Most days, the pressing issues on the forefront of my mind are simple questions: What is the deadline for my current report/project?  What will we eat for dinner tonight?  Are my kids dressed warmly enough for the weather?  But once in a while, a seemingly minor item can trigger a series of introspections, or musings, like the ones you find below.

On a recent trip to India, I remember driving to a nearby market in Mumbai.  At a stop light, I was struck by a huge banner that read “Cheti Chand Jo Melo, Sunday 30 March”.  I was amazed to see such a large banner for a Sindhi mela.  My relatives laughed at my reaction, and said “Over here, Sindhis are thriving, not like in your part of the world”.  This statement really got me thinking about Sindhis, particularly diasporic Sindhis like myself.  Are we thriving?  If not, why not?  And what should/can we be doing differently?

Parenthood is a funny thing.  Of course, it is endlessly exciting and challenging.  But along with the excitement and challenge, parenthood imbues a sense of responsibility as well.  As Aristotle phrased it, one of the key functions of family is the “moral upbringing of children”.  New parents quickly become conscious of the need to give their children a sense of heritage and culture, all of a sudden wishing they had paid better attention when their parents tried to do the same.  For Sindhis, the need to share our culture feels even more pronounced, as there are so few of us, and many of us feel a protective instinct toward our little community.  But when we neither speak nor understand more than a basic amount of Sindhi ourselves, is it even fair to expect that our children will engage in “Sindhiness” in any real way? 

My thoughts inevitably turn to the various examples of the “Sindhi family” that exist in my generation.  There is my own, in which I, the female, am Sindhi, but my spouse is not.  Of course, there is the example where both partners are Sindhi, and the third, in which the man is Sindhi and the woman is not (to be fair, I speak of heterosexual families, as I have no experience with same-sex Sindhi families).  Interestingly, these 3 family shapes have very different attitudes toward the role of “Sindhiness” in their lives.

As a Sindhi woman, I am very keen to create an environment in which my children can participate in Sindhi culture.  However, I am mindful of the fact that a connection to Indian culture is important, and, practically speaking, it need not be Sindhi per se.  With a non-Sindhi spouse, I am more aware during each festival of which rituals represent my heritage, and which those of my spouse.  While it is important to me to pass on Sindhi traditions to my children, I also seek to ensure that my spouse’s traditions are represented as well. 

In conversations with a friend who is non-Sindhi but has married into the community, she has told me that it is very important to her that her children are raised with a Sindhi identity.  To achieve this, she takes great pains to learn about traditions and culture, and tries to create opportunities for her children to connect with both the community and history.  But is it enough to feed our children sai bhaji and daal pakwan?  What can we do to ignite a sense of culture in a tangible way? 

I wonder about the family with two Sindhi parents.  Is their job easier?  I am told that they feel they don’t need to try as hard, in terms of cultural transmission, are they really at an advantage?  What if neither speaks the language?  What is it that they do in their everyday life that is identifiably Sindhi?  Is it enough to let the notion of “Sindhi” be an undercurrent?  Or do they have to work as hard, and be as aware, of the place of Sindhi tradition in their lives?

Inevitably, the way in which one transmits their culture to a subsequent generation is determined by how they themselves received it (or whether they paid attention).  For me, the concept of “Sindhiness” is primarily religious- the particular manner in which we pray.  Of course, for others it may be more cultural or linguistic, focused more on the food eaten or the histories shared.  What I remember is that for our parents, particularly the former “Noori Satsang children”, it was not sufficient to let “Sindhiness” be in the background- they worked hard to make it part of our lived reality.  Most Noori children can recite a Sindhi prayer or sing a Sindhi song, whether or not they realize it to be one. 

I would love for my children to be proud Sindhis.  But, in the balance, it is more important to me that they be proud Canadians. When my children giggle as they hit their teeth with coins on Diwali, I realize that the custom they are learning is Sindhi.  When the first prayer I teach my children is the Japji Sahib, as my parents taught me, I know that being Sindhi has influenced that choice.  And when I hear my son refer to every church, temple or mosque as a Gurmandir, I am reminded that there is a part of him that has begun to identify with the heritage I am teaching him.  For now, perhaps an undercurrent of “Sindhi” will suffice.  Ultimately, what they adopt, and what gets passed on to future generations, is in my, and our own hands.