SINDH'S CONCEPT OF PAKISTAN

G. M. Syed

CHAPTER III

SINDH'S CONCEPT OF PAKISTAN

The writer had actively participated in the movement for Pakistan, It was done for the following reasons: -

The first election for the Sindh Provincial Legislative Assembly were fought on basis of separate electorates in 1935 Sir, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, a British stooge, though the leader of a minority group in the Assembly, was made to form government by the ruling British Governor. He was however, soon defeated on the floor of the Assembly, and the leader of the winning majority, Mr. Allah Bukhish Soomro, a nationalist was called upon to form the Ministry. The progressive group led by the writer, who supported Mr. Allah Bukhish, and was handed over to him for implementation, drew up a program for the progress, and development of the province. The Hindu vested interests in Sindh came in the way and sabotaged all efforts to translate the program into practice. The congress Assembly party, consisting mainly of Hindu members elected by separate Hindu electorate could not prevent this stalling of reforms by the Hindu vested interests. We left the coalition and withdrew our support of the government, having been disappointed rather rudely, in our hopes in the Indian National Congress as a modern Progressive Party willing and able to serve the interests of the people of Sindh, the overwhelming majority of whom were Muslims.
The Muslim masses in Sindh were generally under the control and influence of Zamindars, officers, Pirs, Mullahs most of whom were self-seekers power hunger unscrupulous, and rank reactionaries. Majority of the common people were agriculturist, most of whom were landless Hans sunk in debts and living in extreme poverty and suffering.

The Hindu vested interests comprised the merchant the moneylender, the officer and the Zamindar. Similarly the Muslim vested interests comprised the Zamindar, the Pir, the Mullah and the officer. Both of these powerful groups of vested interests in Sindh were anti-people. But we could not fight against the two simultaneously.

Seeing the group of the Hindu vested interests as less in number but more organized and thorough in their exploitation of the people, we decided first to mount our attack on them. We prepared two legislative bills to bring immediate relief to the people of the rural areas, viz., the land Alienation Bill and the Debt Reconciliation Bill. The Congress ministries in India had already taken steps in these directions. We therefore expected that the Congressite Assembly members in Sindh would help us in these proposals. The Sindh Congress Committees and its All-India High Command, however, frustrated all our hopes and instead of helping us in the solution of our local problems of economic and social good to the people, they always preferred to settle their All-India political problems first.

Government of the country will be established in accordance with God`s commandments, as enunciated in the holy Qura'an.
All people will enjoy political, Social and economic equality.
The reins of power will be held by the righteous and pious Muslims.
The rights of non-Muslims will be strictly protected.
The first and fore-most duty of government will be to remove poverty, ignorance and injustice from society, and to put a total stop to all class exploitation of the people.
Adultery, drinking, and usury will be prohibited and abolished by law.
The criterion for social status and honor will not be power or wealth, but merit and moral excellence- (Ghulam Murtaza, Chairman, Muslim League Organization Committee)."

The Sindhi Muslims believed, then, that with Pakistan establishment, Sindh, shall be an independent and sovereign State as guaranteed by the 1943 resolution of the Sindh Legislative Assembly and by the All-India Muslim League s Lahore Resolution of 1940.

It was under these allurements that we were drawn towards Pakistan and the Muslim league. Not being sufficiently farsighted politically, we could not realize that the stalling of social economic reforms in Sindh by the Hindu vested interests has not because of the Congress of the Sindh legislative Assembly as such. They owed responsibility to the Hindu vested interests because of the system of separate electorates under Which they were elected by these interests, who voted them into these positions precisely to safe-guard them. And it was the Muslim League itself, which was responsible for the introduction of separate electorates in the country, for the purpose of protecting the Muslim vested interests in the Muslim minority provinces. The separate electorates in India, since they corresponded exactly to the "divide and rule" policy of the British Imperialists, were imposed on the people in the sub-continent by them by stage managing a demand through their most reliable stooges and agents among Muslims aristocracy.

It did not occur to us then that by organizing Musalmans on communal basis, we were not at all serving the interest of the Muslim masses, but on the contrary putting the same under grave jeopardy, since among their exploiters, along with the Hindu vested interests there were equally, if not more ravenous Muslim vested interests as well, conversely among the exploited and oppressed millions, too, there were the Hindus as well as the Muslims. It was therefore, better and more useful for the purpose of the people from exploitation, to organize them on class basis, rather than on communal ones devised by the Muslim vested interests and their imperialist British masters for serving their own exploitative interests.

Thus, we aimed at attaining a sound objective, through unsound means. We had involved the class struggle of the people in the rigmarole of Hindu and Muslim interests, thereby providing cover for the vested interests in both the communities instead of organizing their working masses against their common enemy. We sought to organize the Muslim people, promising them establishment of an ideal Islamic State. But because of our deficiency in knowledge and experience, we could not realize that we were aiming at attainment of said Islamic objective through an organization which was led by representative of vested interests, who in their persons were themselves drunkards, gamblers, corrupt, rank reactionary, and rapidly anti people. The result of all this simpleminded and credulous approach to politics was that, along with our own selves we landed our innocent and trusting people too in the soup.

We labored under a mistaken belief that it was only the Congress High Command, which assigned priority to All India questions over the local problems. In due course, we however, learned, to our bitter regret, that the Muslim League High Command were guilty of the same squint towards that policy, to an ever more palpable degree.

The Congress workers did observe a medium of personal scruple. However, the Muslim League leaders soon proved to be totally bereft of all principles and moral checks in their preferences to all-India matters over the local issues in our province. Ours was indeed the example of a dove that got free the talons of hawk and fell into the lap of saintly humbug of a mendicant, whom it found by experience to be a hundred times worse, than his first enemy.

We may recount in some details, here, even at the risk of some repetition. How and to what limits have our hopes been belied in the establishment of the Pakistan s sway over our lands.

We had expected that in terms of the Lahore-Resolution, the Sindhi, Balochi, Punjabi, Pakhtoon and Bengali people will acquire independent and sovereign status as nations but that did not happen. After establishment of Pakistan, the overwhelmingly powerful Muhajir-Punjabi vested interests betrayed the trust and, denying the very existence of the separate national entity of each of these peoples, imposed a unitary form of government on them and started ruling over the smaller and weaker ones among them as their colonies and exploiting their, ruthlessly. If any one from among the victims made any protest, he was condemned and remorselessly hunted as enemy of Islam and of Pakistan, a parochial, a subversionist, and an enemy agent.
We had expected that after establishment of Pakistan, the Sindhi people, the majority of whom were Muslims, will find freedom from exploitation by the Sindhi Hindu vested interests. However, we instead fell in-to the predatory claws of the non-Sindhi Muslim vested interests, from the Muslim minority provinces of India, whose exploitation proved to be incalculably worse than that of the Hindu capitalist.
The Sindhi people expected that theirs being a highly productive land, all its formidable revenue collections will be spent fully on the reconstruction and development of their homeland, which had suffered terribly under callous neglect during the British Raj over the Indian sub-continent. However, their hopes did not material use under the new dispersion. More than 80% of the taxes raised in Sindh are now spent on serving the Muhajir-Punjabi interests both in-side and outside Sindh.
The Sindhis hoped that in Pakistan, Sindh will see the days when in the management of their internal affairs at least, the people of Sindh will have freedom of decision and freedom of action. But experience proved that even that did not come about. Ever since the creation of Pakistan, the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis has ravaged Sindh s autonomy and has dispensed its affairs arbitrarily and to their own advantage. The summary dismissal of the first Government of Sindh under Pakistan, headed by Mr. Mohammed Ayoob Khuhro, is the first case, in point. Mr. Khuhro s ministry retained the backing of the majority vote of the Sindh Legislative Assembly right upto the end. He was yet dismissed as the Chief Minister of Sindh, under the ukase of the Central Government. In order to demoralize him and over-awe the people of Sindh, they involved him in a criminal case under a trumped up charge. Actually, Mr. Khuhro was proving himself difficult for the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis in their haughty meddlesomeness in the autonomy of Sindh. He deserved the block in their calculations for his following sins.

He unflinchingly opposed Liaquat Ali Khan in the latter s deliberate and cold-blooded plans to organize mob-violence against the urban Sindhi Hindu population by inciting his immigrant bands from India, with a view to driving out the Hindus from Sindh and settling then homesteads and places of work the non-Sindhi, particularly the Urdu-speaking, Muhajirs from India.
Mr. Khuhro suppressed one such planned mob-riot in Karachi, with a heavy hand and refused to let go scores of the immigrant government employees and other Urdu-speaking Muhajirs, who were caught red-handed Killing the Sindhi Hindus and looting their property in the riots. This was also the direct cause for Mr. Liaquat Ali to initiate his diabolical attempt only one week after those riots, at dismembering Sindh by separating Karachi from it and take it ever as a centrally administered area, which, in effect, meant implanting Muhajiristan in Sindh, under the Muhajir-Punjabi imperialist conspiracy, the same way as Israel was implanted on the Arab homeland of Palestine under a world imperialist conspiracy. Khuhro fought against this criminal move for Muhajiristan in Sindh.
The Sindhi Musalmans mostly protected their compatriot Sindhi Hindus against the deadly attacks of Muhajir goondas during the riots, wherever the same occurred in Sindh. The Sindhi Hindus in face of organized mob-violence against them under active incitement from the Center Government saw their only safety in leaving Sindh enmasse. They left behind their agricultural lands, their well-established trade and commerce, their shops full of merchandise, their fine residential Buildings, their factories, valued at hundreds and thousands of millions of rupees. The provincial Government headed by Khuhro started settling the local indigenous Sindhi Muslim people on these lands and in those houses etc. The Central Government under Liaquat Ali Khan reacted angrily, and assuming total authority for the custody and disposal of all evacuee property in Sindh, set out dispossessing the local Sindhis Muslims of their allotments, disregarding in certain cases even the long established occupancy and customary rights which ordinary law and usage otherwise gave them. Khuhro and Liaquat Ali Khan bitterly clashed over this issue.
Pakistan consisted of five distinct lands and peoples each with a historically established distinct language and culture of its own. The new ruling class desired to impose on them Urdu which they brought with themselves from Central India, and introduced its compulsory teaching in Schools and colleges in Sindh too, where it was never taught before, even as a second language. Khuhro firmly opposed this policy of the Muhajir-Punjabi clique, which gave them one more reason for their anger against him.
The ruling clique desired to appoint Urdu-speaking Muhajirs to posts in Government Service in Sindh, vacated by emigrant Sindhi Hindus. Khuhro stood against this summary filling in of the vacancies with non-Sindhis. He set out bringing in Sindhi Muslims instead to occupy the positions. This resulted in a severe clash of policy and action between him and Liaquat Ali Khan, the tutelary-working saint of Muhajirs in Pakistan.
In absence of a constitution, Pakistan s administration ran on the basis of the British Parliament s Indian Independence Act, 1947, under which Sindh, as a province enjoyed full autonomy. The new ruling class in Pakistan, firmly entrenched in power at the Center and with the Muslim League Party as their pliable tool, desired to nullify all autonomy of Sindh their persistent interference totalitarian policy of rule pursued by the Muhajir-Punjabi Axis in Sindh, and aroused their wrath against him.
Government of Sindh besides handing over their own office buildings and state houses to the Central Government in Karachi, constructed a great deal of further building accommodation for use by them on which they spent crores of Rupees. On demand for being reimbursed the expenses, the Central Government not only refused to oblige but also took pains to make it appear that it had taken offence at this insolence of Khuhro s provincial government to make such a demand.
Khuhro happened to be also the President of Sindh, Provincial Muslim League. He stood for the independence rights of Sindh, and possessed considerable independence of Spirit to stand up for his convictions in this regard, and decided to do so, in face of the "strongmen" at the Center, who wanted to gain control over the Provincial League to use it for their purposes, through their handpicked yes men. Khuhro opposed their moves in this regard and frustrated them repeatedly.

Government of Sindh, prior to Pakistan s coming into being, had prepared ambitious plans for rural reconstruction in Sindh, aimed at building bigger and better villages, so that firstly all isolated hutments and hamlets and the nomadic population scattered all over Sindh could be collected and brought within the ken of modern civilization, and secondly the rural people, who formed the backbone of social, cultural and economic life in Sindh could be provided with roads, with light, with schools and hospitals and with sources for better economic and cultural standard of living, as could befit a dignified and enlightened people in the modern world.

With the establishment of Pakistan, however all these wonderful plans for up-turning the social and cultural soil of Sindh were shelved, and vanished like a dream. There was no talk but that of settlement and rehabilitation of refugees. Almost the entire cities and towns vacated by the fleeing Sindhi Hindu urban population were handed over to refugees. In small towns in the interior, they behaved like vandals, willfully digging up the floors, bringing down the roofs, unhinging the doors, windows and almirahs, and tearing out anything that was work a paisa, and sold everything in the Bazaar outside; and with cash in their pockets, they veered round again and again towards the few big cities in the Province.

Almost the same thing they did with the evacuee farmlands and gardens, which were allotted to them in preference even to the tillers of the soil who worked on them. New townships and posh colonies were built for them around Karachi and Hyderabad on the lands in the Kotri Barrage command area, and on the Makhi forests lands, a number of modern township were raised for new settlers from the Punjab. The villages and hamlets of the Sindhi people, which got interspersed among the new colonies and township around the cities for the refugees or in the interior for the Punjab settlers, were mostly razed to the ground and the human dwellers there in driven away as one drives away packs of animals from forest clearings. Those of such villages and hamlets that were temporarily spared because of considerations of expediency could any time be seen, so long as they existed, as standing witnesses to the states of second class citizenry to which the Sindhi people were reduced in their own homeland in Pakistan.

The Sindhi Muslims in their over-whelming majority were agriculturists and lived in the rural areas of their land. The few of them who were engaged in trade could not prosper markedly for want of monetary facilities. No sooner, they had seriously entered the field in competition to Hindu than Pakistan came into being and the Hindus left. The Sindhi people saw the opportunity facing them and stepped out to take it. The ruling Coterie of Pakistan, the agents of Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests, however, chose to decide otherwise. All evacuee shops, along with goods for sale therein were allotted to the Muhajirs. All the factories too were similarly turned over to them. All the banks set up and organized under government patronage, quietly passed under the control of these people. All permits and licenses for foreign trade and for raising new factories in Sindh were conferred on them. Soon there emerged a monopoly-merchant capital as well as a monopoly-industrial capital around us, exclusively conformed to the urbanized Muhajir vested interests, with the Punjabi vested interests later joining them, and the Sindhi people remained relegated to their rural Agriculturist life as before.
This Sindhi Hindu had stolen a march over the Sindhi Muslims in English education at the beginning of British rule in Sindh, and had thereby gained a superior almost a monopolist, foothold in the field of government service. After Sindh gained its autonomy, and was separated from Bombay Presidency in 1936, Sindhi Muslims, inspite of political handicaps, like very small over-all composition of their Provincial Assembly and marked membership for Hindus (as a vicarious burden for similar weightage for Muslims in the Muslim minority Provinces), came forward dauntlessly to take advantage of the increasing educational facilities and to over-come their handicaps vis-a-vis their Hindu compatriots, and soon entered the field of government service as serious candidates for sharing the privilege. The Hindus, however, stood already entrenched in the field and the Muslims had mostly to wait their turn for positions to emerge or fall vacant. The process was however soon jolted into a commotion, if not a sudden halt, with the establishment of Pakistan, Hindus begun leaving their posts in hundreds and thousands. The Sindhis Muslims stepped forward to fill in the gap. To their chagrin, however, the Muhajir-ruling clique of Pakistan, as a studied political move, brought in hordes of Urdu-speaking service personnel from India and moved them in to occupy the vacant positions, not only in the Central government departments, as functioning in Sindh, but even more so, in almost all the provincial sectors of service under Government of Sindh. Even the future chances of the Sindhi youth to get into service in Sindh stood dimmed, as almost all departments of government, in this mad, grab for service, came to be headed by non-Sindhi officers, who took every care to see that, except some lower grade minor parts, every other job went to their Urdu-speaking favorites. There is a serious unemployment among the Sindhi youth stalking the land today. The doors of Central Government service of all types, including the armed services, have remained, more or less shut on them from the very beginning. They have to struggle hard for getting an opening for a decent job in their home province too.

In face of these conditions, if any body protests, he is accused of (provincialism and is declared to be an enemy of Pakistan and is immediately silenced. Many leading politicians in Sindh have been thus blackmailed into keeping their mouth shut. The Sindhi people have to suffer and yet not to complain. A part from their unemployment that ensues under this one-sided flow of job opportunities passing them by and leaving them high and dry, there is even more dangerous consequence inherent in the situation. All reins of administration remaining in the hands of non-Sindhi Officers, the Sindhi people have to remain dependent on them in almost all civil affairs of life and suffer all consequences of the State of social and political subordination that remains their lot when all executive authority of government has to be welded by people, socially and culturally alien to them and politically and economically their superiors. There can be no worse state of total slavery for a people than this.

