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To date, most books on Partition have ignored or minimised the Sindhi Hindu experience, which was significantly different from the trials of minorities in Punjab or Bengal. The Making of Exile hopes to
redress this, by turning a spotlight on the specific narratives of the Sindhi Hindu community. Post-Partition, Sindh was relatively free of the intercommunal violence witnessed in Punjab, Bengal, and other parts of north India. Consequently, in the first few months of Pakistan’s early life, Sindhi Hindus did not migrate, and remained the most significant
minority in West Pakistan. Starting with the announcement of the Partition
of India, The Making of Exile firmly traces the experiences of the community – that went from being a small but powerful minority to becoming the target of communal discrimination, practised by
both the state as well as sections of Pakistani society. This climate of communal antipathy threw into sharp relief the help and sympathy extended to Sindhi Hindus by other Pakistani Muslims, both Sindhi and
muhajir. Finally, it was when they became victims of the Karachi pogrom of January 1948 that Sindhi Hindus felt compelled to migrate to India.
The second segment of the book examines the resettlement of the community in India – their first brush with squalid refugee camps, their struggle to make sense of rapidly changing governmental policies, and
the spirit of determination and enterprise with which they rehabilitated themselves in their new homeland. Yet, not all Sindhi Hindus chose to migrate, and the specific challenges of those who stayed on in Sindh, as well as the difficulties faced by Sindhi Muslims after the formation of Pakistan, have been sensitively documented in the final chapters. Weaving in a variety of narratives – diary entries and memoirs, press reportage, letters to editors and, advertisements, legends and poetry, dozens of interviews and a wealth of academic literature – Nandita Bhavnani’s The Making of Exile is one of the most comprehensive and
multifaceted studies of the Sindhi experience of Partition.
ISBN - 9789384030339
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Pages : 434
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