The More I Seek, The More I Find
OBSERVES DHARMENDRA TOLANI, WITH SURPRISE AND SATISFACTION
I was born in Jodhpur, in 1982. It was a joint family, with my father at the helm. The eldest of five brothers, he was twenty when his father died, and it fell upon him to provide for the family. In time, the brothers got married and established their own homes, but my Dadi lived with us till the end of her days.
Growing up in Jodhpur, the other languages spoken around me were Hindi and Marwari, and it was easy to learn one if you knew the other. Sindhi was different, it was my first language, but non-Sindhis could not pick it up so easily.
My school was not considered one of the best in Jodhpur, but I was fortunate to have excellent teachers. They shared their wisdom and love unconditionally, literally traveling the proverbial extra mile for their students: I remember once asking a question to our Sanskrit teacher, to which she didn’t have an answer. She said “Shabbaash – well done!” and, on a visit to Banaras, got me the answer from a Sanskrit professor at BHU!
Most of our teachers belonged to the same community as that of the school owner. One day, I was having my tiffin in recess with a classmate (also of the same community) and one of the teachers came up and scolded him, “Sharam kar, tu _____ hoke Sindhi ke saath khana kha raha hai – you should be ashamed of yourself eating with a Sindhi though you are a _____!” To be fair, neither that classmate nor any other student ever discriminated against me – I only remember them being extra nice so that they could copy my homework or get explanations.
The only time I complained to my father about something at school was a taunt from a girl two years senior to me in the tempo on the way home: “Sindhi to hote hi bhikhari hain – Sindhis are well-known beggars”. He rolled his eyes and said, “She couldn’t even think of a proper abuse!” He came to the school and the girl and I were summoned to the principal’s room in my father’s presence. I may have been the class topper – but she had been the school topper year after year. My father asked her politely, “Beta, aapne kabhi kisi Sindhi ko bhikh di hai kya child, have you ever given alms to a Sindhi?” And she replied, “Nahin – no, uncle.” This marked the end of hostilities.
But Jodhpur was still a clannish, parochial place and one day a teacher mocked a student, “Jaat sab chor hote hain – all Jaats are thieves!” The entire class laughed, myself included. Then she turned to me: “Tu kyun hans raha hai, Sindhi bhi sab chor hi hain – why are you laughing, all Sindhis are thieves too!” More laughter – but this time without mine. That day I did not go out to play in recess. My ears burning, I wrote an application against her, narrating what had happened. I had expected to be rebuffed or ignored or even beaten by the principal, and was amazed when he accepted and signed it.
That was a big deal, because when our principal signed an application, he meant business. Apparently he gave her an earful – and apparently she was puzzled, unable to remember her words. It was that simple for her. She said and forgot, but I remember, even today!
The story did not end there. It spread in the staff room and another teacher who belonged to her community hit out: “You are so good at complaining, why aren’t you complaining about that newspaper which says, ‘If you see a snake and a Sindhi together, kill the Sindhi first’”? No one in my class had heard this one before. Now everyone knew. And I did not have the stamina to go and complain again.
I encountered discrimination in my neighborhood as well. Our next-door neighbour would never eat anything from our house, though we always politely accepted her hospitality. And there were kids (of my age!) who badmouthed Sindhis. But there I was not bound by civility. I badmouthed them back in pretty much the same language they’d used. There were fistfights, and at times stones were hurled.
I left Jodhpur in 1999 for further education and, looking back, I can see that while these incidents may have caused trauma to a child, Sindhis don’t suffer as much as some other Indian communities who face continuous discrimination and verbal assaults due to their caste or religion. Almost no one in India is immune to snide negative stereotyping.
This doesn’t mean that I feel everyone should keep their opinions about other communities to themselves. That would lead to a stifled society. But there is a time and place for everything. There are civil ways of communicating these matters, though it is never easy to decide where to draw a line. Years later, when I readMy Country My Life by LK Advani, one of the things that struck me most was his complete lack of understanding of how important the caste system is in Indian politics. He had grown up in Sindh, where the caste system was not omnipresent as it is in the rest of India. I could relate to this because, though caste surrounded us when I was growing up, it was never a talking point even in my reasonably big joint family.