Lately Mr. Bhutto, a gentleman from Sindh, was installed into power as President of Pakistan (now the Prime Minister). As a small price, which his political masters most cynically extracted from him for the privilege of being put up as their show-boy , was the summary dismissal of 1300 officers, more than half of whom happened to be Sindhi officers.

At the time of British conquest of Sindh in 1843, the Sindhi Hindus, being mostly traders, held not even an acre of agricultural land in their possession. During the British Raj, however, they bought land, having piled up monetary resources from trade, money-lending business and from State employment. Thus, by 1947, the year of Pakistan s birth, they had brought into their possession nearly two and a half million acres of agricultural land. This land they had mostly secured from Sindhi Muslim farmers through usurious operations. The indebtedness of peasantry in the days of British rule in India had reached disastrous proportions, and in almost all provinces debt reconciliation registrations had been sponsored and adopted by Provincial government to lighten the Back-breaking burden of usurious debts of the peasant masses. The then provincial Government of the Punjab had even adopted a land Alienation Bill aimed at the return of such lands to the farmers as had passed into the hands of usurious banias through un-relieved mortgage or in straight payment of such debts. The Sindh, Provincial Legislative Assembly had passed two similar bills, which awaited formal assent of the Indian Viceroy in 1947, to go into effect as law. After the formation of Pakistan, these bills came up for the required assent before Mr. Jinnah as Governor General of Pakistan. On advice from Liaquat Ali Khan Mr. Jinnah refused his assent to the two measures, under which most of the two and a half million acres of the Hindu owned its original Sindhi would have resumed agricultural land Muslim owners. Why was this formal consent to the two most humanitarian and, for that matter pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu Legislative measures refused by Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan? Because, they had their diabolical designs of creating and reestablishing zamindaris and talukdaris of the Nawabs from U.P.C.P. and Deccan in Sindh, by handing over to them all these Hindu owned lands, declaring them as evacuee land which they actually most shame-facially did shortly afterwards. There was a mad Scramble for these lands among the Urdu-speaking Muhajirs from India, and most of these vast tracts of rich and the most ferocious and cunning sharks among them on the strength appropriated fertile lands generally of totally false and bogus claims. Not an inch of these lands was given to the Sindhi farmers, the landless peasants, some of whom even held at the time independent legal claims on them, and which they had owned and tilled for generations.

As a vote-catching promises, Mr. Bhutto had offered the Sindhi Hari a grant of 16 acres of land each on his coming into power in Pakistan, with the exception of the few, who saw through his deception the generality of the people did vote him into power. Mr. Bhutto, on his part, however, did not keep his promise. The Muhajir allotted of the evacuee lands still remain masters of their loot, and the Punjabi army and civilian officers who got hundreds of thousands of acres of the Barrage land and the Makhi forest lands in Sindh as rewards for their services to the Muhajir-Punjabi Raj in Pakistan, still retain what they got as their master share in the loot. A systematic colonization of Sindh by the alien people, particularly from the Punjab is now proceeding vigorously as the main part of the price Mr. Bhutto has willingly undertaken to pay for permission to play the show-boy to the Punjabi-Muhajir Alliance for giving a sort of facetiousness to their empire in Pakistan.

Quite a sizable area of arable land lies barren in Sindh for want of irrigation facilities. As measures for the development of Sindh s economy, Government of Sindh built two barrages, the Kotri barrage and the Guddu barrage, at the cost of over two hundred crores of rupees every single rupee having been saved by government by economizing rigorously on their public funds. The project of the two barrages visualized settlement and rehabilitation of nearly 250 thousands families of the Sindhi landless Haris, on the new lands to be brought under irrigation, that, however, did not happen. On completion of the Kotri barrage, Sindh as a province ceased to exist, and was swallowed in what euphemistically came to be called "One Unit". The barrage was re-christened Ghulam Mohammed Barrage after the name of the fanatic Punjabi Governor General of Pakistan, who, wishing to go down in history as one of the empire builders of the Punjab, and conceived and brought about, at the point of the gun, the diabolic scheme of one Unit, resulting into abolition of the home-lands of the smaller nationals in West Pakistan as separate province and absorption there of in the Punjab under a single unified administration. About a year later, the facade of democracy was fully torn as under and the whole country was impelled unceremoniously under martial law. Armed thus with one Unit s fumigated Punjabi administration directed straight from Lahore, and backed by the authority of Martial Law, the pioneers of the Muhajir-Punjabi ruling junta in Sindh distributed with great abandon almost all the that best land of the barrage among the retired as well as the serving army and civilian Punjabi Officers. Nearly the entire remaining barrage land was put to auction, so managed that major portion of it too was acquired by the Punjabi bidders. Modern colonies and town ships went up in the area where the Punjabi settlers established themselves as privileged communities, conscious of their role to overawe and suppress the inferior subject people who might otherwise attempt mischief and cause trouble for the master nation ruling over them.

The indigenous communities, hard-pressed under organized harassment of varied kinds often left their lands. No protest and no resistance against the situation availed, in face of the government backing of the settlers. The military government of West Pakistan, General Mohammed Moosa, himself a recipient of land grant in Sindh, could not resist claiming credit in his public speech at Nawabshah for having put Hyder-Bux Jatoi and G.M. Sayed in jail for their crime of opposing the one-Unit and agitating against land grants to non-Sindhis in Sindh.

The Sindhi people own a language, which is both original and living. Government of Sindh starting with their life as an autonomous province under British Raj in 1936 had their projects for developing Sindhi to serve the modern needs of its people. They had set up a Board, known the Sindhi Adabi Board for promotion of Sindhi literature with this end in view. We have already referred above to the attempts made by the Muhajir-Punjabi Vested interests, after the establishment of Pakistan, to supplant the language of the original peoples and impose upon them Urdu, an imported language, as national language of Pakistan. They chose the Sindhi Language as the main target of their hostility-the reason for their selection of Sindhi in this behalf being the comparatively higher level of development attained by this language among all the peoples languages in West Pakistan. Immediately on the establishment of one-Unit administration, they imposed a cut on the monetary grants usually payable to the Sindhi Adabi Board. Non-Sindhi ex-officio members were thrust on the managing body of the Board, and its funds were diverted to arbitrary and irresponsible use, with the result that substantive project of the Board such as the following, were either shelved or could not be successfully completed:

A Dictionary of the Sindhi Language, in 3 parts.
A History of Sindh, in 8 Volumes.
An Encyclopaedia in Sindhi.
Heritage of Sindh.
Sindhi translation of World Classics.
Plays and Dramas in Sindhi staging them and exhibition thereof in Films.
Sindh Folklore in forty volumes.
A Sindhi Dictionary of Technical Terms.
Manual of Sindhi Shorthand.
A Standard Key Board for the Sindhi typewriter. Etc. etc.

The Sindhis hoped that in accordance with democratic traditions and modern political climate in the world, favoring democracy, Secularism, nationalism and socialism, there would be freedom of expression for propagating views in favor of these civilized concepts of politics in Pakistan too. The realities in Pakistan however belied these hopes. The Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests, grabbing all power and privilege in the Country, on the strength of an incongruous and in consonant theory of nationhood based on nothing but the self-semi particularism induced by a mis-anthropical religious obscurantism, saw their safety only in zealously shutting out every non-conformist view be it democratic, be it socialist, secularist, ethical or humanist. This flinty bigotry of theirs however, did not reflect any genuine religious Puritanism on their part, it only rafted their class position since it protected their class interests. At the same time, lest they appeared primitives they would most unabashedly claim credit for democracy, socialism even secularism and for that matter any thing and every thing that received approbation in outside world. Getting further hardened thus in self-complacent virtuosity, they would bear down, with added frenzy on those who differ from them in anything, down to the very last detail.

goondas

From the very start of the establishment of Pakistan, the real reins of power happened to fall into the hands of the Civil Services and the Military Junta as agents of the Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests. The Junta firmly held the reins and pulling the strings as best or worst as they could make the civilian government dance to their tune. They shuffled the Central Cabinets of ministers as the same suited their imperious purposes as masters of the show. Liaquat Ali Khan was put out of the way. Khuwaja Nazimuddin was dismissed, Mohammed Ali Bogra was removed, and then one after another Mohammed Ismail Chundrigar, Mohammed Ali Chaudhri, Hussain Shaheed Subrawardy, Sir Feroze Khan Noon were sent stepping on to the stage and quitting the next moment as peaceably as they came; all these frenetic changes outwardly seen as results of palace intrigues within the ruling Junta, but actually being the reflection of the deep malaise of irresoluble class cum-national contradictions inside the body politics of Pakistan.

