Sindhi Hindus were trading across Central Asia (Bukhara, Khiva) all the way to the Astrakhan Tatars in Russia for ages. They managed the finances of Khans, Emirs and were wealthier than the local Muslims.
The 1917 Russian revolution ended the long reigning Romanov dynasty, and with them the Emirs and Khans who were their vassals. Afghanistan and Xinjiang weren’t touched by the revolution at that point.
The Sindhi Hindus in Xinjiang were working as moneylenders. They traced their origin to Shikarpur, Sindh.
The city of Aksu fell on March 1933 where its Hindu and Chinese residents got slaughtered. Prior to that, the Uyghurs hated the Hindus and would start riots if they engaged in religious processions and slaughtered cows to offend them.
One of the prime reason for the massacre was that Uyghur women married non-Muslim men to get away from their oppressive men, some of who even sold their own children. This made them hate the Hindus even more. They were also jealous of the financial success of the Hindus.
The Sindhi men had Uyghur mistresses which hurt the pride of the Uyghur men. Uyghur men were also in heavy debt to the Hindus who were lending them the money. The humiliation made them loathe the Hindus.
The Uyghurs tortured, murdered and attacked all the non-Muslims they could, including the Hindus that they could without recrimination.
Sources:
“Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan” – M. Aurel Stein
“Xinjiang and the Expansion of Chinese Communist Power: Kashgar in the Early Twentieth Century” – Michael Dillon
“Mission and Revolution in Central Asia : The MCCS Mission Work in Eastern Turkestan 1892-1938” – John Hultvall
“The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama” – Claude Markovits
“Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia” – Andrew D. W. Forbes, LLC Forbes
“Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang” – Christian Tyler
“Community Matters in Xinjiang: 1880-1949 : Towards a Historical Anthropology of the Uyghur” – Ildikó Bellér-Hann
(This article has been compiled from tweet thread of @porbotialora)
EVEN NOW THERE IS NO CHANGE
Whenever and wherever there were Muslims, atricities followed in the wake. Indian history stands a grim testimony to this.
We did not know, until this news report, of the cruelties and barbarities of Uyghur Muslims. They butchered all non-Muslims— the Hindus and Chinese (who’ver left behind) both. Blinded by religious bigotry and jealous of prosperity of the Hindus, they waged genocide against the Sindh Hindus who got nowhere (not even mainland China) to flee. The Tatar Muslims, as the history says, were notorious of their atrocities. They used to invade foreign lands for plunder and enjoyed the brutal massacre of the vanquished people with unparallel barbarism. But now the table has turned. China is adopting strict control over these Uygur communities lest they breed terrorists with support from Afghanistan and Pakistani terror outfits.