Sindh Under Pakistan
We have described, above the people s expectations from n, and how it turned out to be only a base for the Muhajir-Punjabi Raj, and became a prison-house for rent nations that unwaveringly walked into it.
We will discuss in this chapter briefly what Sindh has suffered under Pakistan, and will see the causes of the Sindhi disenchantment with it after they participated so glee fully in its establishment.
Shah Abdul Latif, the great poet of Sindhi language has an immortal line on this type of human experience where disappointment with a thing attained is as complete as the exuberance and winders involved in the pursuit of it; "Oh, credulous one! What you took to be the Jewel proved to be a worthless stone. The flower garland you took to round your neck, was only a band of prickly thorns." has exactly proved to be the state of affairs with us in our entire body is covered with sores what ointment to apply and where, for healing these sores, is our dilemma. Would that there be a human soul sensitive enough to listen to the sad account of our plight and join with us in lamenting our lot, if only to lighten the burden of our hearts beats! The story of our suffering is not meant for oppressors, exploiters and imperialists anywhere inside Pakistan or outside. It is also not meant for the mulish ears of the self seeking and sold out Sindhi Politicians, who have no where to go but to their masters, flattering and begging for help and power, nay power, nay for the very permission to breathe and live.
(1) The cruelest of excesses perpetrated on the Sindhi people after the establishment of Pakistan, is the denial of their separate national existence as a people, which they enjoyed for thousands of years of their history. The Muhajir-Punjabi ruling classes and their Sindhi agents say that there is no nation like the Sindhi nation and that to call them so is a penal offence calling for punishment under law. Pakistan be damned and its ruling classes and their agents go the devil, who say so. They have not only deprived the people of Sindh, of their right to freedom, and having enslaved them misappropriated their means of production, fully to their own use, but are engaged in so affecting their mind that they should grow oblivious of their state of slavery, cease protesting against it and even begin cherishing it. This conversion of mind they intend to bring about in the Sindhi people by denying their separate national existence ignoring their thousands of years old culture, traditions, language and economic and political interests and by substituting spurious exercise of mind on a malafide deviationist interpretation of Islam. But the patriotic Sindhi mind, with a sense of pride of nation-hood will never accept this grafting of foreign intellectual stuff on it. During its history, Sindh has been invaded and conquered several times by foreign aggressors, but never has it been imposed upon so wickedly as this time. The Arab expansionists, through the means of religion made their impression almost on the entire life of the Sindhi people. Great many words of their language entered the Sindhi vocabulary. The very script of the Sindhi language was changed. Several of the indigenous tribes were lured to give up their original names and adopted Arabic names. Proper names of persons in many cases were replaced with Arab names. Some of the people were even tempted by the prestige attaching to the ruler class to trace their genealogy to Arab. All these things some of the Sindhi people of weaker clay, adopted in face of strong traditions to the country in the name of Allah and His Prophet. At the same time to begin with when the land was conquered by Arab Army under Muhammad Bin Qassim, and the people saw the royal ladies from the households of their defeated Rajas as also the thousands of young innocent girls from the commoners, caught and taken away to the slave markets of Arab lands and also gold worth nearly 20 crores of rupees of the then prevalent value from Sindh Treasury looted and removed to the Darbar of their Khalifa at Damascus, apart from other untold quantities of goods and amounts of wealth gathered as war booty and distributed among the predatory troops of the conquering army when the people saw all this greed and bestiality of the Muslim Arms in actual play before their very eyes, they stood amazed, hardly able to reconcile in all with the sacred name of Allah and His Rasool which also went on simultaneously being raised with equal vigor and zest in that strongest of the strange world.
The ancestors of many of us arrived in Sindh from that world. They started over awing the poor and simple people and weak dwellers of the land by their assumed airs of religious, social and cultural superiorities. Slowly and gradually the mind of the simple, defenseless people was molded and they started accepting the change and even approving and welcoming it. Every windbag from outside was an oracle in Sindh. But this period of feeling inferior before the outsider soon came to an end. The outsiders married in the local families. These ladies, our mothers and sisters, kept their links with their traditions and culture so strong and so alive that instead of giving their children Arabian names, they gave them their Sindhian names and spoke with them in Sindhi. They stuck to, their indigenous customs on occasions of marriage, birth, death, etc, maintained their all attachment with their costumes, ornaments, food preparations, house-hold apparel and furnishings and hundreds of such things of daily living which constitute the warp and woof of a national culture. Thus the Sindhian way of life not only survived but took firm roots in the families raised by out-siders in Sindh because of the built - in strength and resilience inherent in the Sindhi culture.
The two leading families of Sayeds in Sindh are known as the Lakyari and Matiari Sadats. The ancestor of the Lakyari Sadats, Sayed Ali, arrived in Sindh straight from Arabia. The names received by his two sons from their Sindhi mothers in Sindh were Wagon (Song-birth) and Chango (the Good one!) They in their turn gave their children Sindhi names of Parpio (the victorious). Boolan (dear as the nose-ring) Nindo; Bakhar (the shining one) etc. Among the Matiari Sadats we come across the first names like Jhando (The Flag), Jeeyo (lives long), Toorpio (Begets many children) Chhattan (wearer of fine hair) Nathan (the skillful) etc. The Sommras and Samma tribes later adopted the religion of Islam but retained their original names for their children e.g. Chanesar, Dodo, Bhuongar, Tamachi, Nindo, Punhoon, Koran, An, Baghi, Chattul, Ladi, Marvi, Sasui, Sohuni, etc.
Shortly later however known, the Sindhi people drove away the Arab occupation forces and set up their own independent rulership in the country. Then followed incursion of foreign horde s armies into Sindh - the Pathans, the Tarkhans, the Mughals and the British with varied consequences of triumphs and defeats for its people, affecting its political fortunes in a variety of way s. Every occupying people left their cultural traces on the language and culture of Sindh. None of these foreign peoples, who invaded conquered and ruled Sindh for certain periods of its history, ever denied the distinct national entity of the Sindhi people. No written history of any period of its life, and any language, has denied the separate national existence of Sindh and the Sindhi people either.
As against this, in the present period of their history, that has set in as late as August, 1947. The Sindhi people are being asked to forget that they are Sindhis, and to transform themselves into a new nation which has neither a name nor a language which it may call its own. Is this illusory nation to be called Muslim nation a Pakistani nation, they are not yet decided in it. And Urdu being the language of none of the people in Pakistan except of some 20 % of its population, the Urdu speaking immigrants from India, it can only be the foreign language for this new nation whatever be its blessed name! There can be no greater atrocity of fact or fiction, history or culture than the one involved in this exercise at manufacturing an illusory nation on the one hand and nullifying several other historically established and very much living and flourishing nations on the other.
(2) The second cruel excess which is being perpetuated on the Sindhi people is the denial and defacement of Sindhu Desh which historically and geographically has, for centuries past, remained a distinct and separate country and its forced merger as a mere part, in an artificially created country like Pakistan. The Sindhis do not accept this position. They, on the contrary hate Pakistan and reject it as only an artifice, a frame, work specially devised for their enslavement and for the enslavement of other smaller nations, the Baluchis and the Pakhtoons, which have been similarly merged by force in it.
The Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests first merged Sindh into one-Unit in a huff and tried to efface the name of Sindh from every where-the railway stations, the postal stamps, the textbooks (including ones on Geography and History) the milestones, and road posts etc. But soon they saw that by mere effacement of the name in scripts, Sindh as a reality cannot be conjured away. They, therefore, with equal alacrity, dissolved one-Unit, arid restoring Sindh only in name as a Province, imposed it in the iron frame work of the strong Center, and having seated a Sindhi show-boy on the top of the frame-work, have started exploiting Sindh securely and systematically as if it was their ancestral Jagir.
The Sindhi people have tried various means to mend this situation. They have tried all arguments with the Muhajir
Punjabi Vested Interests to see reason. But, in the words of Holy Qura'an "deaf of hearing and blind of sight, they would not understand". They ride roughshod, power-inflated as they are, over every legitimate desire and sentiment of the weaker peoples in Pakistan. The Sindhi people have now reached the conviction that the situation has to be ended, and there remains no way out for them except blasting the ramparts of the fortifications of tyranny and fraud that is Pakistan, and raise the walls of Sindhu Desh on the ruins of it, to live in security and with honor as a people in their own felicitous and free homeland.