Mushairas

The Muhajir-Punjabi ruling junta had not only made sport of government at the center, but had treated -those in the provinces with ever-greater non-challenge. In Sindh, they began with its first Chief Minister, Mohammed Ayub Khuhro, when they arbitrarily dismissed when they found him a bit recalcitrant. In came the conscience-less Pir Illahi Bux abjectly to do their bidding, but unfortunately for him, he was found guilty of election malpractice s by an Election Tribunal and was disqualified to hold membership of the Assembly, and had therefore to quit his Gadi. In his place Yousaf Haroon, who was not even a member of the Assembly, was brought in and seated as -Chief Minister of Sindh. A few months later, they hunted him off to Australia as ambassador, and called in Kazi Fazlullah to occupy his place. Soon they found Kazi Sahib a bit assertive and hustled him out without much of a ceremony. Meanwhile, Khuhro had begun showing a contrite spirit, and so he was offered at second chance. But it seemed he had not yet learnt his full lesson, and was making much of powers and rights. He and a number of the cabinet ministers were therefore handed over to a judicial tribunal under PARODA. Sindh s autonomy was suspended, and the provincial administration was handed over t person wholly and solely theirs. That was Shaikh Din Muhammad, a hard and fanatic Punjabi. He now became the Governor of Sindh. Colonization of Sindh by Punjabi-Zamindars and peasantry, under a long term plan with political over-tones to disturb the basic population structure to the disadvantage of the Sindhi people was seriously taken in hand during the Governor s Raj of this retired Punjabi-minded High Court Judge.

In 1953, Sindh got a freshly elected Provincial Assembly. But, as the leader of the House and its Chief Minister it could get none from among its elected representatives. The ruling junta at the center picked up Pirzada Abdul Sattar from the Central Assembly for the job, and thrusted him on Sindh as its Chief Minister. On finding his position shaky Mr. Pirzada secured permission from his patrons at the Center to expand his ministry over one hundred percent. But six ministers or the thirteen ministers could not after all ensure for him the lasting patronage of his masters. They could only manage for him the Sindh Assembly members, which they successfully did and Mr. Pirzada started having a comfortable, run of his administration in the Province. No sooner had he consolidated his position thus, than the ruling junta conceived their criminal one-Unit Plan and confronted Mr. Pirzada with the most difficult choice of his life. As a price he had to agree to the dissolution of Sindh as a Province. Mr. Pirzada made up his mind and firmly stood his ground. The ruling Junta could brook no non-sense on the issue. M. Khuhro, the iron man of Sindh, who seemed by now well chastened, and was making sufficiently moving overtures for permission to make a comeback, was offered the chance, and he readily agreed to perform the task. He was not a member of the Sindh Assembly then. He was at the time under a 6-year disqualification to participate in Politics. He was yet made the Chief Minister of Sindh in place of Pirzada who was stalled, the world knows how. Then, the matter lead of One-Unit was poured down the threat of Sindh under Police bayonets. The writer was one of those Assembly members and nationalist workers who were whisked into jail on the eve of the operations.

The sufferings of Sindh under One-Unit were too many and too acute to be recounted with equanimity. The plan to decimate Sindh as a political entity and permit its existence only as a district of the Punjab, seriously conceived under Shaikh Din Muhammad the first Punjabi Governor of Sindh, in 1952, was placed on the anvil in the shape of One-Unit. Sindh started its sad career under one-unit with its 33 crore rupees national savings whisked off into rat hole of the greater Punjab Coffers. All Sindh Government furniture, including carpeting and tapestry, stationery and office equipment, and the most valuable library of Sindh Legislative Assembly were carried to Lahore. Almost the entire good agricultural land under the Sindh barrages was snatched off from the out-stretched hands of the landless peasants of Sindh and pushed into those of the Punjabi army and civilian officers and other managed Chaudhries. Regular colonization officers were appointed in every district in Sindh to settle Punjabis on lands in Sindh in a big way. All Sindhis district officers were replaced with non Sindhis officers in order to crush any and every sign of unrest against colonization in particular and the one unit administration in general. The name of Sindh and every thing else written in Sindhi script was effaced from all public places, including railway stations, postal stamps, milestones, voters lists forms and registers. The literary and cultural institutions like the Sindhi Adabi Board, Shah Latif cultural Center, etc, were starved of funds. The Sindh University and colleges in Sindh were put under non-Sindhi heads, and non-Sindhi teachers, and the nationalist-minded Sindhi students were harassed, beaten and jailed. Recruitment in service, town to the positions of peons and chowkidars came to be almost reserved for non-Sindhis. Import and export licenses and permits for setting up factories were generally denied to Sindhis except for a few agents who, getting these permits and licenses as price for their dirty work, only used the same for collecting easy money on transfer thereof to highest bidders in the black market. No argument or protest availed for any body and anywhere for recognition, support or protection of Sindh or Sindhian interests in any field or department of life.

How and to what limits have the rights and interests of the Sindhi people been ignored crushed into dust in Pakistan can also be read in the memorandum presented to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then President of Pakistan, by the Sindhi students. The memorandum, among other things, carried the following observations

There are over one thousand firms owned by the Muhajir-Punjabi capitalists in Sindh, in which more than a hundred thousands employees worked but out of them there may hardly be a hundred employees who could be the Sindhis.

There are nearly 400 industries, in both the public and private sectors, functioning in Sindh, in which over one million workers, skilled and unskilled remained employed. Out of these one million workers hardly one percent could be the Sindhis.
The leading private banks in Sindh, viz., Habib Bank: United Bank, Muslim commercial Bank, etc. have nearly 400 branches in Sindh, in which over 10,000 persons are employed. Sindhis among them were hardly 2 percent. In the branches of the two government banks in Sindh, the State Bank and the National Bank of Pakistan, not even these 2% Sindhis are there.
These banks manned almost entirely by non-Sindhis offer credit facilities mainly to non-Sindhi commercial and industrial interests, and hardly any to the Sindhis. This results in continuing backwardness of the Sindhi Society in the field of trade, commerce and industry.
The Central Government has spent nearly 50 crore rupees on providing free houses to Muhajirs. Besides, huge amounts of money have been lent to them, particularly in Karachi to build houses for themselves. No step has however, been taken for similar settlement and rehabilitation of Sindhi people. Almost one fourth of the indigenous people of Sindh lead nomadic and semi-nomadic life, live in isolated hutment and in dirty villages. Nothing has been done for the rehabilitation of these neglected people. They re main deprived of good shelter, education medical care, pure drinking water, roads and other modern amenities like electricity, gas, cinemas, radio, etc. In Karachi itself there are the Lyari Quarters, Cumbharwada, Khado, Oharibabad, the Chanesar Goth, the Bhutto Village and the original settlement of Brohis, Makranis Gabols, Gadas, Burfats, and other tribes, who continue living in the same old and dilapidated hutment and dirty environments. On one hand nearly 3 million Sindhis lead a semi-nomadic existence in Sindh, and in Karachi. 01£ the other hand, just next to such very similar semi-nomadic people, are raised Posh colonies like Nazimabad Korangi, Liaquatabad, Drigh colony, Saeedabad and such other modern resettlements at the cost of crores of rupees. A few days back, the Chairman of the Karachi Development Authority has announced in the press that Government has just sanctioned eight crores rupees for the construction of houses for the incoming Biharis from Bangla Desh".

The students have further addressed Mr. Bhutto in their memorandum thus: "You are aware, Sir, That every nation and every country possesses the following three most valuable national assets, the preservation of which they hold to be their national duty:

"You are also aware, sir that when nations conquer other nations and make them their slaves, they use the following methods too completely destroys their victims: -

They keep them subduced by force.
They control their economic assets and appropriate the same to their own use.
They propagate among the subject people ideologies calculated to train their minds into acceptance, and even approval of their state of subjection.
They sow seed of dissension among the subject people and make them fight among themselves; select the timid and selfish from amongst them to serve as their agents.
They suppress the language and culture of the subject people and in its place impose their own language and culture on them".

