Sindhis

Vintage group photo of Indian Sindhi people

The Indus Valley Civilisation went into decline around the year 1700 BC for reasons that are not entirely known, though its downfall was probably precipitated by an earthquake or natural event that dried up the Ghaggar River. The Indo-Aryans are believed to have founded the Vedic civilisation that existed between the Sarasvati River and Ganges river around 1500 BC. This civilisation helped shape subsequent cultures in South Asia.

For several centuries in the first millennium B.C. and in the first five centuries of the first millennium A.D., western portions of Sindh, the regions on the western flank of the Indus river, were intermittently under Persian, Greek, and Kushan rule, first during the Achaemenid dynasty (500–300 BC) during which it made up part of the easternmost satrapies, then, by Alexander the Great, followed by the Indo-Greeks, and still later under the Indo-Sassanids, as well as Kushans, before the Islamic invasions between the 7th–10th century AD. Alexander the Great marched through Punjab and Sindh, down the Indus river, after his conquest of the Persian Empire.

The Ror dynasty was a power from the Indian subcontinent that ruled modern-day Sindh and northwest India from 450 BC – 489 AD.[5]

Sindh was one of the earliest regions to be conquered by the Arabs and influenced by Islam[6] after 720 AD. Before this period, it was heavily Hindu, and Buddhist. After 632 AD, it was part of the Islamic empires of the Abbasids and Umayyids. Habbari, Soomra, Samma, Arghun dynasties ruled Sindh.

Abida Parveen is a Pakistani singer of Sindhi descent and an exponent of Sufi music.

With Sindh's stable prosperity and its strategic geographical position, it was subject to successive conquests by foreign empires. In 712 A.D., Sindh was incorporated into the Caliphate, the Islamic Empire, and became the ‘Arabian gateway’ into India (later to become known as Bab-ul-Islam, the gate of Islam).

Sindh produced many Muslim scholars early on, "men whose influence extended to Iraq where the people thought highly of their learning", in particular in hadith,[8] with the likes of poet Abu al- 'Ata Sindhi (d. 159) or hadith and fiqh scholar Abu Mashar Sindhi (d. 160), among many others, and they're also those who translated scientific texts from Sanskrit into Arabic, for instance the Zij al-Sindhind in astronomy.[9]

Muslim Sindhis tend to follow the Sunni Hanafi fiqh with a substantial minority being Shia Ithna 'ashariyah. Sufism has left a deep impact on Sindhi Muslims and this is visible through the numerous Sufi shrines which dot the landscape of Sindh.

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  Grand mausoleum of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai built by Mian Ghulam Shah Kalhoro on 1762.
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  Interior of the Shah Jahan Mosque, Thatta, built during the rule of the Mughal Empire.

Hinduism along with Buddhism was the predominant religion in Sindh before the Arab Islamic conquest.[10] While Buddhism declined and ultimately disappeared after Arab conquest mainly due to conversion of almost entire Buddhist population to Islam, Hinduism managed to survive through the Muslim rule until before the partition of India as a significant minority. Derryl Maclean explains what he calls "the persistence of Hinduism" on the basis of "the radical dissimilarity between the socioeconomic bases of Hinduism and Buddhism in Sind" : Buddhism in this region was mainly urban and mercantile while Hinduism was rural and non-mercantile, thus the Arabs, themselves urban and mercantile, attracted and converted the Buddhist classes, but for the rural and non-mercantile parts, only interested by the taxes, they promoted a more decentralized authority and appointed Brahmins for the task, who often just continued the roles they had in the previous Hindu rule.[10]

According to the 1998 census of Pakistan, Hindus constituted about 8% of the total population of Sindh province.[11] Most of them live in urban areas such as Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Mirpur Khas. Hyderabad is the largest centre of Sindhi Hindus in Pakistan, with 100,000–150,000 living there.[11] The ratio of Hindus was higher before the independence of Pakistan in 1947.[12]

Before 1947 however, other than a few Gujarati speaking Parsees (Zorastrians) living in Karachi, virtually all the inhabitants were Sindhis, whether Muslim or Hindu at the time of Pakistan's independence, 75% of the population were Muslims and almost all the remaining 25% were Hindus.[13]

Hindus in Sindh were concentrated in the cities before the creation of Pakistan in 1947, during which many migrated to India according to Ahmad Hassan Dani. Hindus were also spread over Sindh province. Thari (a dialect of Sindhi) is spoken in Sindh in Pakistan and Rajasthan in India.

The Cities and towns of Sindh were dominated by the Hindus. In 1941, for example, Hindus were 64% of the total urban population.[14]

The Sindhi diaspora emigrated from India and Pakistan is significant. Emigration from the Sindh began before and after the 19th century, with many Sindhis settling in Europe, United States and Canada with a large Sindhi population Middle Eastern states such as the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Muslim Sindhi tend to have traditional Muslim first names, sometimes with localized variations. Sindhi have castes according to their professions and ancestral locations.

Sindhi Hindus tend to have surnames that end in '-ani' (a variant of 'anshi', derived from the Sanskrit word 'ansha', which means 'descended from'). The first part of a Sindhi Hindu surname is usually derived from the name or location of an ancestor. In northern Sindh, surnames ending in 'ja' (meaning 'of') are also common. A person's surname would consist of the name of his or her native village, followed by 'ja'.