively with death and violence.
Equally evocative is designer Nina Sabnani’s Mukund and Riaz. Using Sindhi appliqué patchwork and simple words, Sabnani creates a tender meditation on a memory her father shared short years before he died: his best friend, and what happened to his cap. The 30 page picture book and eight-minute animated film glow 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, Homespun by Nilita Vachani (Other Press NY 2008); The Swing by Isha Merchant (Notion Press 2023) is notable being written when the author was 12.
The most authentic glimpses into Sindh, though, come through translation. Itthad 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. Ittehad (1941) brims with progressive ideas — women’s independence, choice in marriage, spiritual rather than sectarian faith, labour as partner not subordinate.
The Pages of my Life, memoir of Popati Hiranandani (1924–2005), translated by Jyoti Panjwani (OUP 2010), recounts girlhood, education, Partition, and professional life as writer and academic, with Popati’s trademark candour and verve. A memorable anecdote 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, a history drawn in my book The Amils of Sindh [black-and-white fountain (bwf) 2019].
READ MORE: ‘Sunrise Over Valivade’: a historical record and an intimate family account
Tales from Yerwada Jail (bwf, 2013), by the prolific Rita Shahani (1935-2013), 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 after Independence. I cannot speak or read Sindhi, and translated this book in collaboration with the author. She read aloud while I made notes, and we refined successive drafts together until both were satisfied.
The most outstanding translation yet is Rita Kothari’s Unbordered Memories, a curated anthology of post-Partition short stories told from various vantage points – departure, wrenching farewells, humiliation in refugee camps, and the desolation of those left behind. They are suffused 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, 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) is set in a 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 60 individuals 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 Nandita Bhavnani’s The Making of Exile (Tranquebar Press, 2018). A comprehensive and nuanced account of the Sindhi experience of Partition, it meticulously examines political, social, and psychological dimensions. Her narrative is precise and compassionate, its measured prose conveying the emotional weight of dislocation. One moving section describes the despair of Sindhi writers who lost not only their homes but also their readership and, in many cases, their will to write. Many died heartbroken.
Among newer finds is Premilla Rajan’s The Son-in-Law from Sindh (Notion Press 2025). The title suggests a humorous cultural study – the much-pampered Sindhi son-in-law – and the cover is a mug shot framed by postage stamps. The book comprises lists of information (some wildly inaccurate), affectionate anecdotes, 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 boarded steamships laden with “Sindh work” – handmade goods, textiles, and curios – and sailed out to trade across the Empire. They established mercantile networks long before Partition, a remarkable history documented by French scholar Claude Markovits in The Traders of Sindh: From Bukhara to Panama (CUP 2000).
READ MORE: Read an excerpt from Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland
Beyond Diamond Rings (Pustak Mahal, 2009) by Kusum Choppra is a daring fictional treatment of this world. It portrays the plight of Sindhworki women whose husbands lived in distant lands and who 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 11 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 devastation with work and faith.
Sindhwork and Sindhworkis (1919) was written by TK Mirchandani after a long career in Sindhwork. 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 insiduous – social, linguistic, psychological – and continues to echo through generations.
Saaz Aggarwal is the author of Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland and Losing Home Finding Home.
