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.
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:
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".
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.
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:
The Federal Government of Pakistan shall deal with only two subjects, viz.
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: -
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;
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:-
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.
"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: -
(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.
(9) Democracy: -
"The real democracy in the context of Pakistan, has to guarantee the
following
(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
"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."
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:
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
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.