The cosmopolitan and translocal nature of Sindhiness reveals itself not only through business and family practices, as well as linguistic skills and preferences, but also through the differentiation between home, homeland and place of residence. For
Indonesian Sindhis, regardless of their "roots and routes", Jakarta is seen as home. Meanwhile, India is referred to as homeland.
My respondents were very clear about the difference between homeland and home. India is homeland, cultural roots and heritage. It is "the cultural heart" of the global Sindhi community. Such attitude of Sindhis towards India is paradoxical not only because the land of Sindh was never a part of the present-day territory of India. It is quite contradictory due to the constant mixing of India as it is experienced with India of the imagination. For example, modern India is perceived as a place of commonsensical modernity where Sindhi women have more rights and freedoms than women in the Indonesian Sindhi community: "in Jakarta [Sindhi] people are so orthodox. Sindhis in India are so progressive. It's very interesting to compare. Here the community is so small. They still keep all these values" (Amrita, Indonesian Sindhi, third generation, personal communication, 22 Feb. 2013). At the same time, Sindhis send their children to Indian boarding schools and universities to introduce them to "traditional Indian values". Pre-wedding arrangements are almost unthinkable without several trips to India, where dowries and accessories are purchased. Yet Sindhi weddings resemble a scene from a Bollywood movie more than a traditional celebration from a particular region.
India is where Sindhis see themselves belonging, but in fact never fully do. During the trips to India (for family or business purposes) they know that they can blend with the crowd, something that never happens in Indonesia. But looking the same does not make them feel the same:
for me India is going back to my roots, not for me to stay. I lived there for two years. I felt like a foreigner there because it was a different lifestyle. Indian pace was crazy, Indonesia was a bit slower. They [Indians] don't play basketball and soccer but I do. So for me it was a bit different. They like to sing and dance. I do dance but I don't sing. Guys are very energetic there, they participate in every social event. I have a different pronunciation of "t" and "d" and my Hindi is pretty much from the films, not the slang of the streets. (Nagesh, Indonesian Sindhi, third generation, personal communication, 17 Apr., 2013)
I used this long excerpt from the interview because it clearly expresses the instances that form this feeling of foreignness, of not fitting in.
On the other hand, Indonesia is home. In the interviews, Jakarta was always mentioned as a place to return to after a long travel or years of studying or working abroad, a place that is safe, comfortable and familiar: "I'm very used to living in
Indonesia. I think I'm more Indian [than Indonesian]. But Indonesia is family, it's home" (Reena, Indonesian Sindhi, third generation, personal communication, 6 Mar. 2013). Another respondent talks about the meaning of Indonesia for her daughter in a very similar way:
my daughter is married to an Indian with the Australian nationality so she could easily become an Australian citizen but she has chosen not to. She doesn't feel the need—she still considers Indonesia home. (Sheeja, Indonesian Sindhi, second generation, personal communication, 22 Feb. 2013)
While in this comment the link between the political citizenship and home is quite obvious, this is not always the case. Sindhis who have their family (here spouse and children) and home in Indonesia, hold the citizenship of another country (most often Singapore, the UK, the USA or Australia) and feel culturally close to India, are rather a norm than an exception.
The main point here is that the presence of real and imaginary India in the everyday life of Jakartan Sindhis does not make them less connected to Indonesia. What closer connection can one develop with a place than to call it home? As global traders, after Partition Sindhis developed very different relationships with a number of localities across the world: there is the lost land of Sindh, the imagined cultural homeland of India, places all over the world where Sindhis decide to raise a family, which would be called home, and place of residence with economic and political conditions favourable for successful business development.
7. Conclusion
This chapter has shown how Jakartan Sindhis continue to reproduce themselves as a clearly defined ethocultural community. Sindhiness defines most aspects of
community and private life. Choices of schools and colleges, life partners and friends, careers and hobbies, dresses and hairstyle, wedding celebrations and family gatherings, are all guided by the desire to confirm membership in this well-connected and wealthy community.
This is not to say that the community remains static. There are constant changes triggered by reforms in India and Indonesia, as well as changes in global politics and economics. Higher education is no longer disregarded, either for boys, or for girls; professional experience gained in transnational corporations is welcomed and integrated into family businesses; women get more opportunities to express themselves outside the family; social networks go beyond the immediate Sindhi community and are more diversified; in many cases religious and pan-Indian identities start taking over the Sindhi identity. The loss of Sindhi language with each consequent generation seems to be irreversible, despite constant reminders of its importance for communal unity.
At the same time, all these changes take place in line with a number of social conventions. Business is the central activity of the community members. Social hierarchies within and outside the community are built and based on occupation, with the status of "employee" having little prestige among fellow Sindhis. The success in money-making serves as the main proof of one's personhood. Even beauty is often assessed in monetary terms. Language remains one of the main tools of sustaining the privileged position of Sindhis in Indonesian society—the loss of Sindhi language, a marker of difference and cultural superiority, is made up for increasing use of English and Hindi, the languages that also represent economic and cultural capital. Gender roles are defined in its relationship to business activities: to be a Sindhi man one needs to be in business, while to be true to one's feminine nature, a woman is expected to stay away from it. In other words, after more than fifty years of settlement in Indonesia,
Sindhiness is continuously reproduced by the community members as a distinct
ethnocultural identity of Indonesian Sindhis. In the next chapters I will explore how the features and practices that constitute the core of Sindhiness become intertwined with the processes of producing content for national television in Indonesia.