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. 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. 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. Finally, it was when they became victims of the Karachi pogrom of January 1948 that Sindhi Hindus felt compelled to migrate to India. By 1950, 12, 25, 000 had left Sindh for India and other parts of the world. The population of Sindhi Hindus before the Partition in Sindh was 14, 00, 000. 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. Jan-Mar, 1948: The highest numbers of Hindus migrated from Sindh to divided India. 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, practiced by both the state as well as sections of Pakistani society. 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.
#SINDHI HINDUS FREE#
Post-Partition, Sindh was relatively free of the inter-communal violence witnessed in Punjab, Bengal and other parts of north India. The Making of Exile hopes to redress this, by turning a spotlight on the specific narratives of the Sindhi Hindu community. To date, most books on Partition have ignored or minimized the Sindhi Hindu experience, which was significantly different from the trials of minorities in Punjab or Bengal.
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