Another aspect which I could relate to was LK Advani’s close connection with the RSS. One of our relatives in Jalore had been jailed as an RSS member during the Emergency. One of my Dadi’s uncles was actively involved with RSS in Sindh, and as Partition approached, he had weapons stored in his factory.
I started attending RSS shakhas when I was around eight. In those days, RSS was an underdog; an out-of-power and somewhat rebellious entity. It metamorphosized into something I could not relate to, and around 2002, my teenage obsession faded out with my teens, and I stopped attending. Until then I was a hardcore Swayamsevak, spending at least three hours a day at my shakha. I was so devoted that I never missed a day– not even on the eve of my tenth standard board exams. And I was rapidly growing through the ranks: from Swayamsevak to Shakha Karyawah, the highest rank in a Shakha. Next step was Mandal Karyawah,responsible for multiple Shakhas. I attended RSS camps outside Jodhpur, at times two weeks long.
What I liked about RSS was that they spoke of bigger things: nation building, character building, Hindutva, ideals which appealed to me. Inside a shakha, the emphasis was on Hindu unity, and my Sindhi identity was inconsequential. Nobody here would mock me for being Sindhi. RSS also stressed the importance of native languages, on taking pride in Hindi and Sanskrit. I applied the same logic to Sindhi, even though I wasn’t yet aware of our rich history and literature.
In an English exam when I was in the twelfth standard, my essay on ‘My Hobbies’ was about RSS. One day, our Maths teacher asked what we wanted to become, and my answer was, “RSS Pracharak”. RSS pracharaks form the core of RSS and expand the organization. Two Indian prime ministers, Atal Behari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi, started as pracharaks. My Maths teacher inquired why I didn’t go ahead and become one. And I sort of realized that I didn’t really want that. For some reason, I liked to study. And I did not want to run a shop or work in one.
It was my mother’s dream that her Deepu would one day open the shutter of his own shop and always be self- sufficient and prosperous. It was a great dream. To support a large family, my father had worked in multiple jobs simultaneously, but remained in debt, never regaining the wealth and comfort our family had enjoyed before Partition. When I was in the eleventh standard, he quit those jobs and opened his own shop. For me. So that I would have a set business when the time came. He had arranged for me to spend my last two summer vacations working in shops, one a pharmacy and the other a cloth shop. They were respectable businesses. But I hated both. I quit one and was let go from the other.
My parents never forced me to do things their way, but nobody in our circle had a well-paying job, and a shop seemed to provide the best possible financial security. There were no role models of success through education. And yet, when I wanted to get coaching for JEE (the joint entrance examination for admission to various engineering colleges in India) in Kota, my father borrowed a significant amount of money to support my wish to do something none of us understood at the time.
It was at IIT Bombay that I heard something positive said about Sindhis for the first time and it took me completely by surprise. One of my friends said, “Sindhi logon ne bahut mehnat ki hai. Tumhare pass kucch bhinahin tha aur ab itna aage badh gaye – Sindhis have worked very hard. You people had nothing, and have progressed so much.” This gave me something to think about – but it also reminded me of some of the not-so-good things I had heard in Jodhpur. In my second year, a hostel-mate said to me, “You are a Pakistani!” I grabbed his collar in anger – but later apologized when I heard that physical violence could lead to expulsion. Perhaps he had just meant it as a joke.
I received my degree and began working in Bangalore, a cosmopolitan place with a small population of Sindhis but many migrants – occasionally made uncomfortably aware of being outsiders. But for me, it was here that my tryst with the history of my community began. On a visit to the British Council Library, I came across Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama by Claude Markovits, and this book was my gateway.
I knew there were many Sindhis in Gulf countries and in Africa. But I didn’t know they had been trading with the world for centuries. With a few exceptions, this book shows them in a fantastic light, as brave, gutsy adventurers. Besides trading confidently internationally, they also served as excellent administrators upon whom the rulers of the day relied. We had heroes like Naomal Hotchand and Diwan Gidumal, who founded great cities like Karachi and Hyderabad. Till that point I had been defensive of my Sindhiyat, which I ended up covering with aggression. But this book opened me up to the possibility that I could be actually very proud about being a Sindhi from inside, and could cover it with a facade of humility on the outside.
