Discovering Sindh's Past

Book excerpt: This collection of thirteen articles from the Journal of the Sind Historical Society concentrates on precolonial and colonial Sind. These articles reveal much about Sindh's past and historically showcase the region's broad socio-cultural spectrum. Scholarship frequently overlooks the subjects and people in this collection. In part, this oversight is due to so few libraries (both in Pakistan and around the world) having copies of the Journal of the Sind Historical Society. There are no reprints of these articles in any other book, nor has anyone reprinted them in their entirety since the 1930s and 1940s. The articles in this book not only deepen knowledge about Sindh but also the history of Pakistan and the diversity of its people. They represent, like most research printed in the Journal of the Sind Historical Society, "forgotten" chapters in both Sindhi and Pakistani history. These chapters celebrate Pakistan's socio-cultural diversity and point toward how the histories of region and nation should be intertwined.