Sindhis began to unfold their future and the fortune of country by initiating small steps in terms of setting up of small shops in sheds.
Monitoring Desk
Sindhi, a community originated from Sindh province in Indo-Pakistan region, has been world famous for its art of business, typical lifestyle and food. Today there are approximately 40 million Sindhis on earth, which is less than 0.5% of the total population of the planet. However, Sindhis are the 6th richest community in world running more than 30% business in Indian subcontinent. Sindhis belong to one of the oldest civilization in the world and have inherited the characteristics of dynamism through ages and communities throughout the world. Due to their rich culture and business skills and the adaptability, the province of Sindh has witnessed several foreign invaders. The ruins of Harappa and Mohen-jo-Daro speak of the perishing of this finest community of people. The not so recent independence of India in 1947 was the last snare to the local inhabitance of this community leading to the scatter of Sindhis throughout the world during this period. While Punjabis got Punjab and Bengalis got Bengal as separate states, Sindhis were labelled as refugees and except for few pieces of lands and refugee camps, Sindhis were left in their destinies to craft the coming generations of fortune.
As the title of the article goes: À vaillant coeur rien d’impossible – To brave heart, nothing is impossible. Sindhis began to unfold their future and the fortune of country by initiating small steps in terms of setting up of small shops in sheds. The success mantra behind Sindhi business is “larger turnover at lower profits”. This has generated business conglomerates throughout the world from the same Sindhis who struggled for daily bread. The manner in which Sindhi refugees adapted and evolved bought them the praise and admiration of locals and the government. However, a significant fraction of Sindhis also took to new shores out of Indian subcontinent mostly rushing to Middle East, Africa, Spain in Europe and few to the Americas. Sindhis have based firmly and in strong communities Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The Forbes magazine of richest Indians in the world proudly includes multitude of Sindhis like the Hinduja brothers, Hirandanis, Vaswani group, Romi Wadhwani and many more. Sindhis have contributed to almost every field of society ranging from business (Hinduja’s, Wadhwani, Vaswani’s) to acting (Govinda, Rajiv Bhatia, Ranvir Singh) to medicines (founders of Jaslok, Hinduja hospitals), to internet (Sabeer Bhatia for Hotmail) to law and politics (Ram Jethmalani and Lal Krishna Advani) to scientific research (Sangeeta Bhatia, Harvard Professor). Sindhi’s have greatly contributed to spirituality – the great gift of India to the world in terms of producing many saintly preachers like Bhagat Kanwaram, Sadhu T L Vaswani, and Dada Vaswani. Slowly but steadily, Sindhis are also making their mark in diverse areas like sports (Pankaj Adwani, world champion of snooker and billiards) as well as fashion designing (Tarun Tahiliani). Overall Sindhis form 35% of the NRIs globally.
France, a country world renowned for its rich culture, beauty and romance is no exception to Sindhis for expansion, albeit in low numbers as compared to other countries like Spain and US. Many young Sindhis are now turning to France to pursue education in information technology, management, fundamental sciences, and commerce with entrepreneurship. Sindhis are now actively pursuing courses like International Business Management, Micro and Nanotechnologies, Cancer Biology at the renowned schools in France like Ecole Polytechnique, University of Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), University of Paris, Institute Curie, Ecole Normale Superiere, to name a few along with the business which they carry in their genes.
Gope Hathiramani, the richest Sindhi in France started a small shop at Rue de Rivoli in 1960s after migrating from Algeria. This shop run by a Sindhi India is recorded in the hall of fame of France. In May 1998, two American customers visited his shop and soon the shop was covered with police and high-level security, only to discover that one of the American customers was Hillary Clinton – who is set to make history in US in coming days. Similary, Mr. Bharat Mahtani came to France for education but decided to make his career in this land. Mahtani explores his rich expertise, the sweetness of Sindhi language, to run Language Associates, which trains young professionals with linguistic skills and readies them for the global talent making. Such and many other successful Sindhi stories are scattered in multiple regions of France.
Very quickly most Sindhis in France realized this lack of communication and now multiple small groups are working, thanks to the social media that many Sindhis are getting connected with each other in this country for upkeeping this rich culture. Jyoti Garin-Mahtani based in Marseille, runs a small network called Chatranjai in collaboration with Linguistic Institute, University of Paris to organize small workshops for Sindhi language awareness and promotion in France. Tarun Kalwani, a young and dynamic engineer in Boteco, Paris took the initiative to form a small community of Sindhis in Paris. Similarly, small groups of Sindhis are spread out in Nantes and Nancy. The present Sindhi community in France is small in number and scattered throughout the country. However, despite this, most Sindhis in the country know each other and meet periodically. Recent visit by Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi united most of the Sindhis in the country. Also, the latest initiative by government of India – Namaste France, is bringing various cultural programmes from India to France. There is good scope for Sindhis in France to reunite and make the cultural presentation the fine richness of this culture through these events and hopefully through GOPIO as well.
The main reason why Sindhis have flourished in every nuke and corner of the world is that Sindhis are extremely peaceful, hospitable, hardworking and open-minded people. They are free from inhibitions of caste and creed. Sindhis are the only Indians who don’t belong to any single state and simultaneously belong to all states of India. The cultural values of life in France and Sindhis do intersect at most places. As the famous French proverb goes: Il n’y a qu’un bonheur dans la vie, c’est d’aimer et d’être aimé – There is only one happiness in life – to love and to be loved. And the emergence of Sindhis from almost zero to the top notch of the human society is the best emblem for this.
It would also be a mistake to acknowledge the success of Sindhis without the sacrifice they made to establish themselves. The cost of this sacrifice is huge, while Sindhis managed to keep alive the community spirit to celebrate festivals, they also gradually lost the attention to preserve the language and dialect. A language is the gateway of culture and more than that it’s a gateway of knowledge. Without the preservation of language Sindhis’ cannot access the wealth of hidden treasures in the form of literature, poems, and spiritual thoughts which have been at the heart of Sindh and Indus Valley civilizations.
We witness that Sindhis have capacity to achieve material success after traversing all hurdles. Therefore, Sindhis should overcome this hurdle to retrace and preserve their roots by rediscovering the real essence of their culture, which imbibes the universal brotherhood and emphasizes on the quest of self-realization. This task is a difficult one and requires intergenerational collaboration and it could be only possible if every Sindhi can realize it innately and try to come up with solutions at individual, organizational and societal level to preserve and promote the fragrance of our culture.
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Courtesy: Gopio France
