Partitions begins with an invocation of the Partition of 1947 – the departure of the Crown from Colony, of Pakistan from British India, of Hindus and Sikhs from the new dominion of Pakistan, of Muslims from the new dominion of India. Sindh, a region with its unique tradition of shared sacred spaces and syncretic practices between the devotional Hindu and Islamic traditions, also sees its Hindu population departing the newly raised borders of Pakistan. Long and far journeys are not new to the Sindhi population. With its riverine landscape and bustling port, Sindhis have long established commercial and familial networks around the world. In Asia, Sindhi families extend across Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Kinship, marriage, and business dealings thus animate most of the trade and migration between these countries and the homeland. With the partition of the subcontinent, these old lines see many new departures from Sindh, but few returns.

The route to Singapore is one such line, well-forged over the years of empire-enabled mobility of goods and people between the two ports. Yet it does not stand alone. Migration is never about a singular journey. As Gunwanti recounts in Partitions, her journey from Sindh brought her first to Madurai, then Madras, before her eventual move to Singapore. Importantly, as it is characteristic of diasporic migration, it was extant familial contacts that sanctioned the journey. She first goes to Madurai to meet with her two elder sisters who have married there. She then travels to Singapore because contacts 'in Changi' vouched for her prospective groom.

It is this established community of Sindhis in Singapore that sets in motion the nexus of opportunity, aid, and trust that enables further migrations. We see this also in the fact that the then Sindhi Merchants Association (now renamed Singapore Sindhi Association) established premises at Enggor Street in 1938 with the expressed intent to 'provide Sindhi travellers in transit with comfortable boarding facilities'.[1] These facilities were expanded to Katong particularly to accommodate the large influx of Sindhis displaced by Partition,[2] a move that would account for the concentration of Sindhi families in that neighbourhood. As we see with the commingling of images of Hindu deities and Guru Nanak (the first Guru of Sikhism) in Partitions, the Katong neighbourhood too witnesses the syncretic nature of Sindhi religious practice particularly with the attendance of many Sindhi Hindus at Gurdwara Sri Guru Nanak Sat Sang Sabha.

Partitions conjures the unreturned departure with its opening sequence of citizenship documents and passports spliced with family photographs. Documents – a certificate of registration for Singapore citizenship, a spousal entry permit, a cancelled Indian passport issued in Madras and a certificate of Singaporean citizenship – trace the act of migrations on paper. Papers attest to and make visible the individual’s journey to a distant authority like the state. Family photographs trace migrations of flesh and blood, attesting to the journey of generations and people beyond those pictured.

Following Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes insists on the photograph’s connection to life: