Sindh

Quelle: M. A. Mills / P. J. Claus / S. Diamond. Sindh. South Asian Folklore. An Encyclopedia. New York 2003, S. 556-560.

SINDH
One of the four provinces of Pakistan, Sindh includes the lower 350 miles of the Indus River valley, plus Kohistan, a mountainous region to the west of the river, and the Thar desert, also called Registan, to the east of the Indus delta. Prior to Partition in 1947, which created the states of India and Pakistan from the former British India, Muslim and Hindu groups intermingled in Sindh. With Partition and its accompanying violence, many Hindus emigrated to India, and Indian Muslim refugees (Muhājir) came to be a substantial, self-identifying ethnic group in Sindh and elsewhere in Pakistan. Meanwhile, regional Sindhi culture areas and some local populations were divided by the new state borders.
Archaeologically renowned as the primary locale of the Indus Valley civilization (second millennium B.C.E.), which flourished prior to the arrival of Indo-European language speakers in the subcontinent, Sindh is seen by its cholars as the inheritor of this great civilizations as far afield as the Mesopotamian cities (for example, Tell Asmar) by 2000 B.C.E. Significant research includes efforts to trace connections of current customs and beliefs, folk art motifs, architectural features, and other traditionals institutions with archaeologically revealed ancient roots. These claims to authenticity and cultural continuity are pursued with full acknowledgement of a complex succession of cultural and political influences in the region: “pre-Indus Valley” (exemplified by Bronze-Age Nal pottery styles, 3500-2500 B.C.E.), Indus Valley or Harappan, “Aryan” (including Hellenistic Greek, Persian, and Indo-European language-speaking Central Asians), “Arab” (after Muslim conquest of Sind in 721 C.E.), “Mongol” (Mughal as they became in India, with Delhi as their capital), plus Baloch in the fifteenth or sixteenth century C.E., and Pashtun thereafter.
In a region hitherto startling for the range and abundance of its verbal art and material culture productions, another common thread in writings on the region in the mid- to late twentieth century is concern for the survival of verbal art traditions and certain highly demanding crafts in competition with mass manufactured items and mass media entertainment (film, then video and satellite TV).