(3) The Muhajir and Punjabi immigrants deceive us in the name of Muslim brotherhood. But, actually, they hate their Sindhis Muslim brethren, and treat them only as achhuts (Untouchables). They say, "Sindhis were ignorant people and we have enlightened and reformed them" (daily "JUNG"); "Sindhis were. slaves of Hindus, we have freed them from slavery ("Daily "Jung"), Sindhis had no knowledge of Islam, we have taught it to them" (Maulana Maudoodi).. "The Sindhi culture is that of donkey-cart and Camel-cart drivers" (Liaquat Ali Khan), "Sindhis is the language of the illiterate and uneducated" (Liaquat Ah Khan), As against this, they have high airs about themselves such that, in the words of Allama Iqbal, "God himself first consults them and then manages his affairs! Sindhis however, now know that these "chosen people of God" are nothing but disgusting blasphemers. They are predators par excellence and utilize the name of God and Islam only as a ruse to rob people. They are the enemies of the Sindhi people. As long as they are not ejected from Sindh, neither Sindh nor the Sindhi people will remain safe.
(4) The Muhajir-Punjabi Axis in Pakistan started ruling their subject peoples in Pakistan by creating internal disorders and divisions among them, and whittling down their provincial autonomy to farcical limits. To begin with, even though Khuhro commanded majority in the Sindh Assembly, Mr. Jinnah over-riding his claim made Sir Ghulam Hussain the Chief-Minister of Sindh. Shortly afterwards, the latter was pushed up as Governor and Khuhro was rehabilitated to his rightful place. But soon he was sent to jail, and Pir Illahi Bux, the rank opportunist was brought in. On his dismissal as member of the Assembly by Election Tribunal, Pir Illahi Bux went out and in came Yousif Haroon. A little time later Kazi Fazul-ullah replaced Yousif Haroon. Once again Khuhro was called in, and then expelling him from politics, Sindh was thrown under Governor Raj, the Governor being the hardcore Punjabi Mr. Din Mohammed. The yes-men Mir. Ghulam Ali was then ushered in, but getting displeased with him, they withdrew him and brought in Abdul Sattar Pirzada, permitting him the luxury of 12 ministers. The funny drama has been described earlier in some details. It was all en-acted during a short period of eight years, from August 1974 to 1955.
To the misfortune of the gentlemen ushers of the Muhajir-Punjabi, court, the last choice of theirs, i.e. Mr. Abdul Sattar Pirzada, proved to be the most inconvenient and provoking of all for their masters. It was under his Chief Ministership in Sindh that.
The Sindh Legislative Assembly, through a unanimous 7 resolution, demanded restitution of the city of Karachi to the province of Sindh.
The Sindh Legislative Assembly, by a unanimous resolution, protested against discrimination in recruitment to services under Central Government, in grant of permits for installation of factories, and in issue of licenses for import and export against the Sindhi people.
The Sindh Legislative Assembly adopted, with minor amendments, a resolution solemnly declaring Sindhis a distinct people with basic and inalienable national rights.
The Sindh Legislative Assembly through an act established The Sindh Cultural Development Board, with the Sindhi Board, the Sindh Provincial library and Museum, and Shah Abdul Latif Cultural Center at its three departments, and sanctioned an amount of 40 Lac rupees as initial funds for that Board to finance its activities.
The construction work for the two barrages on river Indus in Sindh at kotri and guddu, was expedited, with a view to forestall intersection and diversion of heavy intakes of Indus water by Punjab Government.
The Government of Sindh showed unreadiness to succumb to the pressure of the Central Government for grant of the agricultural lands on Sindh barrage to the military personnel and others from Punjab and outside.
Pirzada Abdul Sattar himself as representative of Sindh on the Pakistan Constitutional Assembly, joining hands with the Bengali members managed to have appropriate clauses incorporated in the proposed constitution of Pakistan which on one hand granted a great measure of autonomy to provinces and slashed down powers of the hard-core Punjabi Governor General, Ghulam Mohammed, to interfere in the internal affairs of the Province, on the other.
All these doings of the Pirzada ministry of the Government of Sindh infuriated the Muhajir-Punjabi Imperialists beyond measure. By this time, the Punjabi ruling clique, after the assassination of Liaquat Ah Khan, had succeeded in establishing their controlling influences on State Administration. They now hatched their notorious One-Unit Plan for gaining total control over the economic resources of smaller provinces in West Pakistan, and asked Pirzada Abdul Sattar to agree to Sindh s merger in the Plan, which he, after consulting his colleagues in the Sindh Cabinet and the Legislative Assembly, declined to do. Mr. Khuhro, who at the time was under expulsion from public life for six years and was not even a member of the Sindh Legislative Assembly was called in and he, for his own reasons, agreed to collaborate. During the period of administration under One-Unit what Sindh suffered has already been briefly touched at several places in this book, and need not be repeated here. There is however, one touching incident of which the writer was a personal witness at Lahore, the Takht-Gah of the newly established Punjabi "Kingdom" in Pakistan which may appropriately be described here as symbolic of the plight Sindh and the Sindhi people had reached under One-Unit.
One-day while I was standing on the broad steps leading to the Punjab Assembly Hall in Lahore, I saw an old Sindhi woman, clad in rural attire, with a child in her lap and a bundle of clothes on her head, standing at some distance from the Assembly Hall on the road. She had evidently brought some grievances to be submitted to the power that be in Lahore. No one had remained in Sindh to listen to her. She was probably advised that on the days when the Assembly met, she could personally see the Sindhi members and visitors outside the hall in Lahore. And she had come all the way from her distant village in Sindh to the land of the Hakims to tell her tale of woes. But the police had stopped her at a distance, and she was not being allowed to come near the steps of the hall. No member and no minister took notice of her, and she stood there, a symbol of our neglected, helpless Sindhu mata weak; frustrated and lonely. I satin a corner on the steps and wept.
The sad incident recalled to me what my friend Ali Muhammad Shah Rashdi had told me at the time of our defeat elections eve of the establishment of Pakistan. We, a small band of Sindhi nationalists had stood up alone to the joint stolidity of Sindhi officers, Zamindar and intellectuals dragging Sindh, under inspiration from Jinnah, the arch traitor to Sindh, and pushing it under the wheels of the one-rushing Juggernaut of the Muhajir-Punjabi Raj camouflaged under highly attractive name of Pakistan but they had not listened to us. There was hardly any time for any body to en to reason and the game was already lost. Rashdi had said Mian Murtza, most of the big men in Sindh have their sense of shame. To make them understand the situation by arguments or an appeal was useless. The only way rouse their sensitivity is to subject them to a calamity they would only then know what suffering is and realize the pain of it".
But I was not in favor of that kind of ruinous shock Rashdi too, some time later, therefore left us, and stepped forward to compound his Prescription and pour it down the throat of his patient . He helped bind Sindh hand and foot and threw it down to the ground into One-Unit. Seeing his masterful role in this sordid affair of One-Unit formation, I also recalled the words of one of his earlier writings produced by him at the time when we were jointly engaged in almost the last minute struggle to save Sindh from being driven under the wheels of the juggernaut this is what he had written then:
"All This high handedness is being inflicted on Sindh in the name of the Unity of Musalmans, and behind the smoke screen of struggle for Pakistan as if it is the command of Islam that in its name we may establish organizations precisely for using them as bases for wrong doing. Under this scheme of (Pakistan) Islam itself is being used as a hiding place for thieves. If Pakistan is a good thing, it cannot be built through evil means. So far as Sindh is concerned, the scheme of Pakistan is only a pyre for burning Sindh as a sacrifice to the devil of hate. In Pakistan we will have to forget all our past, and give up all aspirations for our future growth and development. We will have to destroy our national being. Alien people will impose on us constitutions as suits their needs and desires. They will utilize all the means of production of Sindh for their interests. Sindh shall become the colony of Punjab." On one occasion, during those days, Allama 1.1. Kazi said:
"Pakistan will not be a place of refuge. It may prove to be graveyard. It cannot be a health resort for the ailing Musalmans. It will have no drugs and lineaments for turning him healthy. It may prove to be his death chamber, where he may breathe his last without saying his last Kalma. Through the false ideology of Pakistan and through the organized movement for it, the entire program of life as shown by holy Qura'an, is being negativised and contradicted."