The students go forward to simplify these points in their memorandum to Mr. Bhutto as follows: The first question to settle is whether or not Sindh is a separate country and the Sindhi people are a separate nation.

"The fact cannot be denied that Sindh has assured the shape and status of a country for thousands of years past, during which period it has held a distinct political identity historical traditions, languages culture and a specific community of economic interest. It was a free and independent State on the eve of its conquest by the British Imperialists. It has throughout its chequered history, striven to preserve and safeguard its liberty."

"It recovered its-freedom after the Greeks subdued it on fields of battle, and governed itself for hundreds of years afterwards as a free country and a free people. The Arab conquered it later in war of prolonged and heroic fighting but it soon recovered its liberty and again saw its own sons and daughters rule themselves for well high six hundred years under the Samma and Soomra periods of its life. For a brief period of less than 200 years (1543-1738), it again lost its liberty, to Arghuns, Tarkhans and the Mughals. But this period of its subjection was also the period of its test and justification, for it was during this period that the Sindhi people waged their most heroic struggle for freedom unremittingly and gave no peace to their alien rulers, till they drove them out and recovered their liberty and established their self rule under Kalhoras. This time their independence lasted for a hundred years, till in 1843, the British armies defeated the free and independent Talpur rulers at Miami, the most severely contested battle of all the battles which the British fought during their empire building campaigns in India.

"The British conquerors, for their administrative convenience, attached Sindh with Bombay Presidency of India. The Sindhi people struggled against this, and succeeded in bringing about its separation from Bombay, in 1936. But they bad hardly taken a few steps towards reconstruction of their education, health, agriculture, communications etc. why some eleven years later, it was involved into the concretion of Indian Reforms and, in the name of religion, was eddied into Pakistan and transplanted into it as its part.

"The Sindhi people had expected on the basis of Lahore resolution of the All India Muslim League, that within the sphere of Pakistan, Sindh shall be an independent and Sovereign State." But it did not happen.

"Sindh, under a systematic scheme, has suffered terribly in Pakistan. It has been turned into- an unchanging minority under the hegemony of an unchanging majority. In the name of Unity, solidarity and security of Pakistan, its population ratio is being overturned. The distinct nationality of its people is being denied and controverted for the sake of the Muhajir Punjabi Vested Interests-. Its Language of the great past is being submerged under an upstart of a stranger language. Its culture is being suppressed. Schemes are afoot for bringing about its dismemberment.

"In the world of government services, the Sindhis find themselves almost non-existent. In the Central services hardly two of them can be found in five thousands. In the provincial services in their own homeland their percentage is below forty. In the Central Secretariat there is hardly one Sindhi in two thousands, in the Defense department, one in five thousands in the Railway department one in a thousand in the Foreign Affairs department hardly any with the exception of a couple of ambassadors, and in the Finance department none at all. -State Bank of Pakistan has only 3 Sindhi Officers among its 959 to date, and only 40 Sindhis among its three and half thousands -lower staff members. National Bank of Pakistan can boast of 5 Sindhi officers among its 1200 today, and some 150 among its five thousands lower staff. The radio and Television have hardly one Sindhi in thousand. In the higher educational institutions in Sindh, non-Sindhi teachers are in a talking majority and under Karachi Municipal Corporation, out of some 13 senior departmental heads, only two are Sindhis. The position under Hyderabad Municipality is only slightly better. Among the ministerial lower staff under these Municipal administrations, Sindhis are no more than 5 and 20% respectively. On the break of One-Unit and restoration of Sindh as a Province, the Sindh Secretariat started with 66 senior departmental heads, out of whom only - 19 were the Sindhis. If the Sindhi people demand their rights in service according to their population or talk of any social, political, cultural and economic right they are blackmailed into silence by being shown up in the frenzied Urdu Press as enemy agents, enemies of-Islam and even enemies of Pakistan.

"There are non-Sindhi teachers in a big majority in the higher education institutions in Sindh, and in most of the cases occupy directorial positions there, from where they let no chance spare without injuring the interests of the Sindhis students both in the class room teaching and in the examinations.

"The Sindhi students have to study Urdu as a compulsory subject from class IV to class XII, while the Urdu students do not study Sindhi at all. The result of this discriminative burden of studies has played havoc with the life career of the Sindhi students, as in all school and school leaving examinations and the entrance examinations for professional studies, the Sindhi students have to complete with Urdu-students with an in-supportable handicap under which the Sindhi students have to take test for 100 marks in Urdu language which is not their mother tongue, while the Urdu students have to take the test for the same 100 marks in their own mother tongue. The children of the Sindhian parentage have suffered under this discrimination in our educational institutions since 1955; the year of the imposition of cursed one-unit on Sindh, and continues to remain its victims todate.

"A predatory people imposing their language and culture on another people, whom they have subjected politically and economically, are seen to be engaged in establishing their intellectual imperialism on these other people, The Sindhis when they talked of Pakistan or were told what it would be, where not then, nor are they now, prepared for such a subservience under any cost. They on the contrary hoped and believed that with the passage of time when feelings cooled down, and the Muhajir Punjabi started getting absorbed in Sindhi society, some of the Sindhi Hindus who had left Sindh under duress would start their backward trail to their motherland, with the return of Engineers, doctors, professors, writers, scientists and of those among them who were the devotees and scholars of Shah Enayat Sufi, Makhdoom Bilawal, Shah Abdul Latif, Sachal Sarmast, Sami and other evolved souls and divine humanists of Sindh. The flowering and fructification of Sindhi life and its culture with its immortal message of love, Catholicism and humanity will begin growing and spreading its felicitous influence on the hate-ridden atmosphere in the sub-continent and the clashing tac-au-tac of warrying ideologies and interests of the world. This was to be the contribution of Sindh to human civilization towards the development of universal brotherhood and world peace.

"Experience has taught us, however, that these new arrivals, being the children of hatred, violence and greed, were neither willing nor ready to join us in this mission of taming, the brute in man. For the sake of serving their class interests that lay in (i) protection of loot they collected and privilege they acquired in Pakistan, and (ii) preservation of their exploitative position in society, they would go to any length to keep the cauldron of ill will and hate boiling in the sub-continent, and would not hesitate for attaining that end, to serve as agents of American Imperialism and push the whole sub-continent under foreign slavery.

"Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, the worst parochial Muhajir Leader, whom his followers Lionized as Qaide-Millat i.e. the Director of Muslim Nation because of his having lactated Sindh and thrown it at the feet of Muhajirs, was guilty of the following atrocious behavior in the above context.

