SINDHI VOICES PROJECT: SHARING OUR STORIES
4 July 2011
Neena Makhija and Natasha Raheja report on the Sindhi Voices Project, a participatory media and oral history initiative which began operating formally in 2010 and is currently under their leadership. ‘The 1947 Partition of British India yielded one of the largest mass migrations of people in contemporary history.
The Sindh province, now located in Pakistan, experienced a huge efflux and influx of people and, like the rest of South Asia, continues to fall prey to conflict along the reductive ethnic and religious lines imposed and hardened in the hurried partitioning of the subcontinent. A widespread and systematic documentation of this ongoing shift amongst Sindhi communities has not been undertaken and dominant, collective memories of the past continue to have a stronghold over generations of Sindhis.
*Students at a school in Rajasthan, India listen to an interview during an oral history workshop.
The Sindhi Voices Project (SVP) foregrounds individual experiences of Sindhis from diverse class, gendered, geographic, and religious backgrounds through the usage of participatory media and oral history practices.
‘At present, we are focusing on listening to the voices of Sindhi elders with pre-partition memories whose stories are quickly leaving us. Committed to engaging and mobilizing communities in the production of their histories, we have developed an oral history interview field kit available in several languages. Our field kit is a step by step guide on how to conduct, record, and submit an interview to our collection. In addition to distributing this field kit amongst Sindhi communities across the globe, we are conducting oral history and audiovisual recording workshops for tenth to twelfth standard Sindhi students in India and Pakistan. Key challenges we are currently facing include the equal representation of Sindhis from different backgrounds and the reconciliation of oral history interview conventions with the task of interviewing being so widely democratized.
‘We plan to bring together all audio and video recordings of Sindhi life narratives both in the form of a publicly accessible, interactive online archive and the physical circulation of A performance of ‘Black Box’ based on oral history interviews. Students at a school in Rajasthan, India listen to an interview during an oral history workshop an artistic multimedia exhibit. As part of our commitment to extending community participation beyond the recording of oral histories, we will be integrating the narratives collected into a multimedia-based dialogue curriculum for Sindhi youth.
*Grandmother and granddaughter: sharing and listening to life’s stories in Rajasthan, India.
‘Lastly, as many of the oral histories illustrate the drawing of territorial maps and borders too often does not correspond to the complex ambiguity of lived realities. To further explore these intersections, we strive to situate our stories with collections from other communities that are also largely shaped by themes of movement and partitioning.’
Visit: www.sindhivoices.org or email: sindhivoicesproject@gmail.com
Source: International News Section of UK's Oral History Journal, Spring 2011, pp. 23-24
Number of Visits: 4716
The latest
Most visited
Loss of Memory in Pahlavi Prisons
In total, [I was in prison] about 6 years in two arrests. For the first time after several years, a soldier arranged my escape. I do not know why! Maybe he was one of the influential elements of Islamic groups. They took me to the hospital for the treatment of my hand, which was broken due to the callousness of an officer.Hajj Pilgrimage
I went on a Hajj pilgrimage in the early 1340s (1960s). At that time, few people from the army, gendarmerie and police went on a pilgrimage to the holy Mashhad and holy shrines in Iraq. It happened very rarely. After all, there were faithful people in the Iranian army who were committed to obeying the Islamic halal and haram rules in any situation, and they used to pray.A section of the memories of a freed Iranian prisoner; Mohsen Bakhshi
Programs of New Year HolidaysWithout blooming, without flowers, without greenery and without a table for Haft-sin , another spring has been arrived. Spring came to the camp without bringing freshness and the first days of New Year began in this camp. We were unaware of the plans that old friends had in this camp when Eid (New Year) came.
Attack on Halabcheh narrated
With wet saliva, we are having the lunch which that loving Isfahani man gave us from the back of his van when he said goodbye in the city entrance. Adaspolo [lentils with rice] with yoghurt! We were just started having it when the plane dives, we go down and shelter behind the runnel, and a few moments later, when the plane raises up, we also raise our heads, and while eating, we see the high sides ...
