Interpreting the Sindhi World Essays on Society and History

by Boivin, Michel; Cook, Matthew A.

• ISBN13: 9780195477191
• ISBN10: 0195477197
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Interpreting the Sindhi World seeks to unite the wide community of scholars who work on Sindh and with Sindhis. The book's interdisciplinary focus is on history and society, and represents a 'snap shot' of contemporary research from different disciplines and locations. Combining interdisciplinary and multi-local approaches, it describes the diversity of Sindh's 'voices' and raises questions about how they are historically and socio-culturally defined. Conventional studies of Sindh and Sindhis often bend the region and its people upon themselves to analyze society and history. This collection of essays treats Sindh and its people not as isolated regional entities, but rather entries in a wider socio-cultural and historical web. Sindhis are a global community and this collection generates new perspectives on them by integrating detailed studies on Pakistan with those from India and the Diaspora. Such an approach contrasts with other writings by celebrating rather than erasing multi-cultural faces from Sindh's human tapestry. By rethreading unheard socio-cultural and historical voices into understanding Sindh and its people, Interpreting the Sindhi World disputes the vision of Sindhis as a monolithic population in Pakistan.

Author Biography

Michel Boivin is Research Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies at CNRS-EHESS in France, is heading the French Interdisciplinary Mission in Sindh. After graduating in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Lyon 2, he taught contemporary History of the Muslim world. Cook is the editor of Sindh Through History and Representations (OUP 2008), and has contributed to many academic journals on Ismailism and Sufism in the 19th-20th C. Sindhi area, both in Pakistan and in India.

Matthew A. Cook is Assistant Professor of South Asian Postcolonial Studies at North Carolina Central University. His research focus is on modern South Asia and the methodological conjunction of anthropology and history. He has authored book chapters, journal articles and reviews published by Oxford University Press, Eastern Anthropologist, Sagar, Columbia Journal of Historiography, Columbia Historical Review, and Educational Practice and Theory and South Asian Review.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Michel Boivin and Matthew A. Cook
1. Myths of Jhuley Lal: Deconstructing a Sindhi Cultural Icon, Lata Parwani
2. Mobility, Territory, and Authenticity: Sindhi Hindus in Kutch, Gujarat, Farhana Ibrahim
3. Unwanted Identities in Gujarat, Rita Kothari
4. Recreating Sindh: Formations of Sindhi Hindu Guru Movements in New Contexts, Steven Ramey
5. Code Switching Among Sindhis Experiencing Language Shift in Malaysia, Maya Khemlani David
6. Pithoro Pir and Sufi Culture: A Historically Unexamined Socio-Religious Tradition in Sindh, Michel Boivin
7. Getting Ahead or Keeping Your Head? The 'Sindhi' Migration of the Eighteenth Century, Matthew A. Cook
8. Richard Burton's Sindh: Folklore, Syncretism, and Empire, Paulo Lemos Horta
9. 1947: Recovering Displaced Histories of Karachi, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar
10. The Sufi Saints of Sindhi Nationalism, Oskar Verkaaik