He diverted the people s attention from the real problems of poverty, reconstruction, economic development literary and unity and goodwill among the peoples, facing the country, and instead laid the foundations for policy of confrontation with Bharat, for the purpose of establishing and consolidating political, economic and cultural domination of Muhajir in Pakistan. The Muhajir-Punjabi ruling circles in the country have since stuck to this policy confrontation with Bharat, and are carrying it on stealthily even today, because it suits the identical purposes of the Punjabi exploitative interests even more admirably.
He kept the Khokhrapar and the Karachi Sea Port the two points of entry in Sindh borders open, for the ceaseless immigration of Muhajir from India into Sindh, even though the Bengal, the Punjab and the N.W.F.P provincial governments in Pakistan had closed their borders to such immigration within their areas.
He misguided Jinnah on the question of Karachi and arranged its separation from Sindh, intending to make it a concentration point for Muhajirs, who now are dreaming to convert it fully into a Muhajiristan.
When asked to pay compensation to Government of Sindh for its crores of rupees worth properties taken over in Karachi by the Central Government, which he himself had solemnly undertaken to pay on the floor of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, Liaquat Ali Khan with hardly any compunction, spurted La-di-da what compensation! There is no compensation of a conquered territory!
Getting hurt at his loose references to Sindh and the Sindhi people, Sayed Haji Ali Akbar Shah a venerable old man, the then President of Sindh Provincial Muslim League led a deputation to Liaquat Ali Khan, and requested him to exercise due restraint in his talk about these delicate matters, Liaquat Ali Khan, whom power and pomp had probably turned too much into a puddle-headed snapped at Shah Sahib: Truth is truth What is Sindhi Culture? Donkey driving and Camel riding! What else! This could be the epitome of the mind of this arch enemy of Sindh and Sindhi people, whom he thought he had conquered and who therefore had only to make Farshi Salams to him and to every Muhajir who had followed him to this land.
Liaquat Ali Khan did not confine his designs to Sindh for turning it into a jagir for Muhajirs but simultaneously he cost his eyes on other areas of Pakistan as, well. The other province that received his attention in this respect was the East Bengal. He had already succeeded in creating discord between Maulvi Fazl-ul-Haq, the popular old leader of Bengal, and Mr. Jinnah. Mr. Jinnah had, by then acquired a great deal of power and prestige under backing of the British authorities and publicity and propaganda of clever Muslim politicians from the Muslim minority provinces. He had otherwise undergone no suffering or sacrifice in the freedom Movement. He hardly participated in it. As against Maulvi FazI-ul Haq, he had no locus stand with the people of Bengal. He however succeeded in over throwing the popular leader in his province, with the support of the English Governor of Bengal and the communal sections of Bengali population. This happened prior to the birth of Pakistan. An other nationalist political leader of Bengal was Hussain Shaheed Suharwardy. He had also like Maulvi Fazle ul Haq, enjoyed a great deal of popularity and backing among Bengalis. He had been the Chief Minister of the United Bengal, but since he was a able and powerful leader of a majority province in Pakistan, and could not relied upon as a mere yes man of Mr. Jinnah, the clever Muhajir leadership brought about a clash between the two leaders. He was denigrated, and in preference to him Khuwaja Nazimuddin, a docile, sluggish and pliable gentleman was made the first Chief Minister of East Bengal. Mr. Suharwardy was dismissed even from his elected position as member of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. "Liaquat Ali Khan pursued the policy of settling Bihari Muhajir in East Bengal in the place of Hindus who were to be driven away from their houses, government positions and their business establishments, just as they were in Sindh. Liaquat Ali Khan also mis-guided Mr. Jinnah to make an absurd announcement that Urdu, a totally strange language to Bengalis in its vocabulary, phonetic system, and even script, was to be the national language even for them. This led to the rise of an angry popular Language Movement in that province, which finally ended in the emergence of Bangla Desh as an independent and sovereign state and its separation from Pakistan. "Liaquat Ali Khan was elected to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly as a representative from East Bengal. He replayed the Bengali People for their trust in him in sowing dissension among them, and exposing them to the lacerating bloody fangs of Muhajir-Punjabi imperialism. The main cause of the Bengali people rising against Pakistan was the attitude and behavior of the parochial and predatory Bihari Muhajir immigrants there under the lead and support of their counterpart patrons in West Pakistan, viz. the Muhajir Punjabi vested interests and their ruling clique initially led and set in the way by Liaquat Ali Khan.
An other area for Liaquat Ali Khan s conspiratorial and intimidatory pro-Muhajir politics was the Province of Punjab itself. The first Chief Minister of the Pakistan part of the Punjab was Nawab Iftkhar Hussain Mamdot, a simple, sincere and honest Muslim League worker. He was not a man of much brilliance and ability. All his policy decisions and his entire administration were shaped and run on initiative from the Punjab Civil Service. The Muhajir Leadership under Liaquat Ali Khan did not feel easy at this. The Punjab Civil Service, what-ever could be their other faults and detractions, were patriotic Punjabis and defied all attempts on the part of the Muhajir ruling and defied all attempts on the part of the Muhajir ruling clique, based at the center under Liaquat Ali Khan, to spread the Muhajir tentacles in Punjab. Liaquat Ali Khan countered this defiance of the Punjab Civil Service by ousting Nawab Mamdot and installing Mian Mumtaz Mohammed Daulatana, an able and autocratically minded politician, in his place, so that he may cut the Civil Service into size.

Liaquat Ali Khan maneuvered the two leading nationalists in Pakistan, namely the Bengalis and the Punjabis into an irreconcilable conflict by egging on one against the other. The Bengalis he tickled at their numerical strength, having an over-all majority and entitled, therefore to rule Pakistan in accordance with universally accepted principles of democracy, while the Punjabis he excited at their superiority in the military and the Civil services, over-all ability to rule, and their economic advancement, and entitled, therefore, to rule Pakistan on the basis of merit. The Clashes and controversies that the incompatibility of the two positions raised in the country resulted into delay in the adoption of a constitution for the country. In the melee that ensued, Liaquat Ali Khan and his Muhajir ruling clique got an opportunity to spread their tentacles all around and consolidate their positions in every sphere of life in Pakistan as an indispensable third factor, out only to wish the two sides well and help them arrive at a balance.
Liaquat Ali Khan, finding the nationalist government of Dr. Khan Sahib in the N.W.F.P. not ready to play to his tune, dismissed it inspite of its majority support in the provincial Assembly, and thrust on the people Khan Abdul Qayoom Khan as the Chief Minister of the province, who started crushing with heavy hand the patriotic peoples movement of the Pakhtoon nation. This man originally was a member of the Khudai-Khidmatgar Movement led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. It was great patriotic movement for freedom from British Imperialism, and had suffered a great deal in its heroic struggle for national liberation. Khan Qayoom Khan turned traitor to the movement in the midst of its course. To compensate his scheme and to establish his loyalty with the masters, he committed untold atrocities on the workers of the movement. Liaquat Ali Khan in his pursuit of the policy of divide and rule , picked out in every case the worst and the most degraded men in the national life of the peoples as his tools. He thus corrupted the entire politics of Pakistan beyond redemption.
The all India Muslim League had repeatedly adopted resolutions since 1930 for introduction of democratic reforms in Baluchistan in part with other provinces in India. On the League s assumption of power in Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan not only did not grant any such reforms to Baluchistan, but also rounded up its entire political leadership and hustled them into jails simply because they were nationalistically minded and wanted to live life of an independent and self-respect mg people.
Liaquat Ali Khan built up an atmosphere of greed intolerance, hate, and villaining in the country, all the time aiming at establishment and consolidation of dictatorship of the Muhajir Elite in Pakistan. He tried to hold the country at a safe distance from the contagion of democracy, secularism, nationalism, and socialism. Any one who indicated any serious trend for progressivism was a Bharati agent a provincialist an atheist, an enemy of Pakistan, and a subversions, and was punished accordingly. Pakistan as a jagir of the Muhajir Elite had to be kept protected against all such anti-Islam and anti Pakistan stuff, in order to safeguard it from danger, which surrounded it, the danger of Bharat, the danger of communism, the danger of parochialism etc.
Liaquat Ali Khan had an unrestrained and loose tongue. He called Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his associates agents of India and traitors to Pakistan , little realizing that by giving vent to his laxity of mind, he left a permanent scar on the hearts of the Pakhtoon people which he thus wounded by insulting their most loyal and revered leader and his courageous and self-sacrificing band of followers. In the same way he called the most popular nationalist leader of the Bengalis, Hussain Shaheed Suharwardy a kept spy of Hindustan and dog . The other equally popular and widely respected leader of the Bengali people. Maulana Fazl-ul-Haq he called a purchased slave of the Hindus . Similarly he called G.M. Sayed and Shaikh Abdul Majid Sindhi, the most devoted and selfless servants of the Sindhi people. "The paid agents of the Hindus and traitors to the nation . He put Khan Abdul Samad Khan and Shahzada Abdul Karim and other nationalist leaders of Baluchistan in jail for no other reason except only the one namely their crime to stand up for the lasting good of their homeland and to raise a bold and defiant voice for it.
Liaquat Ali Khan so encouraged and incited the Muhajir population in Sindh that they started believing themselves to be the conquerors of Sindh and acting so pompously and so over-bearingly that they soon lost all sympathy with the Sindhi people, which had been lavished on them on their first arrival in Sindh as people who had fled their homes and sought shelter in Sindh against persecution and terror. The Sindhi people now saw them as their enemies out to exploit them and even to supplant them. They appeared to them to be only a band of dissimulating moneygrubbers out to hate, despoil, blurt and brag about.
Liaquat Ali Khan patronized and pampered bureaucracy beyond measure, which till his times mainly consisted of the Urdu-speaking Muhajir-Officers caste. The bureaucracy under him felt so emboldened that they soon started interfering in the politics of the country.
He despoiled democracy in Pakistan almost spitefully, and laid ground for Fascism to take root and grow. To have feel of Fuehrer he arranged for a huge crowd of his Muhajir followers to arrive in a big banner carrying procession at his official residence in Karachi and himself came out at the window of one of its balconies and, like a gimmick of a Hitler or Mussolini, raised his arm in a mailed fist, and declared that to be the symbol of Pakistan politics. Taking it as a cue processions of people were organized in several other cities of Pakistan, who went through roads and streets with their fore arm raised up in the form of a Mukka, (fist mailed). Thus politics in Pakistan was lent fascistic overtones from almost its very start by none others than its founding leadership.

