A border divided my family's language – now I'm bringing it back

By: Sanjana Bhambhani / BBC
Translation: Agron Shala / Telegrafi.com

When I was about eight years old, a teacher at my primary school in New Delhi, India, asked us what languages ​​our families spoke at home. India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, with estimates suggesting that we collectively speak anywhere from 122 to 456 languages. In New Delhi, as in several other major Indian cities, people tend to use at least two languages ​​every day: a language that is commonly spoken at work, at school, or in government offices (such as Hindi in Delhi), and a regional language that connects people to their inherited culture and is spoken within the family.

Of the Indian languages, I grew up speaking only Hindi. I had no idea what my family's second regional language was. When I asked my father, his answer confused me.

"Cindy," he told me.

I had never heard of this language. My father explained to me that the region where Sindhi is mainly spoken – that is, in Sindhi – is not in India, but in Pakistan, our neighboring country. How did my family lose our ancestral language? Why, unlike other Indian families, did we no longer speak our regional language?

The answer has to do with an event that not only shook my family's history but also reshaped South Asia: the partition of British India.

In 1947, when the British left India after nearly two centuries of colonial rule, they drew what is known as the “Radcliffe Line,” dividing the country into two parts: India (Hindu majority) and Pakistan (Muslim majority). During this partition, Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus were forced to abandon their homes, causing one of the largest forced migrations in history. Between 14.5 million and 17.9 million people fled for their lives amid widespread violence and chaos. My grandmother was among them.

My grandmother is from Sindh, a region that, before Partition, was a more religiously and culturally mixed province, where Hindus and Muslims coexisted, with Muslims in the majority. Sindhi was the most widely spoken regional language. But when the country was partitioned, Sindhi ended up in Pakistan, and Sindhi’s Hindu minority – including my grandmother and her family – fled to India, escaping persecution of Hindus.

Thus, Sindhi lost most of its Hindu community, while Sindhi Hindus – many of whom had fought for India's independence from colonial rule – lost their homes and the place where their native Sindhi language was spoken.

At the age of 14, my grandmother left everything behind: the neighborhood she had grown up in, the streets she had walked, her beloved relatives and friends.

“We didn’t even have a single teacup or plate,” she told me – two important symbols of community and connection to our tea culture.

But, there was one trace of her childhood that my grandmother was able to take with her across the border: her language, Sindhi.

One of the most intriguing things about Sindhi is that it combines linguistic features from two countries that are not only separate but also politically hostile to each other: India and Pakistan.

Sindhi is derived from a dialect of the Prakrit languages, which are the predecessors of Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India. However, most Sindhi literature is written in a modified Perso-Arabic script. In another form of modification, the Perso-Arabic script is also the script for Urdu, the national language of Pakistan.

When my grandmother left her native region, she took this language with her – a symbol of her upbringing in a mixed cultural environment. However, when she arrived in the new India, she had to master the dominant language of her new state, the Hindi spoken in Delhi. It is the language in which I address my grandmother today, calling her दादी (Dadi).

Other Sindhis generally adopted the language of the states where they found refuge, especially in communication outside the family. And, thus, Sindhi began to fade among the younger generations. In my family, as in many others, once it was lost, it became difficult to revive it.

Sindhi is quite unique, even compared to some of the languages ​​of its neighboring countries in Pakistan and India. For example, it uses implosive sounds, which are pronounced with a puff of air. Vimmi Sadarangani, a professor of Sindhi at Tolani College of Arts and Science in Gandhidham, India, lists four such sounds: ɓ, ɗ, ɠ, and ʄ. Implosive sounds are difficult to pronounce because they are rare in other languages. In addition, Sindhi has five nasal sounds inherited from Sanskrit that do not exist and are not used in modern Hindi. These sounds are difficult to learn if you have not grown up using them. You can listen to an audio recording and try it out for yourself.

Sadarangani explains that without pronouncing these sounds correctly, every other aspect of learning Sindhi – including writing – becomes difficult.