But no body then listened to any precept on the matter. One of the two friends of Sindh, despairing of the inexpiable lethargy of the Sindhi people, said his heroic goodbye to life, with prayers for the good of his beloved Sindh on his lips.
The other friend, in approbative vindictiveness has entered the camp of the enemies of Sindh and is reimbursing all concerned for the debts they owe Sindh, by his machiavellian politics. I, on my own part with my young comrades have to tread along the steep path of the struggle for the freedom of Sindhu Desh as our national duty imposed on us by history. Along-with the foes on the way, we have many to engage in fatal combats, who could be our helpmates if they wished but are in the enemy camp for the time. I often hear the echo of the words of our young poet, Mohammed Ibrahim "Munshi".
"I surely recognized them, they were our own, with the enemy they assaulted us in hands
"To the enemy they showed the way to our base
"Since they knew where we sat unawares".
(5) The One-Unit scheme launched by the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis with the fondest of hopes of providing stability and efficiency to their exploitative machinery in Pakistan soon started floundering. Only two years after it was launched, they could not maintain it except through Martial Law, which they imposed on the country on October 9, 1958. Once again they rounded up all nationalist workers in Sindh including the writer and Kazi Faiz Muhammad, Ghulam Muhammad Leghari, Shaikh Ayaz, Hyder Bux Jatoi and others. All nationalist Literature which was published before the establishment of Pakistan or subsequently was proscribed, Public Press was put under control, and judiciary was intimidated into submission. All democratic freedoms were withdrawn and basic human rights suppressed. The leadership of Muhajir-Punjabi Vested interests withdrew into the background and put General Muhammad Ayoub Khan in the forefront as their show-boy , and carried on their rule under the umbrella of the army with the help of black laws promulgated through Ordinances.
During his ten years dictatorship, general Ayoub visited various parts of Sindh annually, scouring district after district in pursuit of game. The top-men in each district vied with one another amounts of money were wasted on the hunting parties. Hundreds and thousands of men, officials and non-officials were called to make arrangements on each of the occasions at every place to render week ends as successful a the whole of Sindh became big hunting ground for full ten years not only for the General but in the matter of hogs partridges ducks stages etc. But for every exploiter, big or small, slinking and scurrying behind him and snapping at every thing which came his way to fill his pot-bally with. The Sindhi people went on being robbed of their lands services, trade, and business opportunities, education, culture, human dignity and all, while their Pirs, Makhdooms, mirs and Vaderas continued feeding and faltering general Ayoub khan and playing clowns and huntsmen to him at his drink parties and shooting fiestas.
The Ayubian period of the Pakistan was the period of Rule by might. Imitating hitlerite methods, all political parties except the Muslim league had been either banned or rendered lifeless. The ruling party served as the hand maiden of the dictator ruthless efforts were set afoot to flatten all peoples in Pakistan by passing Islam s steam roller over them, and render all "unevenness" of language, traditions, culture etc: among them into a deal uniformity. But since there was an implacable steel coating of uneven-ness evens the roller itself, the object could not be achieved. The - roller, all the same, went on turning, under the self-adulating slogans of Islam, Muslim nation, Pakistan, Urdu etc. depriving the smaller peoples of very right to exist in security and peace.
The drivers of roller blind of sight and stagy in approach did not realize that the minds of men were not made of clay or metals, which could be driven through a mould and shaped arbitrarily in a set form and size. Had it been so, all this variety of nations, language countries, faces and colors would not have come up in the world. This richness of difference in things around is not without purpose. Nature, in its infinite potency for good, has assigned to every bit of differing color, shape size or inner content, a use, which is both special and necessary. There are yet, certain insensible minds, who being unintelligent and tyrannous minds, would insist on reducing this many-sided splendor of nature into a gloomy sameness. This, however, is beyond them to accomplish.
It is said of our friend Mohammed Amin Khoso that back in the thirties, when he was studying in Aligarh, he came under the influences of Dr. Mohammed Ashraf, a communist, and began propagating non-conformist views about religion and other matters among his fellow-students, which certain communalist teachers in the University did not relish. One day, the pro-Vice Chancellor of the University Professor Abdul Halim, sent for him and told him," I am informed that you are spreading disruptive views among students and creating discords among them! Mohammed Amin Khoso is said to have replied "That is not correct, Sir, When God s own prophet could not leave the people firm on the right path or united, what influence can poor Amin Khoso have on such people to keep them away from discord which is a deep rooted and primeval in them as that".
Actually, behind all that fanfare regarding Islamic Unity and Muslim brotherhood, the exploitative interests of the Muhajir-Punjabi ruling classes went on consolidating their political strangle-hold on the smaller peoples in Pakistan, a view to facilitating seizure by them of the economics of these peoples and harnessing the same totally to their own use. It was during this period that the Muhajir-Punjabi Army officers and civil servants in particular and the Muhajir-Punjabi elite in general fattened and battened to the extent that they over-spilled their limits. The phenomenon of 23 families monopolizing bulk of wealth in Pakistan was the product of these times.
It was during these days that even the mention of the word "Sindh" was held to be an offence. The Muhajir-Punjabi oriented propaganda with slogans of Muslim-nation Islamic Raj Ideology of Pakistan etc. was to full blast, depressing the mind of the Sindhi people into indifference or hopelessness about the cause of Sindh. On the writer s release from jail in May, 1966, we examined this situation, and gave shape to a group of workers calling it "Bazme-Soofia-Sindh" (The Council of Sindh Mystics) and under its auspices, addressed ten public gatherings anniversaries (Melas) of leading mystic saints in different parts of Sindh, from June to December 1966. At these gatherings, we sang, discussed and talked about patriotism in the context of Sindh, Hindu-Muslim Unity, tolerance, national interest of the Sindhi people and so on. The Sindhi Vadera, officer, and traders had, no doubt, mostly entered in to an equation of service dependence and yes-men-ship with their Muhajir-Punjabi masters. Many of them served as their conscious agents, working probably against the national interest of the Sindhi people. But the urge for freedom and spirit of self-respect and communal harmony had, fortunately remained in tact among the broad masses of the people. Bazm gathering, therefore, aroused very enthusiastic response among the Sindhi people and attracted huge audience everywhere. The Muhajir-Punjabi ruling circles not take long to move in. They declared the Bazm illegal, and put a ban on all its gatherings, and the writer along with several of his associates including Shaikh Ayaz, the national poet of Sindh and comrade Hyder Bux Jatoi and other Were arrested and put into jail. General Mohammed Moosa, the Governor of West Pakistan addressing soon after meeting, petulantly declared that he had sent Hyder Bux Jatoi to jail and issued instructions for subjecting him to strict treatment under jail manual, because the man had composed poems in praise of Sindh, and was thus spreading provincialism in Pakistan! In fact he would not mind if such a fellow died in the Jail. The General then, in a self-poised mood, disclosed that he had also placed G.M. Sayed, the arch enemy of One-Unit, under house arrest, and issued orders that he should not be moved to any city, outside of his village even on medical grounds. This attitude to us, one of the Muhajir-Punjabi top gendarmes reflect the General s working of the mind of the entire ruling clique and their masters to-wards Sindh and the Sindhi people.
Thus those of us who were born and bred in Sindh, were aware of the five thousands years old glorious part of Sindh, had concern in the preservation of the culture, language and economic and political interests of Sindh, had our graveyards and mausoleums in Sindh where our ancestors lay buried, had acquired the message of love and humanity which the poets and the divinely just men in Sindh had given us, had heard and absorbed in our veins songs of love for mother land, which our mothers, while holding us at breast and our sisters on happy occasions, of marriage sang to us, and had thus come to acquire a love for our homeland, which was so full and all-absorbing when we saw people from outside not only exploiting Sindh and usurping its lands, services, trade workshops and work factories etc, but even trying to efface its history, traditions, culture and language; when we saw them hating the very name of Sindh, calling the Sindhi people donkey-drivers and camel-herds and punishing any one who so much has brought the word "Sindh" on his lips. When we saw our poets who sang in praise of Sindh being banned from the Radio and TV and arrogantly kept away from official gatherings; when we saw Sindhi writers, teachers and officers transferred to distant places superseded and even dismissed from services on slightest of suspicion of loyalty to Sindh; then even though our selfish Pirs, Mirs, politicians and Vaderas and officers could not feel the sense of shame or realize the gravity of the loss, there were some amongst us, yet who felt our hearts seared and our souls put aflame.