The Sindhi students also later presented a petition to the then Chief Minister of Sindh, Mumtaz Ali Bhutto in which they discussed problems of their people at some length. Relevant extracts from this petition may not be out of place here After discussing the background of Pakistan in the context of Sindh, the students referred to the then existing situation in the following words.

"We realize, Sir, that it is for the first time after the establishment 6f Pakistan, that today we have a democratically formed government in the country, which has been given to us by the Pakistan Peoples Party, and whose President, fortunately happens to be Sindhi. "We also realize that Peoples Party over whelming consists of representatives from the Punjab, among whom there are fanatic and imperialistically inclined Punjabi5 like J.A. Rahim Miraj Mohammed Khan and Kausar Niazi for whom Sindh and Sindhi to say the least are just the red Raj to the Bull. "We do realize, too, that majority of the people of Punjab are today be devilled with the Muhajir ideology of hate and communalism. "We also know that the peoples Party, inspite of claiming formal belief in non-communal and progressive principles, permits itself, for the sake of continuance in power, to feign equally strongly their faith in the Muhajir inspired ideology of Muslim nationhood. "We are also aware of the fact that although the Ruling Party commands majority in the Central Assembly, its government, realizing that the real power is yet wielded by the army and civilians officers, have to carry out the latter s desires fully and unquestionably. "We know that the President of Pakistan and his colleagues, both inside the Government and outside in the party, while trumpeting their faith in Islamic Constitution. Islamic Raj and the ideology of Pakistan yet insist on keeping up a show of outward belief in democracy and socialism, simply, because they well known that democracy and socialism cannot any way will attained without nationalism and secularism. "You know, Sir, that in what remains of Pakistan today, there exist four languages i.e. Sindhi, Punjabi Pakhtoons and Balochi since ages past. You also know that among these four languages of the Pakistani peoples, Sindhi happens to be the richest and the most highly, developed language at the moment, and for that reason a right to be made the sole national language of Pakistan. Not withstanding this awareness, your Party, merely for fear of displeasing the Punjabi public opinion in order to placate the turgid communalism of the speaking Muhajirs, decided to make Urdu, a foreign language, the sole national language of Pakistan, by exposed Sindhi language even in its own homeland to the danger of being reduced to the status of mere vernacular. This is proved by the very fact of our own government in Sindh under your good-self shying at making Sindhi language the official language even of Sindh. "You very well know that majority of the conscious I well informed persons among the Sindhis were not satisfied with the language Bill in the shape it was moved your government in the Sindh Legislative Assembly, but realizing your limitations and difficulties in the matter, the people of Sindh kept quiet at it.

"Out of 62 members of the Sindh Assembly, 51 member voted for that bill and the Assembly passed it an Act in the form of a national achievement.

"You also know that the Urdu speaking Muhajir members the Assembly opposed the bill vigorously, and immediately after its passage through the Assembly, they brought about and even led, language riots in Karachi and in other big cities, in which the Sindhi houses and shops were burnt looted, and Sindhis were killed and publicly humiliated. Most graceless slogans written on the walls against the President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, against you yourself and the Governor of Sindh Mir Rasool Bux Talpur. Their graves were build and openly disgraced their effigies were burnt. Their names tied to the collars of dogs, and these dogs paraded on the roads most indecent slogans written, cartoons were and posters were stuck on the walls in the cities against the wife and daughter of the President. All these things were said and done involving the President of Pakistan, the Chief Minister and the governor of Sindh and Others of your party and the Sindhi people as a whole, only because they were Sindhis. There was a strong reaction among the Sindhi people against all these deliberate acts of provocation by organized bands of Muhajir hoodlums, who could have been taught a lesson in return by the Sindhi people throughout Sindh, but for the protection afforded to them by the peoples Party Workers under orders from the President. It was however expected that your sense of national honor will be stirred and the guilty rascals will be suitably punished.

"We were, however, amazed to see that on 8th July, 1972, a few persons were called from Sindh to Rawalpindi by the President to study and discuss the language bill as adopted by the Sindh Legislative Assembly. Among those called for the purpose were included also those Muhajirs leaders, who had organized and led those riots. All these persons were called to Rawalpindi on, government expenses, We do not know what were the pressing reasons that made the President take that undemocratic step, which was tantamount to interference in the Constitutionally guaranteed sphere of powers and authority of the Provincial Assembly. But what has since come to light in this behalf is rather disturbing and portends much harder times and conditions for whatever little provincial autonomy Sindh is otherwise to enjoy under the constitution. It is said that the Muhajir leadership, by their powerful propaganda and other means of pressurization, so affected the Punjabi Ruling Circle through Jamait Islami and the P.D.P. that they were about to stage- a revolt against the Bhutto regime, which absolutely unnerved the President, and he at once decided to accept all the terms and conditions of the Sindh Muhajirs and, in the words of Rais Amrohvi, one of those who master-minded of the language riots and who was among those invited to Rawalpindi to assuage the issue the President wanted to please and win the Muhajirs over by supplications and prayer promising their amendment of the language bill, through Ordinance, as defused by them.

"You, on your part here in Sindh, however, kept up the deception by announcing that the Bill was not to be touched and had to remain as it was originally adopted by the Sindh Legislature, the rights of Sindhis shall not be whittled down and the language problem in Sindh stood amicably solved.

"If you don t mind, we may however plainly tell you that there can be no bigger hypocrisy and deception than this. In case you are not ready to listen to the view or sentiments of Sindhis except through the method of mob violence as the Muhajirs adopt with you, that could then lead to an entirely different situation. However, you can not now deny the consequences and implications of the Ordinance, which your government has promulgated for amicably solving the language problem in Sindh.

Firstly, in face of this interference of the president in the provincial affairs, all provincial autonomy and all work of provincial Legislature has been reduced to a farce. If a Legislative measure adopted by majority of vote in a provincial Assembly can be reduced to a nullity with one stroke of pen by the Central Government, And if the Central Government reacts only as a pliable tool in the hands of the Muhajir Punjabi imperialist interests, just as it did in .his case, what could be the way remaining open to the patriotic Sindhis, for example, to exercise their right of arranging their internal affairs as willed by them, except that they may revolt against such an interference and seek their national right to exist with honor and dignity as a totally free and independent people out-side the arrangement, which exposes them to such a state of subjections and interference.

Secondly, this interference from the Center in the affairs of the Province amounted clearly to want of confidence in the Provincial Assembly and the Provincial Government. Sindh Assembly and your government were therefore honor bound to resign your positions instead of obeying such a ukase from the Center as sheepishly as you did.

"Thirdly, this amicable settlement outside the constitutional framework only proves that majority and its decisions are worth nothing in our way of democracy. If certain influential and disorderly people are not able to obtain what they want through democratic and constitutional means, they can always create a situation of mob-terror, and through insurrection to intimidate Power greedy bunch of rulers like you and force their hands to grant them what they demand.

"Fourthly, in this entire sordid affair the Sindhi politicians have been degraded and humiliated the most. They adopted what they believed to be a fair and reasonable piece of Legislation by majority in their legislative Assembly. Thereby a certain number of goondas and gangsters are provoked who come out in the streets and catch their people unawares kill them and burn and loot the hops and louses. These heroes of the, Assembly Hall, who inside boasted of sacrificing their lives ten times over in defense of their people, come out and a showered abuses and are openly disgraced. And yet they at once accept the conditions of the goondas, arid abjectly surrender before them. This only proves that the Sindhis have a class of people consisting of persons of your lot, who are pacifist, cowards and know no honor, and who can surrender human dignity of the Sindhi people to the enemy, tolerate every indignity at his hands and be ready to agree to every thing until nothing remains.

Actually by this surrender you have done worse than that Muhammad Ayub Khuhro did when, for the sake of office, he handed the province of Sindh over to the Punjab under One-Unit. Your surrender on this issue is worse because you are out to justify it and expect to be hurrahed for it, and yet the consequences of your surrender are for more dangerous and harmful, and may almost prove to be irreparable.

By this surrender, Sindh has been turned for the first time in its history, into the land of two languages. "By this surrender, the principle of the Urdu speaking Muhajirs in Sindh forming a nationality has been accepted and on that basis they are now asking for the partitioning of Sindh.

