Sindh: Towards the Philology of a Place

If we examine the history of Sindh, in the southeast of Pakistan, as a discursive subject, three moments stand out: the 1830s–40s, when the British East India Company began and executed its colonial project of conquering Sindh (then romanized ‘Sind’ or ‘Scinde’) from its Talpur rulers; the 1920s–30s, when colonial archeology “discovered” Harappa, Moenjodaro and the Indus Valley civilization, giving birth to “Ancient Sind”; and the 1960s–70s, when the task of making central the history of Sindh to the history of Pakistan was undertaken as a nationalist project in Pakistan. In this short introduction to the special issue that follows, I want to sketch a few important themes that connect not only the research articles collected in this issue but their avatars and echoes in previous instances. An implicit aim of this issue is to illuminate new perspec-tives outside of colonial and postcolonial historiographies, myth-making and memory projects. and surveys Antiquities Historical Outline .