At the start, we took certain officers to be responsible such things and began fighting against them as a remedy it. But finding the situation not only persisting but also aggravating at every succeeding period, we succeeded in detecting the hidden hand behind the phenomenon. We saw at t that it was in fact the joint Muhajir-Punjabi exploitative crest that was responsible for the situation. The persons exercising power at a time, the Governor General or the president, Ministers and officers and other, were all mere "Show-boys" or tools or that joint concern of the Muhajir-Punjabi Samraj, in Pakistan. And this Axis of the two exploitative Interests could not have struck their foothold the soil of our homeland, had not there been a Pakistan. The twenty-six years long history of Pakistan was spread out before us, as clearly as the palm of our hand. Was there any possibility of any change for the better for our purposes? No, not any that we could see. Things, on the contrary, went on turning from bad to worse. The hard real experiences taught us that the Muhajir-Punjabi vested interests would never give up or relax in their hostility to Sindh, and would never stop exploiting the Sindhi people as long as Pakistan lasted. The stem of love for Pakistan thus dried up and its leaves withered away and its roots were burnt to cinders in our hearts, never again to be revived or resuscitated.
The ruling classes were blind in their over-weeping sense of power. They could not measure up the conditions properly. They always tried to keep the Sindhi people in check by three methods; force, enticement and propaganda. They could not imagine that all people could not be held under subjection by these methods.
At last, being forced by experience, they dissolved One Unit and restored the provinces in West Pakistan. Presently, they are engaged in tile exercise of maintaining their stranglehold on Sindh by keeping a Sindhi as the President or the Prime Minister of Pakistan. They must however, know that if Sindh could produce traitors like Chanesar, Jam Froze, Naunmal, Jinnah and Bhutto, it has also given birth to its devoted and loyal sons like Dodo, Darya Khan, Makhoom Bilawal, Hoshoo, Hamoon Kalani, Hyder Bux Jatoi, Allah-Bux Soomro, Shaikh Abdul Majeed, G.M. Sayed and others, who could never be intimidated or tempted to betray their motherland of Sindhu, whatever be the force, whatever be the enticement.
The ruling interests in Pakistan could thus deceive the people for some time by means of high-pitched emotional slogans and strong propaganda and continue their rule through general Ayub Khan. But when the people woke up from the trance and saw through the facade of tall talk, and became restive, the General pushed the country into war on Kashmir with India, Getting badly mauled, and having taken the country to the brink of disaster, the arm" withdrew from the war through intercession, on arrangement, of the United Nations organization Later there was the Tashkent Treaty, which exposed the entire deception and futility of the war to the people. When Ayub Khan saw the people s anger mounting against him, and the conditions in the country getting out of his hands, he stepped down from the pedestal, handing over the mantle of power to his next in Command General Yahya Khan.
The Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests ruled the country, from the very beginning, through civil and army officers cost as their pliable and obedient instrument for exercise of power in defense and support of their exploitative hold over the smaller and weaker peoples in Pakistan. Under the circumstances leading to replacement of General Yahya Khan by General Yahya Khan, the masters of the show advised the new General to execute the following measures to serve as safety valves for the mass resentment that had gathered during the Ayubian rule, as also strategically other wise necessary for the ruling axis.
(1) Releasing the political detainees. (2) Dissolving One-Unit and restoring the original provinces. (3) Holding of new elections. (4) Ensuring success of Peoples Party under Bhutto in West Pakistan, and particularly in Sindh by mobilizing support of Zamindar, Pirs, and Officers for it as against the Sindh nationalist party, the Sindh Mutahidah Mahaz.
The scheme of the masters did not somehow work according to plan. In East Pakistan, the Awami League, a thoroughly nationalist party, swept the polls, winning cent percent of the seats both in the Central as well as the Provincial Assemblies. In the west, quite effective contingents of nationalist members were sent up in the NEWF and Baluchistan provinces. Under these conditions, Muhajir-Punjabi vested Interests grew apprehensive power at the Center slipping out of their hands in to the hands of the nationalists. To obviate this possibility, tackled Mr. Bhutto and made him declare that unless he was made a co-sharer in the Central Government, he will stage a revolt and would not participate in the work of Constituent Assembly. Using this declaration of Mr. Bhutto as a pretext; General Yahya Khan at once postponed the Constituent Assembly which he had already summoned, and simultaneously started flying troops and equipment to East Pakistan. As a smoke-screen to this move, they opened political negotiations with the majority party leader Shaikh Mujibur Rehman, and kept the same going till they found the armies there well placed and well-supplied for action. They then suddenly called off the negotiations, imposing martial law on the country and started their bloody massacre in East Pakistan as a pacification campaign against what they termed to be the miscreants of Bangla Desh. The heinous crimes against humanity that the military men committed against the defenseless civilian population are today well known to the world. The forces of truth and justice at last won in this unequal fight by the sheer courage desperateness with which they fought their battle of From Bangla Desh thus won its freedom from the tyranny and exploitation of the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis forever.
The ruling classes now found Yahya Khan to be a liability The people could tolerate him no longer. They brought in Mr. Bhutto as his successor. Military dictatorships had ceased paying dividend any further. It was time despotism in the grab of democracy was once again tried in what remained of Pakistan. There could be no more appropriate tool than Mr. Bhutto for such a type of rule by the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis in the lour provinces that had been left with them after their debacle in East Pakistan.
Mr. Bhutto, after getting installed into power, started serving his masters with alacrity and faithfulness typical of a household servant, who knows no joy greater than the pleasure of his masters, provided they kept him in their service. He would allow no scruple however, noble or high to restrain him from performing the meanest of the job that they may anytime summon him to tackle. So far as Sindh is concerned, Mr. Bhutto has already totally pledged it with his masters as tile price for the privilege of being their first slave. His exemplary services to his masters at the cost of Sindh have already been described in some details elsewhere in this book.
The election manifesto on the basis of which Shaikh Mujibur Rehman won his land-slide victory in the General elections in East Pakistan, consisted of the following six Points: -
Point No. I
The Constitution should provide for a Federation of Pakistan, in the true sense, on the basis of Lahore Resolution of 1940 and Parliamentary for m of government with supremacy of Legislature directly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise. The above point, in short, visualized:
Pakistan to be a Federation;
The Federation to consist of autonomous, self-governing states based on Lahore Resolution.
Government in the Federation to be of Parliamentary form, responsible to the elected members of Legislature, and
The Legislatures to be directly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise.
Point No.2
The Federal Government of Pakistan shall deal with only two subjects, viz.
(i) Defense, and (ii) Foreign Affairs.
Point No.3
Separate currencies for the provinces may be introduced; or In case of one currency, effective constitutional provisions should be made and separate Reserved Banks should be maintained to stop flight of capital from one province to another.
Point No.4
The power of taxation and revenue collection shall rest with the federating Units and the Federation will have a share in the state taxes for meeting its required expenditure. The merits of this point were the following: -
We were to save the double expenses otherwise being incurred on maintaining separate departments and offices to impose and to collect taxes.
Every province will levy taxes best suited to its conditions and circumstances.
Our province (for example) earns most of the customs duty and Income Tax, but its earnings were spent by the Center and on development of other provinces. In the case of Defense and Foreign affairs, we contributed large amounts towards expenses thereof than what we gained from them directly or indirectly,
By vesting the provinces with powers to impose and collect taxes, the difference and disparity in the burden of Central-taxation from province to province shall come to an end.
The Provinces would then be entitled to ask for benefits proportionate to their contributions.
This is not a new idea either. Before 1900 A.D. provinces in India had all powers of taxation vested in them and they only used to make fixed contributions of funds to the Center. The two leading Federations of the world, the U.S. and the USSR follow this system of taxation as between their constituent states and the Federal Center.
The disadvantages of the present arrangement in Pakistan besides imposition thereby of iniquitous economic burdens on the provinces are firstly inescapability of the danger of frequent interference by the Center in the affairs of provinces, and secondly, the possibilities of some provinces benefiting at the cost of others.
