The author will do well to explore the status and attitudes of Mohajirs in Sindh. Sindhis have never faced any discrimination and we are a part and parcel of India. Hinduism is an inclusive religion, thus Hindus do visit Dargahs, Gurudwaras and Churchs, just like Sikhs and Christians (especially in South India) visit Temples. Sindhis are not the only Hindus to eat meat, support the BJP or take part in riots etc Nor are we the only Hindus to support LK Advani. Any Hindu would know that Hinduism has many variants and within every linguistic group or caste etc, the mode of worshipping, culture, diet etc changes. The author does not seem to be aware of the facts pertaining to Sindhis in India.Īt the outset, Sindhis do not need to behave or act in any manner to fit in or to prove their "Hinduness" to anyone. Published in The Express Tribune, March 6 th, 2011. Ninety per cent of Sindhi Hindus are BJP voters today and recognise Sindhi LK Advani as their leader (p.73). He wanted us to have townships next to Muslim colonies so they remain under control” (p.66). One Sindhi said: “The Maharaja of Baroda wanted us to put the Muslims of Baroda also in place. The Sindhi aggression against Muslims was seen as a special gift the Sindhis had brought with them to Gujarat. The reputation of the Godhra Sindhis had spread to other parts of Gujarat.
#Sindhi people in india series
Kothari writes: “The subsequent communal history of Godhra, with its notorious series of riots between the Ghanchi Muslims and the Lari Sindhis has, at its roots, the issue of evacuee property.” It is in the struggle of the Sindhi Hindus in Gujarat to be accepted as Hindus that they backed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and then fought with local Muslims. The second smaller group, one that is more powerful in terms of political representation, was from Upper Sindh and the regions of Larkana and Shikarpur (p.65) Peasants and fishermen by vocation, the Laris are considered coarse and poor. A majority of the 15,000 Sindhis who live in Godhra are from Lower Sindh, the region of Lar. Parts of Bombay that included the districts of Godhra and Dahod (now in Gujarat) also beckoned Sindhis due to their availability of evacuee property. They disliked Sindhis for being like Muslims, due to their meat-eating habit (p.64). Local Gujaratis resented the government’s decision to allocate evacuee properties to Sindhis. Local Gujaratis did not want Sindhis to occupy the evacuee properties left behind by Memons who had preferred to migrate to Pakistan once it was decided that Junagadh would merge with independent India. These Sindhis looked ‘Muslim-like’ to the locals: “The Hindus of Sindh were not quite the most suitable examples of orthodox Hindus, as they were a meat-eating community in a largely vegetarian region” (p.59). Movement towards Gujarat also happened indirectly, especially via Rajasthan, when Sindhis arrived from Mirpurkhas (p.58). Ships from Karachi arrived at the ports of Porbander, Veraval, and Okha on Gujarat’s coast.
Rita Kothari records the Hindu migration into Gujarat. They left en masse in 1948, after the immigrating populations touched off riots in Karachi. The Hindus of Sindh mostly moved to this state after Partition. The modern state of Gujarat consists of a strip of ‘mainland’ Gujarat, the peninsula of Saurashtra, and the western arm of Kutch (p.33). The Supreme Court of India, in 2004, fined a litigant for asking to delete Sindh from the Indian national anthem, thus challenging any organic relationship between territory and nationalism (p.31). A Hindu will often become the murid (follower) of a Mussulman, and in some cases the contrary takes place… all great Pirs revered by the Moslems have classical Hindu names” (p.17). Hinduism here is mixed up with the heterogeneous elements of Islam, and the faith of Nanak Shah.
Richard Burton wrote: “Hindu religion is not to be found in a state of purity in Sindh. The province was pluralist, just like East Pakistan. Like East Pakistan, nationalism in Sindh was language-based.
These facts have been revealed in the book Interpreting the Sindhi World: Essays on society and history Edited by Michel Boivin & Matthew Cook (Oxford University Press, 2010). Shockingly, these very Hindus, partly to be accepted as true Hindus, participated in the anti-Muslim violence in Godhra in Gujarat in 2002. They went to the neighbouring Indian state of Gujarat but were not accepted there by the local Hindu communities. Hindus were driven out of Sindh after 1947.
0 kommentar(er)