"These consequences of your surrender are of grave consequences for the future of the Sindhi people. The problem which is there by posed before them for survival as a people in their own homeland, with or without suffering its partition, appears to be insoluble except the frame works of Pakistan. By this treacherous surrender, you have imposed a life long bloody struggle on them for self-preservation, as their national duty.

"Meanwhile, what you, in your timidity and craze for power, have additionally surrendered to the Muhajirs in id, as a immediate price for keeping peace is equally fraught with serious consequences for the Sindhi people.

"First, you have agreed to their condition 3f postings id- transfers of officers, such that nationalist minded Sindhi officers are removed as heads of certain departments of Administration and non-Sindhi officers are posted in their places.

"Second, you have resorted to mass arrests of Sindhi workers and have left the Muhajirs alone to continue agitating freely against the Sindhis.

"Third, you have undertaken to pay as compensation to the Muhajir miscreants an amount of 25 lacs rupees for the losses they suffered in the riots.

Fourth the President of Pakistan (now Prime Minister) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, undertook an extensive tour of the rural areas of Sindh and called upon the Sindhis not to resort to any retaliatory measures against Muhajirs, living in their midst, even when the latter in the cities who had killed Sindhis and burnt and looted their houses and shops there. Significantly, he avoided visiting the affected areas in the cities, where the Muhajirs had indulged in arson, loot and murder of the Sindhi life and property. The President was everywhere graciously received in the Sindhi populated areas in rural Sindh. But when he passed a worst affected area in Hyderabad the Muhajir gangs of hoodlums disgraced themselves by shamelessly indulging in naked danced through the passage of his entourage.

"Fifth, inspite of all this, President Bhutto went on television, profusely apologized to Muhajirs; begging their pardon with folded hands and even reminding them of his own sisters having been married in Muhajirs families and appealed to them abjectly to give up rioting, since all that they asked for had more than fully been granted to them.

"Sixth, the settlement arrived at with the Muhajirs leadership at Islamabad included several secret commitments, which subsequently came to light as follows: -

"Seventh the share of Muhajirs in Government services in Sindh has been agreed at 50%.

"Eighth, It was agreed that the census of propriety in Sindh would be so conducted that the fact of the Sindhi people being in majority in the land shall not be reflected or carried in the figures.

"Ninth the existing pre-ponderence of Muhajirs in the provincial service in Sindh and their weightage in central service shall in no way be reversed.

"Tenth, The existing programming on the Radio, Televisions, shall remain as overwhelmingly tilted to the side of Urdu as now, and all regional pressure calling for increase in the regional programming at the cost of national programming shall be resisted so as to avoid increase in fissiparous tendencies.

"Eleventh, it was agreed that justice or propriety of evacuee property allocations iii Sindh will not be questioned.

"Twelfth, the University of Sindh would either be closed or dispersed and denigrated, in order to weaken and diffuse the Sindhi people s nationalist movement finding its base and support among the Sindhi youth from within its precincts. Further, a secret pact with Jamait Islami, and in collaboration with it, this movement would be politically destroyed in Sindh totally and by all the means at command of the two parties viz. the ruling Peoples Party and the Jamait Islami, the party in opposition.

"We wish and pray that, all these criminal schemes of the enemies of the Sindhi people may not succeed. But the past performances of Mr. Bhutto as a master opportunist induce ominous fears in our minds about future developments some of which have already started unfolding the truth of several of these things. Mr. Bhutto is the man, who in order to please General Mohammed Ayub Khan called him Lenin, Kamal Ata-Turk, Salahuddin Ayubi and Ibrahim Lincoln, and declared before a huge audience at one of the anniversaries of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, the saint poet of Sindh who died over two hundred years ago, that had Latif been alive he would have placed garlands of flowers round the neck of the General for his excellent services to Sindh. Mr. Bhutto is the man, who, in order to please Yahya Khan and his military Junta, the succeeding military dictator in Pakistan after General Ayub Khan, advised them to take direct action in East Bengal, and publicly and most gleefully declared at the start of the bloody action there; "Thank God, Pakistan has been saved". Mr. Bhutto is the man, who sent his leading party workers, Mohammed Bux Dhamrah, Maulvi Rubbani, and others, to jail, and resorted to indiscriminate mass arrests of nationalist workers including the writer, Hafeez Qureshi and others and countenanced without loss of equanimity banding of the nationalist students detainees in the lock-ups of Larkana, his own hometown only to please the Muhajirs. If the same Mr. Bhutto shows readiness now to mortgage and even actually does mortgage Sindh s autonomy, language, culture and economic interests to the Muhajir Punjabi imperialists, it could not be entirely beyond the ken of possibilities.

"The President and his ruling party are permitting themselves to lacerate Sindh thus only for the purpose that Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests may a flow them to remain in power for some time longer. The fact cannot, however, be denied that these interests are opposing Mr. Bhutto solely because of the reason that he is a Sindhi; and so long he keeps on obeying their command and continues meeting their desire without much about the interest of Sindh or Sindhis leaving his insteps rather free to make mince meat of Sindh s interests, they in turn, will allow him to keep seated on his gaddi. But just as they threw out Khuhro from the Chief Minister-ship of West Pakistan only two months after he had handed over Sindh to them, under One-Unit in the same manner they will deal with Mr. Bhutto as well. As alas! Mr. Bhutto, then, will neither be able to save himself nor his Pakistan about the safety and integrity of which he appears to be much concerned today."

The Sindhis students in their memorandum to President Bhutto, at page 24, made him the following fervent appeal:

"Esteemed President you may graciously see from the above recital our tale of woe that Quaed-i-Azam Jinnah thrive us in this predicament by establishing Pakistan. It is now upto you mulishly to tread the same path as taken by Your predecessors and lead the country straight to disaster or to learn due lessons from the experience of its short history, and retracing certain steps, make an effort to understand and solve the country s problems denovo. We acknowledge your esteemed self to possess the following qualifications and talents, which we believe could conduce to such a bold departure from the usual, on your part:

We therefore, hold ourselves justified to appeal to you most earnestly: First to help us to save ourselves from the oppression of Muhajir-Punjabi Imperialist forces, who deny the separate national existence of the Sindh people. Second to save the Sindhi people from subjection to Muhajir-Punjabi Vested Interests, which they have imposed on the Sindhis in the name of the strong center. Third, to take steps against likelihood of imposition of Military rule on the country, possibilities of which would continue over haunting us as long as there is ceaseless expansion of armed forces, under illusory fears of Indian enmity. Fourth, to pave way for genuine socialism in the, country by basing the State policy on non-alignment internationally and on Secularism, national justice, love and tolerance instead religious bigotry, fanaticism and hatred internally. Fifth, to save the Sindhi people from the intellectual imperialism of Urdu language. "But, if for any reasons, you and your party too, like your predecessors, continue harping on the tunes of ideology of Pakistan, Indian, enmity, Islamic Form of Government and strong Center, then you will have to prepare to face the following developments: -

There will be inevitable growth of fanatic nationalism in the country, and the Provinces will turn hostile to the center, and set out breaking Pakistan into separate States.
Getting tired of Muhajir-Punjabi domination at the Center, there will arise desperate rebellious movements all around accruing no good for the country as a whole.
As a reaction to open unabashed exploitation under cover of religion, the youth in Pakistan will rebel against religion and desert it totally.
The Sindhi people will prefer leaving such Pakistan and be free from it, if they have to live in it as a colony."

The Sindhi students submitted their memoranda to the president of Pakistan, Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and to the Chief-Minister of Sindh, Mr. Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, and made feverish appeals to them for rescue, expecting, in their innocence, an instantaneously solvable response from the two little realizing that they, as mere show-boys , could hardly be in a position to do any thing of the sort. The two great men were completely occupied in endeavors to save their gaddis. What they, therefore, did was that they prescribed the two memorandums and also forfeited the Press which printed them to government. The manager of the Press was put into jail.

Under these circumstances, the Sindhi people see no way out but to break the clamps as under and get free. Pakistan has proved to be a prison-house for them, where all their hopes and aspirations of free and independent life have been crushed into dust. As a self-respecting people, loving liberty and ready and willing to pay the price for it, they find no choice before them but to bring the prison walls down and step outside to breathe free, and to think, speak and live free. This is the vision of life they see in Sindhu Desh. They are determined to build that life for themselves. They take it to be their sole national duty today to struggle for that goal and to live and die for it.

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