“I Thought, Well, This Is a Sindhi Paada (Neighbourhood)!”: Hindu Sindhis and Diasporic Belonging in Hong Kong

This paper explores how Hong Kong became a meaningful and desirable node in the Hindu Sindhi diasporic network, and how older mercantile imaginaries frame contemporary forms of belonging in the ‘global city’. The Hindu Sindhi diaspora in Hong Kong has emerged through a range of mobilities and connections - sojourning for trade from the 1880s onwards, displacement from Sindh during the 1947 Partition, and more contemporary migrations for business, employment, and marriage. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic data, and archival sources, this paper explores how Hong Kong emerged as a ‘place of the future’, and as a ‘Sindhi place’ in this diasporic imaginary. Research for this paper was carried out from 2019-2021 - at a time when 'expatriate’ mobilities and futures in Hong Kong came into question alongside new ‘national security’ legislation, pro-democracy protests, and the Covid-19 pandemic. However, during this uncertain time, older mercantile imaginaries continued to shape the Sindhi diaspora’s ties to the city. An interlocutor who described Hong Kong as a ‘lit-up city’ and place of the ‘future’, also felt, on arriving at Hong Kong’s Wyndham Street in 1969, that they had arrived in a ‘Sindhi paada' (neighbourhood). Interlocutors often narrated local histories of such neighbourhoods to map diasporic change and belonging. They also expressed how a futural vision and promise of Hong Kong circulated in the wider Sindhi diasporic imaginary, and continues to mediate mobility and community here. Through such accounts, I suggest that diaspora nodes (like Hong Kong) emerge as ‘points of convergence’ - in space and time, where people, things, goods, and ideas collect; and as ‘points of articulation’ – for articulating and experiencing belonging, as well as orienting and facilitating movement and connections to elsewhere. This frames the ‘global city’ as a node within wider diasporic currents, mediating forms of belonging for such communities.