Sindhi Boli Otaak

After India was partitioned in 1947, a large number of Hindu Sindhis had to leave their homeland in Sindh which became part of Pakistan. Most of these Sindhis chose to stay in independent India but were not able to settle in one place as they were not allocated a separate state or region. However, a small piece of land was given to Sindhis in Kutch, Gujarat. Courageous and resourceful Sindhis built a thriving city in desert of Kutch. This is their story and story of Gandhidham-Adipur, Kutch. Mohan Gehani's book can be downloaded from his site https://mohangehani.com/history/desertland-to-homeland-by-mohan-gehani/
Watch the episode on Youtube  https://youtu.be/DV64hwiCPIY

Dr. Dharam Ramnani is a board-certified anatomic and clinical pathologist in private practice since 1999 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. He received his MBBS degree from Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, India, and MS (Biological Sciences) from The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. He completed pathology residency and surgical pathology fellowship from Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, and urologic pathology fellowship from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, before settling down in Richmond. Dr. Ramnani has been passionate about photographing human cancers from the early days of his residency training. He has collected several hundred thousand images which he hopes to share with a world-wide audience on this site. Dr Dharmani's online archive of images of cancer slides

In this episode we meet young budding Sindhi scholar Vandana Govindani. She is currently doing PhD at Indian Institute of Technology Indore. Born in a small town of central India, Vandana's initial educational journey and early life is discussed and how that leads to her decision to do research on Sindhi language and culture. She is also trying to digitise Sindhi rare books. Full of insights into a young persons educational and professional choices. Many shaping moments are discussed with a message for Sindhi parents and youngsters. You can read Vandana's research article here  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380203073_Sindhi_literature_in_post-partition_India_marginalization_challenges_and_digital_interventions

In this episode we meet young budding Sindhi scholar Vandana Govindani. She is currently doing PhD at Indian Institute of Technology Indore. Born in a small town of central India, Vandana's initial educational journey and early life is discussed and how that leads to her decision to do research on Sindhi language and culture. She is also trying to digitise Sindhi rare books. Full of insights into a young persons educational and professional choices. Many shaping moments are discussed with a message for Sindhi parents and youngsters. You can read Vandana's research article here 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380203073_Sindhi_literature_in_post-partition_India_marginalization_challenges_and_digital_interventions

In this episode we meet young budding Sindhi scholar Vandana Govindani. She is currently doing PhD at Indian Institute of Technology Indore. Born in a small town of central India, Vandana's initial educational journey and early life is discussed and how that leads to her decision to do research on Sindhi language and culture. She is also trying to digitise Sindhi rare books. Full of insights into a young persons educational and professional choices. Many shaping moments are discussed with a message for Sindhi parents and youngsters.

You can read Vandana's research article here 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380203073_Sindhi_literature_in_post-partition_India_marginalization_challenges_and_digital_interventions

This is first online Sindhi Reading Session series. In this series Sindhi stories, poems and other literary creations like proverbs, idioms are read. In the first session we read a poem by Meena Sharma and a story by Dr. Hundraj Balwani.

In this conversation with Mr. Mohan Gehani, we talk about Sindhi language, culture, trends in scripts used for Sindhi language. Multiple scripts have been used for Sindhi language such as Arabic, Devnagiri, Gurmukhi and Hatwanki. Lately English/Roman script is also getting promoted. We discussed how Hatwanki was used by Sindhi merchants as coded language.


You can find more information about Mr. Gehani at www.mohangehani.com A particular essay on Sindhi language referred in the podcast is on page 59 of book titled A Gateway to Sindhi Literature by Mr Gehani accessible from his website https://mohangehani.com/essays/a-gateway-to-sindhi-literature-by-mohan-gehani/

Jawaharlal Nehru's quote in Chapter 4 of the above book (p.59): "A change in the script is a very vital change for any language with a rich past, for the script is the most intimate part of its literature. Change the script and a different word and picture arises, different sounds and different ideas- an almost instrumental barrier is put between the old literature and the new and and it becomes a foreign language that is dead."

Nineteenth century Swiss linguist Ferdinand de-Saussure mentioned in the podcast. More about him can be found here https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-de-Saussure

Sindhi Scholars mentioned in podcast include Dr. Sandhya Kundnani, Hari Dilgir, Professor Khubchandani, Dr Satish Rohra, Dr Parso Gidwani, Sahib Bijani and others.

This is Ghazal by famous Sindhi poet Narayan Shyam.

In this conversation we talk to Dr. Harish Poptani who is Professor and Chair of the Centre for preclinical Imaging at the University of Liverpool since Dec 2014. Before that he did research as post doctoral scientist in Finland and the USA where was Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, USA from 1997-2014. He did his Higher education - BSc - PhD - Lucknow, India 1985- 1995 and basic education - Kanpur, Ranchi, Patna. Born to a Sindhi family in Devlali Camp (near Nasik), can speak Sindhi fluently. Besides professional activities, am quite active with the UK Hindi Association, based in London, towards teaching Hindi (reading, writing and speaking) to first and second generation Indians. We talked about his inspiration, upbringing and interest educational and professional journey. His three messages for young people as well as his humble service to humanity motivation are worth listening. He is a brain scientist. His research area is MRI imaging and its use to support brain cancer treatment.