Point No.5
Every province shall have its own separate account of foreign exchange earnings, and of one province would not he spent for the benefit of any other province. As a result of this;
Earnings of each province shall be under the control of its own government.
All the provinces proportionate to their populations shall meet Foreign Exchange requirements of the Federal Government.
Indigenous products shall move free of duty between Federating Units so that any province can sell its surplus goods to any neighboring province, with ease and without any hindrance from center, and the provinces shall not suffer from any discriminatory permit system or Excise duty.
Constitutionally the provincial government shall be entitled to establish trade and commercial relations, and enter into agreements with foreign countries. During the last 23 years, the Central Government, having remained under the influence of a particular province and certain vested interests, some provinces remained undeveloped while other developed at a wasteful cost of millions of rupees.
Point No.6
Every province shall have the right to raise its own Militia for looking after its internal and external security.
This would bring the following advantages:-
The Police force is not always sufficient to deal with law and order situations arising from eruption of local riots, strikes, etc. In such cases, the provincial governments generally have to request the Central Government for the aid of the army to reinforce the Police Force in controlling the situation. This paves way for involvement of the army in the internal situations of law and order in the country, and its readiness or efficiency and effectiveness as an instrument for external defense, suffers.
Some of the provinces have virtually no representation in the countries armed forces. When they make a grievance of it, they get the reply that their People do not come forward for recruitment in the forces, and that they do not possess the required martial qualities either. To this contention, the peoples of such provinces have following arguments: -
The recruiting and the training officers belong to a particular province, and it was their unsympathetic attitude, which was responsible for this lag.
Some of the conditions of recruitment were such that the peoples of these provinces were not able to fulfil them due to their physical make-up.
If they were to have their own militias, they would be able to overcome this lag, and their Jawans would not only be readily available to safeguard the borders of their country, whenever any occasion arises, but the provinces would also, thereby get their due share of representation in the Central Military force.
It has been proved from experiences of the past 23 years that for the support and protection of certain vested interests possessing a controlling away in the Central Government, there has been undue interference frequently in the affairs of the provinces and also impositions of dictatorial regimes through Martial Law, reducing all provincial autonomy to a farce. The Provincial Militias would ensure against these eventualities by providing necessary minimum safe guard to their respective home provinces.
We here in Sindh too pleaded for a similar constitutional status for our homeland as Shaikh Mujeeb Rehman and his Awami League did for East Bengal. They won elections in Bangla Desh on this platform, which we lost them in Sindh. In our case, the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis with our Pirs, Mullahs, Zamindars, and officers as their agents could bamboozle our, unawakened and unorganized masses into voting for Bhutto and his party-this time deceiving them on perfuse verbiage of socialism added to the old catchy Slogans Islam, Islamic Raj etc, etc. The ruling Axis did not, however, transfer power even to the Awami League of Mujeeb Rehman, which as the single majority party elected to the national Assembly was otherwise entitled to it, and instead pushed the country into Civil War, thereby compel mg Bengal to leave Pakistan. The ruling Axis, infect were not concerned about anything, not even about the integrity of the country about which they never tired of shouting their only concern was about the protection of their exploitative interests in the country. On suffering ignominious defeat in the civil war, they quietly removed General Yahya Khan from power and installed Zulfikar Ah Bhutto in his place as their new agent.
On the out-break of the civil War, the writer was out of country, in the holly city of Madina, on his return he was immediately placed under house-arrest without preferring any charge against him. The Yahya regime lasted for eight months thereafter, and kept him under detention till the end. He was freed from house arrest one month after Mr. Bhutto took over as President and Chief Martial Law Administrator of the country. As mentioned in chapter I above, the writer took opportunity of his birth day celebrations soon after, and put forth certain suggestions in his speech on the occasion to Mr. Bhutto. Mr. Bhutto however, did not take the suggestions favorably, and clamped him under house arrest immediately, where he continues with a very short respite between to remain to date.
Mr. Bhutto, to the best of his thinking has riveted the weaker links in the chain of slavery of the Muhajir-Punjabi Raj worn by the smaller peoples in Pakistan, and rendered it un-breakable. He takes pride, in this behalf in the constitution, which his party has imposed, on the country in complete violation of the election pledges to the peoples of Pakistan. Mr. Bhutto s constitution is indeed the warrant of authority for the fascistic rule of the Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests, but the smaller peoples of Pakistan take it to be the instrument of their slavery. The chains of slavery imposed on Sindh have been hardened by this constitution.
But these chains will break or will not break is not a matter be decided by Mr. Bhutto or his masters. That is the matter to be decided by history. And it is history, which determines the destinies of nations, and has the right of ion in the matters such as these.
As for the people of Sindh, they have indeed only two open before them now. Mr. Bhutto s constitution leaves them no third way. They may either quietly accept their state of subjection under the Muhajir-Punjabi ruling elite and their native agents, or they may strike out for freedom through bloody revolt, bringing down the iron walls of raised round them so massively by the constitution.
It is no sin in Pakistan to change one s religion. It is no to put the reins of government under pressure from American Imperialists, in the hands of the traducers of the finality of emanation of prophet-hood in Islam. It is no to collect arms through war pacts with American Imperialism and utilize the same in crushing the freedom of indigenous peoples and for safe guarding the Muhajir-Punjabi rule of tyranny over them. It is no sin to strike bargains with the ruling circles in Iran and ensures supplies oil to Jews in Israel for their air bombing of Arab homes and to facilitate their criminal war against the brother Arab peoples. The ruling classes in Pakistan and their stooges are to drink, gamble, smuggle, profiteer and contaminate society to their heart s content. It is no crime to import hundreds of thousands of alien people and help them colonize Sindh by putting them in possession of lands, factories, services, all avenues of business and financial resources, and leave them free systematically to destroy the language, culture and the great historical traditions of the Sindhi people and to put their very existence as a people in jeopardy.
There is no check on the Muhajirs openly conspiring for dismemberment of Sindh and establishing their separate province as Muhajiristan in cynical defiance of all that there is in what they themselves proclaim to be the ideology of Pakistan. It is permissible to dub Sindhis nationalist workers as enemies of the country, and to incarcerate them in jails, and to subject them to tortures and to murder them in police custody. If however the Sindhi Governor and the Sindhi law Minister are abused humiliated and beaten inside the Karachi University in the presence of the Vice chancellor the matter is to be hushed up neither any student is to be rusticated nor the vice Chancellor is to be disturbed. 0n the contrary, they are to be flattered and fawned upon with apologies with hands folded and head held low in servile objections. There is no sin or shame in all these things. They are all admissible and perfectly all right.
But the Sindhi nationalist minded students in the Sindh University have to be beaten rusticated thrust into jails and brutally tortured. If the lower courts or even Supreme Court, happen to order their release on bail they are to be done in again under freshly cooked up charges immediately they step out of the prison gates.
The Writer lives under house arrest, without trial, since 31st March 1973, under Defense of Pakistan Rules for the sin of having made the following address to the students of the Sindh University on the occasion of a Sindhi Evening arranged by them in Hyderabad.
"Dear young Friends: - To celebrate an evening with you is to rejuvenate oneself in this killing atmosphere of hypocrisy and brutishness. On occasions, such as these, one would like to say out and also listen to what hearts may have to speak to hearts.
"I had informed you on the 4th March, 1973 that time was soon to come when you may have to face burdens of heavy responsibilities, and you have to prepare yourself for the same. Only the persons of ability and grit will come out successful from the test. It was easy to go to jail and to suffer Lathis blows on the bare body, when it comes to that. But to carry the load of national responsibility was a difficult task. For the fulfillment of the task, you had to create a band of devoted workers, who could understand the social economics and political problems confronting Sindh, and, after thus clearing their own minds, could enlist increasing number of comrades to join them in the struggle for the national salvation of Sindh.
"You have to study the following problems of your people and to form your correct conclusion about them 1. The National Ideology: -
After Knowing and understanding various aspects of national ideology you have to accept one concept with the exclusion of all the others. "With due thought and deliberation, I, on my part, have arrived at the conclusion that the people of Sindh are a separate nation by virtue of their distinct language, culture, historical traditions and their identity of political and economic interest and are therefore fully entitled, on the basis of right of self determination of nations, to decide the question of their political, economic and cultural freedom and that of their future growth and development.