I also learnt from this book that Sindh, due to its geographic location, was a religious melting pot influenced by Hinduism, Sufi Islam and Sikhism.
I already knew that my mother could read Gurmukhi. She would take me to the Sojti Gate Gurdwara in Jodhpuron Gurpurab. And I knew relatives who visited mazaars – mausoleums – of Muslim saints. I had taken this religious fluidity – not easy for non-Sindhis to grasp – for granted, and now understood its significance.
The next lesson came from a book about Partition from the IISc library. One of the essays was by HT Lambrick, a British officer posted in Sindh, and he mentioned the Sindhi participation in the Indian freedom movement, quoting a slogan chanted during the protests: “Qaido lun jo bhago bhajo, Angrez hindman bhago bhago – the rule of salt has been broken, broken, and the British have run away, run away from Sindh.” ‘Bhago’ is the past tense of two verbs in Sindhi – to run away, and to break. I was surprised and intrigued, and realized that I had never before seen Sindhis as freedom fighters – or as creative, poetic people.
In 2006, I visited McLeod Ganj on holiday. This beautiful hill town is the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, and I learnt here that Tibetans too had been forced out of their homeland. Like Sindhis, uprooted, but enterprising enough to rebuild a new and beautiful life. I ended up buying some expensive things from Norbulingka Institute primarily out of the refugee solidarity bond. I later discovered another commonality: Tibetis where the mighty river Sindhu begins, and Sindh is where it merges with the sea. I used this theme in my book Yet Another Dream. Of its two main protagonists, one is from Sindh and the other from Tibet.
Then, in 2007, I bought a handy cam. One of the first things I did was to record my Dadi Jamna Tolani’s account of what she saw and experienced during Partition. I recorded a few more relatives’ accounts as well,knowing that we were running out of time as most of those who experienced Partition have either died or will die soon. Over time, this anxiety has reduced as I have come across others who are committed to documenting recent Sindhi history. I have also realized that Sindhi language and literature is alive and well in Sindh – though, living in India, we are completely detached from our ancestral homeland and its current political realities.
It was in RSS that I first heard the name of Raja Dahirsen, a Hindu king who fought Muslim invaders in Sindh. Much later I learnt that he is a hero even to the Muslim Sindhis, being a Sindhi ruler who resisted the first Arab conquest in 715 AD. I understood that perhaps they see themselves as Sindhis first and Muslims second, and they resent the suppression of Sindhi culture in Pakistan, and that Dahirsen is an icon for them.
So the relations between the Hindus and Muslims of Sindh are not quite black and white, and maybe they never were. I recall my Dadi’s experience of a Muslim mob at their door, close to Sant Madhavdas Darbar near the lovely Phuleli Canal. It was their factory worker Suleiman, a Muslim, who stood outside, pleading, “Mua, aseen Musalmaan! Mua, aseen Musalmaan – we are Muslims! We are Muslims!” and saved their lives.
Kodumal Asudani, my cousin’s father-in-law, told me that when his people were leaving their home in Kotri, the local leader and their neighbours begged them to stay. They settled in Jaipur, but his father and two uncles returned to Sindh. His father was persuaded to return to Jaipur, because his mother was ailing, but the uncles lived happily in Sindh and died there too. Mr Asudani remembered a visit from their friend Anwar. Knowing how much it would mean to them, he brought with him three pallo fish from Sindh, weighing six kilos each. Their Marwari landlord did not allow non-vegetarian food, so they quietly arranged to cut and cook them at a dhaba owned by a Muslim. What a feast they had that night!
