‘Sindhis are so adaptable that they’re overlooked’
On how the contemporary community around the world has become embedded in the societies in which they live
Was it really the Sindhi businessman Bhojoomal who founded Karachi?
If the memoirs of Seth Naomul Hotchand are anything to go by, then yes. Hotchand was a merchant who lived in Karachi in the 19th century, and who wrote the history of his family. He wrote that his ancestor, Seth Bhojoomal (originally from Sehwan in Sindh), established business in Kharrakbandar around 1720. The place, however, quickly silted up, and Seth Bhojoomal and his fellow Sindhi merchants relocated to a new place, later named Karachi, and developed it into a port.
Claude Markovits published his findings about Sindhi global traders in 1999. Why did it take so long for this phenomenon to be written about?
The Sindhworki network goes back to the 1850s, and involved traders from Hyderabad-sindh who travelled around the world in search of potential markets (usually in port cities). That of the Shikarpuris goes back to at least the early 18th century, and involved men from Shikarpur who ran an elaborate banking trade in Central Asia.
You’re right in saying that it took scholars a long time to get the hint. Some early examples were Anita Chugani’s 1995 MA thesis on Sindhworkis in Japan, my undergraduate thesis on Sindhworkis in Malta in 1996, Markovits’s benchmark book of 2000, and my book of 2005. I think the reason is that Sindhis are so adaptable in their ways that they are easily overlooked. It took Markovits considerable detective work to tease out the Shikarpuri presence in Central Asia; and Sindhworkis can be even more difficult to identify. For all their globetrotting and business acumen, Sindhis tend to fly under the radar.
Did you observe cultural differences between the Sindhi communities in Panama, Hong Kong and other locations, as a result of local influences?
You’ve put your finger on one of the most fascinating parts of the Sindhi story. Simply put, Sindhis live in places. The first Sindhi I interviewed ran a retail business in Malta which had been in the family for decades. In a corner of the shop was a little shelf, and on it photos of departed family members and figures of Ganesha, Lakshmi and the Virgin Mary. When I asked, he told me he was “100% Hindu” but also a follower of a number of Catholic devotions. In Indonesia today, there are about 10,000 Sindhis; many are businesspeople. Perhaps the best known is their production of sinetron (soap operas), which they have been heavily invested in since the 1980s. The Sindhi producers even came up with an innovative product, sinetron Ramadhan, which in turn evolved into a new genre of Indonesian television known as sinetron Islam (Islamic soap opera). These are two small examples of their linguistic, cultural, economic and social diversity. And yet, Sindhis retain a strong sense of a networked cultural affinity, which makes it possible for them to relocate should they wish or need to.