2.Sindhi Desh:- "Through the ages in the history of the South Asian sub-continent, our mother land this land of Sindhu, the Sindhu-Desh has remained a separate, and like any other country in the world has the right to decide its own future. "The name "Sindhu Desh is no new term for us. Quite a number of newspapers, printing presses, factories and other social and cultural institutions in Sindh were named after this word, in the pre-partition days as an exact synonym of the word "Sindh" in its territorial constitution.
(3) Sindhi Language: - "Since times immemorial Sindhi has remained the language of Sindh. It is the oldest and the richest of all the indigenous languages in Pakistan, and has, therefore, the right to be the official and national language of the country.
(4) The Constitution: - "To understand the problem of constitution making facing the people of Pakistan it has to be first decided whether the constitution is to b2 framed on the basis of one-nation or four nations. In the first case the Sindhi People will be reduced to a minority and will have to live under subordination to the majority province. In the second case, no constitution could be adopted without the free and unfettered consent of the Sindhi people. Under the One-Nation concept: -
The majority province i.e. the Punjab on strength of numbers, wealth and superiority in services, its permanent hegemony over Sindh and will rule Sindh with Sindh own resources which it shall exploit as it wills.
The lands, services, industry and the wealth of Sindh as a whole will remain subjected to appropriation by people from other provinces in Pakistan.
The Sindhi people would never be freed from the trap of Pakistan Ideology and the deception of Islamic constitution and the strong center.
The flight of capital from Sindh to other provinces would remain unchecked to the determent of Sindh s own economy.
The Foreign Exchange, the Foreign Trade Banking, the Railways, the Posts and Telegraphs, the Radio and Television the Mines and all institution controlling of the country will be under the direct control of the central administration.
Apart from defense, foreign affairs of country the rest of the subject, and departments otherwise under the jurisdiction of the provinces, shall always remain open to the interference of control of the Central Authority, reducing provincial autonomy to a facade.
The Sindhi people could be represented on the Central Assembly on the basis of their numerical strength only.
The Sindhis would rarely obtain more than I % of the jobs in central services as at present.
The officer caste represented in the Civil Service will work under the Central Authority, and through them, Provincial Autonomy shall always remain attenuated to a lifeless force as before.
Urdu, an alien language will be the national language of the country.
The obnoxious combination of religion and politics will hold on, contaminating as here-to-fore the life s roots in Pakistan.
Pakistan s state policy of confrontation and hostility as regards the neighboring countries shall remain unchanged.
The peoples from other provinces in Pakistan shall enjoy full liberty to colonize Sindh as they do now.
The country would never see the light and enjoy the blessings of Socialism.
(5) Sindhi Culture: - "Sindh has its history of over five thousands years. The Sindhi people have built their national characters and developed their culture on the background of that history. These are the living elements of their national heritage. To forget these and to get absorbed in the rootless culture of the migrant populations from outside would be suicidal for the Sindhi people.
(6) Exploitation: - The Sindhi people will have to be very clear in their mind as to the vested interests, which exploit them. They ought to know that it is the Muhajir-Punjabi vested Interests who have suppressed their political freedom, are sitting tight over their economic resources and intend subverting their culture. They have to take care of this menace to their national existence and get over with it, if they intend to survive as an honorable and self-reliant people in the world.
(7) Nationalism: - "I have always said that we believe the Sindhi people to be a separate nation. We have however, to discover the basic principles of our Sindhi nationalism. According to me those principles could be the following: -
Belief in Sindh as a separate country.
Belief in Pakistan not as one country but as a group of four countries.
Belief in the Sindhi people as a separate nation on basis of homeland, language, cultures historical traditions and identity of political and economic interest.
Belief in the right of the Sindhi nation to decide their future as a people.
Belief in the fact that ideology of Pakistan and concepts of Islamic Raj, Strong Center and National Interests of Pakistan are the greatest obstacles in the way of the realization of Sindhi nationalism.
(8) Secularism: - "Systems of government throughout the world are based on secularism. In Pakistan, however the ruling Vested Interests have all the time been imposing on the simple illiterate masses by crying hoarse about Islamic Raj, just for the sake of diverting their attention from the real problems of poverty, ignorance and disease facing the country. They masquerade before the people as upholders and harbingers of Divine Raj, of Islam in order to provide a cover for their rapacious exploitation of the people.
(9) Democracy: - "The real democracy in the context of Pakistan, has to guarantee the following
No nation must dominate any other nation on the strength of its number or through superiority in wealth or education.
No group, class or section of people must exploit any other group; class or section of people, all persons in the country must have guaranteed equality of rights and opportunities.
The Mullah and the Pir must be debarred from participation in the politics of the country.
(10) Socialism: - "All means of production, distribution and exchange shall be under the control of the people s Government, which shall exercise that control of the collective good of the people. All avenues of individual or class exploitation shall be closed. Socialism has its theoretical roots in reason and derives its justification from the concrete realities of the world. Religions hold protections for individual and class privilege, and as such always stand as obstacles in the way of attainment of socialism every where. There is no such thing as Islamic Socialism in the world.
(11) Islamic Constitution and Islamic Form of Government: - "Constitutions of countries depend on prevailing social and economic conditions there. There is and can, therefore; be no Islamic constitution or Islamic form of government anywhere in the world-including Pakistan, where things are being shouted the loudest since its inception. Only the fools or the Khaire talk about them in the modern world.
(12) Nation Building: - "The Sindhi people, though otherwise fully entitled to be called a nation have yet certain obstacles to remove in order to attain total national integration-One such most formidable obstacle being the deep and yawing elite gap among them, for bridging this gap, the Mullah, the Pir and the Vadera among their middle class will have to be either eliminated or suppressed effectively as the leading elite which they today happen to be in the Sindhian Society.
(13) Pakistan and Sindh: - "Sindh can exist without Pakistan, but Pakistan cannot exist without Sindh. Pakistan s existence depends on how it s ruling Classes treat Sindh. If they don t revise their, attitude and accept the national existence of Sindh and the people and grant them their rights, no power on earth is going to save Pakistan.
(14) Political Parties in Pakistan: - "With the exception of "Jeay Sindh" and Khudai Khidmatgar s all the existing political parties in Pakistan are all Pakistan parties. Basically all of them are founded On the basis of the ideology of Pakistan which denies the separate existence of Sindh and other provinces. For a Sindhi nationalist to join any of these parties is for him to sign the death warrant of Sindh.
(15)Policies of Government :- "For examining and evaluating policies of different governments vis-a-vis Sindh, the Sindhi nationalists have of necessity to place before themselves certain criterions of judgement, which according to me, ought to be the following
(a) No government basing its policies or programs on the ideology of Pakistan can ever do any good to Sindh. (b) A government that aims at establishment of the Strong Center will always be hostile to Sindh. (c) A government that believes in Islamic constitution or Islamic Rule would always prove harmful to Sindh. (d) No ruler in Sindh or Pakistan, who prefers power to principles, can ever prove to be the well wisher of Sindh. (e) A government that denies the principles of freedom of Sindhu Desh must ipso facto be treated as the enemy of Sindh.
(16) Pro-Sindh Foreign Policy: - "Of all the foreign countries, the U.S.A. for reasons of its global policy and particularly for lessening pressures on Israel, which is the Kingpin of its imperialist strategy Afro-Asian part of the world, aims at keeping India, and Pakistan at longer-heads with each others. Besides, for the sake of keeping the wheels of the arms countries running, America s ruling circles would like to manage small wars in the world. American imperialism has also to stand at the back of the Muhajir-Punjabi ruling circles in Pakistan for using them as its call-boys in its confrontation with the USSR "China, for reasons of its nationalist strategy in Asia and the world, has taken up an anti-India position, and would therefore always supplement and reinforce American Imperialist policy of staking fires of state-to state hostility among countries in the South Asia subcontinent.
"This being the case, all pro-American and pro-china policies of the ruling cliques in Pakistan are bound to prove detrimental for the rights and interests of the Sindhi people. Friendly relations with Bharat, Bangla Desh, USSR, Afghanistan, Iran, and Arab countries will on the other hand, positively serve the Sindhi interests and must therefore be cultivated as assiduously as possible.