Indian-American entrepreneur Kiran Thadhani, whose grandparents fled Sindhi to Ahmedabad in India during Partition, is among those trying to reconnect with the language. She was born in the US, now lives in London, and is taking Sindhi classes. But she struggles with pronunciation.

“They always correct me in class by saying, 'Say it again,' and I say, 'Oh my God, I don't know, I'm not getting it right!'” – says Thadhani.

Some words come naturally to her, she says. She knows how to pronounce the words for garlic and onion, for example, partly because food is a big part of conversations in her family. But there are other words that are more difficult for her, words that never sound native to her. For example, she pronounces the word “guɗi,” which means doll, with a softer, more Americanized “ɗ.”

However, according to Thadhan's parents, she uttered her first words in Sindhi.

“When I started school in the US, I would accidentally say something in Sindhi,” she recalls. But in her predominantly white neighborhood in Atlanta, she felt pressure to hide her differences and fit in—one of which was her “Sindhi” (Sindhi identity).

“I have a very mixed relationship with my first language now,” says Thadhani. To this day, however, she finds it easier to express her deepest feelings in Sindhi. “I don’t remember all the words anymore, but some of my earliest, most childish emotions, I can’t always express in English, but I can express them in Sindhi,” she explains.

In the course of conversations for this article, I have come across a number of Sindhi words and expressions that I find endlessly fascinating. The word “aɠopoi,” which I learned from Saaz Aggarwal, a writer and oral history historian, means “while you are doing this, you can do this other thing.” A practical term that also reflects the Sindhi community’s reputation for being resourceful and adaptable.

This leads us to an important question: If Sindhi is so culturally important, why is it struggling to survive in India?

In fact, Sindhi speakers tried from the beginning to ensure that the language was learned and used in the new India. But a fundamental problem, according to scholars, was disagreement over the future of the alphabet for this cross-border language.

In her 2022 article, A language without land, Uttara Shahani, a scholar of South Asian history at the Centre for Refugee Studies at the University of Oxford, explains the conflict. During the literary class, some wanted to continue writing Sindhi in the Perso-Arabic script so that younger generations in India could read classical Sindhi literature, and so that speakers in Pakistan could read works written in India. This group sought to maintain a connection to the Sindhi region, despite the partition.

Others, however, wanted to use the Devanagari script – the same one used to write Hindi – because it was familiar to many people in India. Furthermore, the modified Perso-Arabic script was associated with Muslims, and this group wanted to assimilate into the new India as Hindus.

"This conflict has never been fully resolved," says Shahani.

Today, Sindhi spoken on the Indian side of the border sounds increasingly different from that on the Pakistani side, says Vimmi Sadarangani. Some sounds have been influenced by Hindi and Arabic pronunciations have been lost. Sadarangani believes that to fully master the language, one must learn both alphabets: the Perso-Arabic and the Devanagari. “Sindhi, with the Perso-Arabic alphabet, is also necessary to keep the connection with Sindhi alive,” she says.

For me, as an Indian citizen, it would be very difficult to visit the Sindh province of Pakistan, see with my own eyes my old family home, and learn more about the fate of the language there, due to the political hostility between the two countries.

However, young people like me, on both sides of the border, are finding other ways to connect, including through settlements in the US and the UK, where Sindhi Muslims and Hindus migrated.

Faraz Ahmed Khokhar comes from a Sindhi Muslim family in Pakistan. He lived in Hyderabad, a city in Sindh, until the age of nine and then moved to London with his family. There he founded the Sindhi Youth Club. Ironically, he has forged more connections with Sindhi Indians on British soil than he did when he lived in Pakistan, just a few miles from the Indian border.

“When I was in Pakistan … I didn’t have any interaction with Indian Sindhis,” says Faraz Ahmed Khokhar. “In Western countries, where there is more diversity and openness, you end up mixing with different people, making friends, no matter where they come from.” The Sindhi Youth Club has members from both India and Pakistan.

Although Sindhi is taught in government schools in Sindh, Khokhar says it is also facing challenges in Pakistan. Sindhi families are increasingly speaking the language at home, replacing it with the more widely spoken Urdu. In urban centers, Sindhi is barely surviving in the face of Urdu and, increasingly, English.

