Sikk for Sindh: A Study of Utopianism in Sindhi Hindu Narratives of Partition
Abhilasha Sawlani
Publication: Volume 5 Issue 1
Abstract | Most narratives about the Partition of the Indian subcontinent frame the lost home/city/cultural milieu as an idealized model of syncretism. The frontier region of Sindh was a particularly fertile locus for the confluence of diverse cultures and religions. The resultant syncretism made it a particularly apt site for the projection of nostalgic and utopian fantasies. Bringing together historical accounts, literary analysis of short stories, along with interviews conducted within my own family, this autoethnographic study seeks to explore the utopian impulse within Sindhi narratives of the Partition of India. It looks into how the past is fabricated as an idealized space, obfuscating its dystopian aspects—the inequitable socio-economic structure and communal tensions that preexisted Partition. Despite this selective, nostalgic reconstruction, it argues that the oppositional utopian impulse of these ‘fictions of memory’ lies in their visions of a world where proximity and coexistence were possible. Instead of offering realizable blueprints of a utopian past, these narratives signal the possibility of a society based on alternative, more amicable ways of negotiating religious difference. The underlying utopian impulse manifests in the desire that motivates nostalgic longing, emerging out of a chaotic and dystopian present which selectively reconstructs the past to mobilize its redemptive possibilities for syncretic, potentially utopian, future, social configurations.
Keywords | Partition of India, Sindhi Narratives, Sindhi Hindus, Pre-partition Nostalgia, Utopia, Syncretism, Sindh, Autoethnography, Personal Interviews
Abhilasha Sawlani (abhilasha.sawlani_phd19@ashoka.edu.in) is currently enrolled as a second year PhD scholar at Ashoka University, India. Her research spans the fields of Partition and Cultural Memory Studies, exploring the phenomena of memory and postmemory and their influence on formerly syncretic identities. Her questions emerge from a personal investment in exploring the Sindhi identity and its changing configurations in the aftermath of Partition and the fissures it generated.