(17) Pan Islamism: - This idea has entirely gone stale and out of date. All foreign relations and out in the modern world must be founded on pan-secular grounds. To believe any further in Islamism would tantamount to entrapping the Sindhi people in the class intrigues of the Muhajir Punjabi Vested Interests for hegemony of Pakistan and to fall in line with the Sindh American conspiracy to promote their exclusive national interests in the world.
(18) Ethics of Politics: - As it is necessary to chose and adopt principles in Politics, it is also necessary that one must act upon those principles. To expect any principle politics or any ethical conduct in the field from, those who are not able to maintain moral integrity in their personal life, is expecting the impossible. Opportunism and somersaults in politics may bring temporary benefits to the individuals concerned. Such a policy, however, it is bound to prove fatal for the genuine and the long term good of nations and countries.
(19) Intelligence and ability: - No individual group or nation could deserve to rule unless it cultivates and acquires intellectual ability and merit. Without such ability and merit, all power and authority even if acquired somehow, is bound to vanish into thin air like a bubble under a whiff. If, therefore, you desire to be the masters in your country and inherit its greatness, you must develop political character and consistently try to attain excellence of ability and merit.
(20) Politicians: - There are two types of politicians; one, the practical politicians, who sacrifice principles for acquisition of temporary success of power; two, the idealist politicians who set before themselves certain principles for the collective good of the country and of the people, and shape their own political conduct and admonish others to pursue their course accordingly. For them, temporary success or power at the cost of principles has no meaning.
"These and many such questions are there about which you have to be very clear in your mind. Instead of going forth huffishly from your schools and colleges, supporting or opposing government politics or those of the Opposition parties. It would be better that you may first divert your efforts at properly informing and educating your own minds and that of your student brotherhood on these problems of very grave and far-reaching importance to your people. I invite you to form groups of 12 students each and meet at my village Sann for 7 days courses of study and discussions for gaining insight into these and other problems and principles of politics and of ethics of which the present day politics of power stands totally shorn off to the shame of us all.
My young friends, I wish you well and my good-bye to you "Jeay Sindh."
In a democracy, the people have a fundamental right to associate freely and to express freely on national problems. There could be no restriction even on apostasy. But here in Pakistan, its Muhajir-Punjabi Ruling Interests have so effaced these basic human rights that if some one as much as even whispers out his political views which are non-conformist to those of the ruling class, not only his views are rejected in a huff, but be himself is whisked off to what they learnt from their British Imperialist masters to call "protective detention". The writer continues since to be in such a detention, for the crime of his non-conformity, for the crime. 9f his assertion of the inalienable rights of freedom and Sovereignty of his people and of his motherland. Mr. Bhutto, the President of Pakistan and now its Prime Minister, even though he is a Sindhi, has no power or freedom to release the writer from detention, since he very well knows that all his power and position is at the sufferance of the Muhajir-Punjabi Imperialists who would not approve any such step on his part.
As a matter of fact, together with democracy rule of law has become the second biggest causality in Pakistan. What to speak of political opponents, for whom there is always one or the other law-less laws on hand to keep them deprived of their liberty. Even the plain, ordinary citizens are caught tortured and physically eliminated at the instance of petty officials of the ruling party, who are out to settle personal scores with individuals with whom they may be involved in a feud or vendetta. The entire machinery of law and order us at the back and call of the Party bosses for these purposes. They terrorize their enemies get them thrust into jails, their standing crops, shops and houses burnt, and get in killed through their patharies or private bands of desperadoes or even through the police. Judiciary has been reduced to the position of a pliable tool in the hands of the top men of the ruling party. There has been an instance, a District Sessions Judge was taken straight from his in court and bundled into jail under Defense of Pakistan rules, It has become almost a universal view in the country there is no law and no justice in Pakistan. Peoples faith these two institutions of civilized living have almost totally eared. No one, note even the police or any other department of government seems to be interested in the enforcement of law, All are out to snatch benefits and grab advantage by subverting it.
Pakistan has been given the name and title of an "Islamic Republic". But who are the men in charge of it? Almost out exception, certainly those who indulge in adultery, gambling drinking, tyranny, decrepit and lying. I am basically a religious minded person. In the first wall poster heralding the idea of Pakistan among the people in Sindh, I had said vide its item no 3 that "The reins of government under the Islamic State shall be in the hands of true and pious Muslims". Item 6 of the poster proclaimed that "There would be no gambling, no adultery, no drinking and no usury in Pakistan". But what do we actually see around ourselves in this Islamic State? Exactly the opposite of these goodly things; but the name of Islam is all the same used for labeling these very things as Islamic.
If today I am opposing Pakistan, the main cause for it is that through its existence today, in the words of Hazrat Allama 1.1. Kazi. "The entire program of life as adumbrated in the Holy Qura'an is being debased and falsified". Under Present conditions, continuance of Pakistan instead of serving Islam is only effectively destroying it.
Qaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ah Jinnah was a Sindhi, but the lure of power and fame blinded him to the duty to his motherland, and he willfully threw Sindh to the wolves. His was the chief leading role in the establishment of Pakistan the empire of the Muhajir Punjabi Vested Interests, which he administered as their agent to the utmost detriment of Sindh. Qaid-e-Awam Zulfikar Ali Bhutto too is a Sindhi. He has attained the top political position in Pakistan because of Sindh He is determined to bold that position at the cost of Sindh. For faithfully serving his masters, he is administering their empire fully resolved that Sindh, his motherland has to observe and subserve the interest of that empire and therefore, as a part of the Policy of his government, it is taken for granted that Sindh has no independent interest other than what devolves on it by virtue of its state of subservience to the empire.
Mr. Jinnah threw over board the ideology of Pakistan as a totally risky ballast for the pirate ship of Muhajir-Punjabi imperialism that had already developed leaks in its hold. Liaquat Ah Khan learned over and put the arm loads of it back to where it was, and made his Muhajir compatriots from India Stand guard over it in return for the most favored treatment as one of the two marshalling gang on board. The Punjabi vested interests being the elder gang, not alarmed, and immediately restored the advantage to its side under Ghulam Mohammed. The happy balance was struck under General Ayub, who threw open additional sources of loots to the two parties in piracy in the shape of what his political and economic advisors termed "the Economic Prosperity of Pakistan", but which actually amounted to deprivation of the weaker people of all that belonged to them. Mr. Bhutto s being only the continuation of the policies of the Ayubian rule, the word socialism is being labeled now, under his Raj, along with the word Islam, on the piratical goods which the Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests are gathering to their side in the name of National prosperity. The nation being only they themselves and none others in Pakistan. This type of over reaching sharpness has already cost Pakistan half of it. The lands of Baluchistan and Pakhtoonistan are already in a ferment. There is the lava agitating and burning under the surface in Sindh. How long is the lid going to hold?
It is no use, of course, to expect a rational response from Bhutto to the situation, since he is hardly free agent himself. We would therefore prefer addressing a few words to ruling elite of the Muhajir vested interests. It is possible it they, keeping aside for some time their power inflated ego, may yet consider these questions coolly:
You and we both claim to be attached to Islam, as our common faith, though there is a considerable difference between us in its doctrinal interpretation, political strategy and tactics.
You and we both had made collective efforts for the establishment of Pakistan, but experience has proved that our purposes and aspirations in it were different.
It would be pointless to deny that many of you having centuries old ancestral connections with the Iranian and Mughal imperialist administrations and with literary and cultural atmosphere of these courts, are men of high civilization and culture. Many of you are also highly skilled in arts and crafts, and in trade and business. Your existence, therefore, in any society ought to be a matter of advantage and pride for it.
You must be aware that the nationality conscious elements of the people of Sindh are at present dissatisfied with you. Have you given a thought to this problem, in order to know as to why it is so?
Do you know that in my welcome address the 1943, sessions of All India Muslim League at Karachi while speaking about the past of Sindh, I had invited men of talent and ability from amongst you to come to Sindh and assist the Sindhi people in their various fields of life.
It is possible that many of you might be wondering over the change, and have not understood the reasons for it. Let me give you some of the reasons:-
We had invited you as our comrades and companions, and not as those who would teach us what Islam is, and exploit us, and would be our mentors, would claim to civilize us, would impose Urdu language on us, and would strive to rule over us in position of exploitative vested interest.