The respect for all forms of worship, so characteristic of Sindh, is a central theme in the works of Shah Abdul Latif, the most revered of all the poet-philosophers of Sindhi literature. Shah Latif’s stature is such that telecom company Telenor’s Sindhi promotion song was “Bhit ja bhittai, bhit te wasai noor muhnjhu toh poojayun,” televised as a beautiful folk rendering with the background of rural Sindh. The town of Bhit is said to be the origin of the great poet, who is also known as Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.
I started exploring his enormous work Shah jo Rasalo with enthusiasm, first with Kalyan Advani’s compilation. It is in Arabic Sindhi, and Devendra Kodwani very kindly helped me transliterate several verses to Devanagari Sindhi. Then my mother-in-law, who was a Sindhi teacher, found a Devanagari version of some popular verses. My study remains in the initial stages, but there are a few verses I would like to share.
par^aad^o so sad^u, varu vaaeea jo je lahee’n;
huaa ag^ehee’n gad^u, b^udh~an~a me’n b^a th~iyaa
The echo and the call are the same.
In the beginning they were together, but while listening they appear different.
SUR KALYAN DAASTAAN 1.19
In this verse, Shah compares call-echo with God-human, a small example of his mastery of metaphor. And the complex idea is conveyed in words which anyone can easily understand. This verse is a popular stand-alone classic, and there is a book titled Parado Soi Sad.
Another verse along the same lines:
paan~hi’n jallaalhu, paan~hi’n jaani jamaalu
paan~hi’n soorat~a piree’na jee, paan~hi’n husun kamaalu
paan~hi’n pir mureed~u th~iye, paan~hi’n paan~ khhayaalu
sabhu sabhoee haalu, manjhaa’n maalum th~iye
He Himself is the famous one, and He Himself is the fame.
He is the beautiful face and He Himself is the beauty.
He is the teacher, and He is the disciple.
SUR KALYAN DAASTAN 1.16
This poem celebrates oneness of the creator and his/her creation.
Shah travelled a lot on his spiritual quest and imbibed many influences; I believe these concepts convey
Advaitvad, which means that Atma and Parmatma are not separate but one. Perhaps it is my Hindu upbringing that leads me to believe this. But there are other indications. The chapters of Shah jo Rasalo are called ‘Sur’, which is derived from the Sanskrit ‘Swar’. And the first Sur is Sur Kalyan, a Sanskrit word. So there are distinct non-Islamic influences. In another verse, he takes potshots at mullahs, though not as bluntly as Kabir:
andh~aa oondh~aa vej^a, khala kuj^aar^yaa khaa’nee’n
asaa’n d^ukhee d~ela me’n, t~oo’n piyaaree’n pej^a
sooree jinee’n sej~a, maran~a t~ini mushaahid~o
O ignorant, moron doctor! Why do you fool me with your stupid concoctions and burn my skin? Why do you give false hope to this wrinkled, stiff body? Those who think of the deathbed as the nuptial bed, consider death as a means to meet the beloved.
SUR KALYAN DAASTAAN 2.1
In this verse, Shah Latif is exposing the self-appointed saviour saints who sell hope and false solutions to spiritual seekers. Note the word vej^a from Hindi/Sanskrit vaidya. Andha Undha Vej is the title of a book; his words are so evocative that they have been used as book titles.
To tie one’s sense of self-worth to the history of one’s community or family limits one’s perceptions. To grow as a human being and achieve one’s potential, we have to move beyond the prism of the past. At the same time, I must say that studying my Sindhi roots has enriched me immensely, and made me a more well-rounded and centered person. I have learnt to question the stereotypes about Sindhis, both positive and negative. And I have understood that one’s past is a double-edged sword. Different socio-political realities interpret perceptions of a community differently. For example, business folk in India have been historically perceived as dishonest and exploitative. But once the Indian economy started opening up, as professional practices were introduced, they are better accepted as drivers of the economy. This reduced the negative perception of the mercantile communities. Who knows when that will change again?
As a child, my family members and relatives all spoke to each other in Sindhi and it was the first language I learnt. There may have been many reasons why I subconsciously spoke to my son in Hindi. It was only after a lot of effort that I was recently able to stop doing so. He is eight now, and has begun to understand his mother tongue. God-willing, one day he will speak it fluently too.
