INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

originated. Generally the Hindu Sindhis have been grouped under three basic categories:
Lohana, Bhatia and Brahmin, of which the former comprises a bulk of divergent
Vaishya jatis, who share the claim of Kshattriya origin and the cult of Jhulelal. Except
for the Brahmins, who were and still are ritual specialists, the major part of Sindhi
jatis are involved in trading and commerce of different kinds. 153 Equally important to
a Sindhi identity is clan membership (bradari) and ancestry. Most Sindhi family
names end with “‒ani”, which signifies “descendant of” and indicates the patrilineal
origin from a male ancestor, while other Sindhi surnames will denote the place of
origin or occupation. 154
After the migration from Pakistan the Sindhis have attempted to construe a
global Sindhi identity that subsumes social differences of caste and regional belonging,
even if traditional social rules still plays a significant role when arranging marriages.
As Falzon (2004) argues, the idea of a ”Sindhiness” has become the primary
identity marker in contemporary Diaspora communities which distinguishes Sindhis
from other people in different local contexts and nurses the feeling of belonging to a
single community and a shared cultural and ethnic group. 155 The reconstruction of an
all-embracing Sindhi identity, however, does not necessarily rest on the imagination
of a “homeland” or religious belonging ‒ elements that are fundamental to a Punjabi
Sikh identity. Thapan (2002) notes that the older generations of Sindhi Hindus may
still consider the province Sindh as a lost “homeland”, but due to social mobility and
the transnational character of contemporary Sindhi communities the younger generations
will claim multiple homelands that are located in different parts of the world.
As Thapan puts it, they let “their communities around the world represent a “homeland”
without a territory.” 156 It is an imagined homeland located on the symbolic
level. The cultural material articulated in the creation and maintenance of the modern
Sindhi identity implies a shared history, specific language, literature, and in more
recent decades, rituals and symbols related to the cult of Jhulelal.
The religious world of the Sindhis is a complex matter. According to Thapan the
majority of the population in Sindh converted to Islam between the tenth and fourteenth
century, followed by Sufi influences in the sixteenth century. 157 Sindhi Hindus,
on the other hand, have combined different beliefs and practices of the Hindu and
Sikh traditions, assimilated with devotion to regional saints, Gods and Sufi pirs. A
major part of the Sindhi Hindus would in fact call themselves Nanak-panthis, followers
of the teaching of Guru Nanak, in addition to their worship of Gods and Goddesses
associated with the mainstream Hinduism. The religious life of Sindhis, however,
cannot simply be comprehended as an amalgam of regional Hindu and Sikh
beliefs and practices that historically have developed by accretion and reconciliation
through interaction with the different traditions. Neither would it be correct to clas-
153
Falzon 2004: 32.
154
Falzon 2004: 36, Thapan 2002: 15.
155
Falzon 2004: 38.
156
Thapan 2002: 2.
157
Thapan 2002: 16.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008