We have thorough experience got dis-enchanted with you, because of the following things: (i)Your obsession, with the concept of separate Muslim nation-hood. (ii) Your concept of one-nation and one country for Pakistan. (iii) Your state of self-illusion regarding Islamic Constitutions and Islamic system of government. (iv) Your intention and desire to impose Urdu on us. (v) Your insatiable desire for economic exploitation. (vi) Your notions of cultural superiority and social exclusiveness.
It is possible, some of you may ask to know as to how and by what efforts on your part, could there be an understanding for mutually harmonious living between you and the Sindhi people. So far as I have considered the problem I have reached the following conclusions on it.
(i) You may give up your belief in separate Muslim nation-hood and absorb yourselves in the nationalist milieu of Sindhi culture and language. (ii) You may join us in ending Pakistan and in establishing independent and sovereign state of Sindhu Desh. (iii) You may retain Urdu as your language at homes. You may even study Urdu as your language in schools, but you must accept Sindhi as a sole national language of Sindhu Desh. (iv) You may give up your illusions and empty talk about Islamic constitution, Islamic form of Government and pan Islamism, and instead join us in establishing a secular modern State in Sindh. (v) You may give up your anti-India obsessions and for the sake of Asian Unity prepare your-selves for the unity of Bharat, Bangla Desh. Sindhu Desh, Afghanistan, Iran, Arab lands all as custodians of high spiritual values and for forward looking understanding with the USSR as the vanguard of Western civilization. (vi) You may cultivate conviction in your mind about the international mission of Sindh for serving interests of World Peace and Universal Brother-hood of man, and join us in the accomplishment of that mission.
It is possible that you may not accept the above suggestions which we have given in all sincerity for your consideration, and you may reject them because of your arrogance and airs of superiority and self righteousness in which you habitually live. In that case, you may know that there could be no understanding between your and the people of Sindh, and you may have to prepare yourselves to hear the terrible verdict of history about you. You have already left India, and the only place of further refugee for you, in the words of General Mohammed Ayub Khan, "may be Arabian Sea". You cannot be saved from this calamity by Bhutto s chance relation-ship with you, nor by your placation of Pir pagaro, nor by your alliance with the Punjab power elite not even through the "fatwas" of Maulvi Maudoodi. The slogans and deceptive banners of Islam, socialism, Pakistan, pan-Islamism etc, are not going to work with the peoples of Sindh any more. You may please know that the nationally conscious Sindhis now prefer Raja Dahar to Ibn-I-Kasim. To them Dad Jethmal is a more dear and near person than your Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan. They hold Shri Jai ramdas in far greater esteem than Liaquat Ah Khan.
It appears that extremist elements among you are now engaged in an efforts to remove Bhutto even though he faithfully carries out your desires and to foist the military rule on the country again. They believe that thereby they would be able to have the entire nationalist leadership eliminated and, as a result, to get their imperialist hold irrevocably established in Pakistan. It seems they have already forgotten the experience of Bangla Desh. Let them go through the experience again if they so desire. This time, the result that is bound to follow would spell the doom of not only the show-boys, but along with them, that of the entire hordes of the Muhajir-Punjabi vested interests, including Pakistan, the safest and the richest hunting ground for their predatory exploits in which they have engaged without any lit or hindrance from the very start.
The one fundamental fact of the situation in Pakistan is that the people living here are not one nation, nor are their interests common or identical. Mr. Bhutto in his turn may by all means keep himself in illusions on this score. He may well speak to exhaustion in the name of the non-existent Pakistani people and feel safe that the people being with him, no body is going to dislodge him. But he is wrong and his calculation would not stand the test. To please his Pakistan people he even proclaims himself to be the champion of Islam, democracy and socialism. But all the three claims of his are baseless which being, even otherwise contradictory interests are not going to serve any body s purpose except Mr. Bhutto machiaveilism of saying all the things to every body without meaning anything to any body.
Mr. Bhutto ought to realize that the interests of the Muhajir-Punjabi ruling classes, which he finds himself, obliged to protect at present, and those of the constituent smaller nations of Pakistan are mutually exclusive and contradictory. It does not matter that their oppressed nations have not been able yet to fully mobilize themselves internally nor have they succeeded in mustering external support for joining the fight, decisively for their liberation. The fact of the de-facto existence of these nations and their distinct interest cannot however, be denied by any means. The Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests cannot succeed to keep them suppressed or in subjection, for long. By intimidating, or even liquidating Khan Wali Khan, Attaullah Khan, Khair Bakhsh Khan and G.M. Sayed, the existence or the urge for freedom of these nations cannot be ended or destroyed.
Every act of tyranny and despotism creates its reaction in the shape of resistance, mental as well as physical. Nothing can be attained permanently through violent or fascistic means. The Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests would not like West Pakistan for that is all that now remains of it one-national state under the one Party rule with the fascistically groomed Control government, with Mr. Bhutto seated at the top, wielding the scepter on their behalf and breaking the skulls of the smaller nations that may raise in heads against such a nice arrangement. But this is no strategy for the Muhajir-Punjabi regime in Pakistan. Jinnah sat at the top of such on arrangement in the fanfare of popular acclaim. Liaquat Ali Khan held the same scepters as rightful wielder of it with unstinted backing of the civil service and his advancing migrant brother-hood. General Ayub Khan took his turn with full military support to perform the job of holding the fort. But of them could neither unite Pakistan nor consolidate it. Each one of these stalwart supporters of the Rule on the contrary, could only witness an increasing weakening of the foundations of the edifice. This was none of their fault either. It was the edifice itself that was inherently a faulty, founded as it was on very shaky and uncertain ground. The country was an amalgam of nations each with specific interests of its own, whom the Muhajir-Punjabi vested Interests planned to dominate and exploit. This inherent contradiction between the alien ruling interests and the national interests of the smaller and weaker nations in the amalgam made it impossible for the country to know peace.
In face of this cancerous formation in the body-politics of Pakistan, none could succeed to give unity, integrity or stability to the country. Mr. Bhutto, on the contrary came to the task with certain irreparable handicaps. He hails from the province whose people are weak and backward. He does not command full backing of the Civilian or the armed services of the country. He cannot win or retain confidence of any one of the constituent peoples of Pakistan including his masters belonging as he does to one of the smaller peoples who are oppressed and exploited the most by the alien ruling interests at whose command he operates.
Finding him useful for the time being, he has been promoted to the position of supreme power by the Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests, but they would not hesitate for a moment to pull him down, when they see him no more able to answer their purpose.
I have enumerated somewhere above the hopes and aspirations of the Sindhi people which they had associated with Pakistan and also the trials and tribulations which they have-actually borne under it. Reviewing all that has since passed before us, I have arrived at the following conclusions
(1) Not a single hope or aspiration with which Pakistan was formed has materialized. (2) The smaller nations, particularly the Sindhi people have suffered the most under Pakistan. (3) Pakistan was established for the rule of the Muhajir Punjabi Vested Interests, and it is being run for the sole benefit of those interests. (4)The ruling class in Pakistan denies the existence of the anciently established nations in order to serve its own interests. It desires to rule in the name of the self-constituted country and a self-conceived nation. Since no such a country and no such nation has ever existed in history, this contrivance based on illusory foundations as it is, cannot work. (5)The ruling class in Pakistan aims at destroying thousands of years old nations and countries for the sake of its class interests, in defiance of all lessons of history. Since its plan is contrary to the facts of history, it is bound to fail.
Considering these things, I believe that the condition of Pakistan is that of sick person, which has been lying on its deathbed for the last 26 years. Its well wishers, now, are heard openly praying for its quick and easy death.
With this condition of its health, it has now become impossible for Pakistan to survive. Its rulers have lost their common sense and have gone crazy. They are not ready to listen to any advice for its betterment or welfare. It is the duty of the sincere well wishers of the country; therefore to put it on the operation table, so that it could be rearranged into independent and sovereign states as originally planned. The emerging independent states would then be left free to establish mutual relations among themselves that may suit them in accordance with their best interests. More they are kept together forcibly under one center lesser would be possibilities of their mutual co-operation in future.
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