To preserve the language within the family, Khokhar's parents did not allow him to speak English with his two younger brothers, forcing him to use Sindhi at home.

“And I’m glad they did,” he says, because it allows him to communicate freely when he returns to Pakistan, especially in the cities and villages where Sindhi remains the main language. “If I didn’t know Sindhi as well as I do now … when I would travel to Sindh, I would be limited to urban centers.”

On the Indian side of the border, the disappearance of Sindhi occurred in part because of the reorganization of India after the Partition of 1947. India was divided into states based on linguistic boundaries – those living in Gujarat spoke Gujarati, those in Punjab spoke Punjabi – and in this system, Sindhi had no place of its own.

Hindu speakers of Sindhi, in states like Rajasthan and Gujarat, faced a different problem, says Indian writer Rita Kothari in her book, The Burden of Exile: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat [The Burden of Refuge: Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat]. Although they were Hindus, their Muslim-influenced heritage raised suspicions in the new India, where religious tensions were high. They came from a Muslim-majority province, wrote in the Perso-Arabic script, and ate non-vegetarian food that called their "Hinduness" into question.

Then there were the stereotypes about Sindhis, who are known as a trading community. In her book, Kothari points out that Sindhis who settled in urban centers of Gujarat set up businesses with low profit margins and no religious restrictions, working unusual hours to survive. This brought competition to local businesses, causing resentment towards Sindhis. This sense of hostility is also evident in expressions like the one comparing us to snakes; a banality that both Thadhani and I have heard in different parts of the world.

The sense of being foreign and the lack of a homeland for Sindhi was particularly felt in 1950, when India adopted its Constitution and included 14 official languages, with Sindhi not among them.

Later, Sindhis in India successfully lobbied to have their language included in the list of official languages. But by then, Sindhi had begun to fade.

Today, the name Sindh is mentioned in India's national anthem, which I sang every morning at school without realizing its significance to my identity.

When I think back to the day we were asked to bring the name of our family's mother tongue to school, I remember being allowed to add Sindhi to a list titled Languages ​​of India. A relief, given that I had been anxious to ask my teacher for permission to add a language from a region that is now in Pakistan. My anxiety, unbeknownst to me at the time, reflected decades of political debate over the language, its speakers, and their rightful place in India.

Sindhi speakers have also found a new community online, including those who, like me, never learned the language but would like to as adults. Khokhari says he watches Sindhi videos online and enjoys social media posts and music produced by Pakistani and Indian Sindhis.

“You will often find comments from Sindhis on the other side of the border, in Sindh, who comment very positively and love the songs [released by Indian Sindhi singers],” says Shahani.

Sindhi cuisine is also a way through which our community maintains a connection to the language.

A popular dish, says Sindhi writer Saaz Aggarwal, is Saee Bhaji: a mixture of dal, spinach, other herbs and vegetables, cooked together with tomatoes and spices, turning into a soup which is eaten with rice and papad.

“It’s very healthy and I hated it when I was a kid,” she says. She was surprised to find that her children, as they grew up, loved it when she cooked it for them.Saee bhaji "is an icon of Sindhi culture"!

She also mentioned the dish Sindhi kadhi, which I remember as the dish my grandmother was known for. It is a sour, chickpea-flour curry, made with vegetables and tamarind juice, different from the curries of other communities. Just thinking about it takes me back to my grandparents’ dining room, feasting on this dish as they chatted with my father in their native language.

At that time, the only Sindhi phrase I remember learning was good luck. It means “strong hug”; a phrase I used to use as I threw myself into the arms of my parents and grandparents. While I was researching this article, my father told me that I have been saying it incorrectly for the past 10 years, so improving my pronunciation could be my first step towards reconnecting with my language. Recently, I enrolled in a course to learn Sindhi. If I practice enough, who knows, maybe one day I will be able to bring Sindhi back into our family.

Six days after I enrolled in Sindhi courses, my grandmother passed away. I dedicate this article to Prema Bhambhani, who took an entire language across a border and preserved enough of her memory for me to reconnect with her today. /Telegraph/