Bhit Shah

Sindh for grant of visas to Indian intellectuals

Karachi – Sindh Culture Minister Sassui Palijo said on Sunday that she had approached Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi for issuing visas to the poets, writers and intellectuals from India and other South Asian countries who wanted to participate in the 267th annual Urs of Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai.

She said a similar facility was granted to the participants of the recently held International Urdu Conference.

Ms Palijo said this during a meeting of officials of her department to review the arrangements of the annual Urs.

She said her department would erect a monument of Shah Abdul Latif at Sea

View in Karachi, while a cultural village would be set up at Bhit Shah on the occasion of the Urs. “A round-the-clock Sufi Mehfil will also be organised.”

Secretary Culture Ilmuddin Bulo apprised the minister of arrangements, including face-lifting of the historical Karrar lake, setting up of 12 different entrance points and security arrangements. …

Read more : The News

Hundreds of Sindhi-Americans Gathered in Houston to Pay Tribute to Their National Leader

– Condemned the religious intolerance and human rights violations in Pakistan

HOUSTON, TX, USA. Tens of hundreds of Sindhi-Americans gathered in Houston on Saturday, January 15, 2011 to commemorate the 107th birthday of Mr. G. M. Syed, a national leader of the Sindh who waged a nonviolent struggle against religious fundamentalism and for freedom.

Sindh is home to the ancient Indus (Sindhu) Valley civilization and is now a unit of Pakistan. A vibrant Sindhi-American community numbering in the tens of thousands lives in various U.S. cities. More than 30 million Sindhis live in Sindh today. Sindhis are supportive of democracy and secularism and have been marginalized by security establishment of the country and its religious extremist reactionary ideology.

Karachi – Sindh : now we see it, now we don’t!?

Courtesy: DAWN News (News Night with Talat Hussain, 17 January, 2011)

via – ZemTV – You Tube Link

First Pakistani Hybrid Car : 110 Kms per liter

Courtesy: Geo TV (Aaj Kamran Khan ke Saath, Jan 17, 2010)

via – ZemTV – You Tube Link

Pakistan’s Mullah takeover – Khalid Hasan

….  an analysis of mullah-propelled extremism by Amir Hussaini recalls that early on in Zia-ul-Haq’s draconian rule, ….

Read more : Khalid Hasan

Current wave of extremism in Pakistan

Statistical ambiguity society

Just how some recent events of our surface politics offer an interesting study of the deep politics

By Dr Ahsan Wagha

It started with the worst ideological polarisation promoted by the military generals in the 1970s when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was forced to invite Saudi ambassador Riaz Al-Khatib to mediate between him and the opposition, a practice that was reverberated during the Musharraf-Nawaz conflict and has almost culminated into becoming one of the basic features of our foreign policy. The phenomenon can be investigated in the background of the history of Arab colonisation of this region.

GM Syed’s birth anniversary today

KARACHI – The sleepy town of Sann in Dadu district lights up twice every year for GM Syed, the founder of the Sindhi nationalist movement – on January 17 for his birth anniversary and in April for his death anniversary.

While Syed and his followers are branded as traitors now in the mainstream narrative on account of their demand for an independent Sindh, few are aware of the fact that in 1940, as then-Sindh education minister, Syed was the first person from the Muslim League to table the Pakistan Resolution. As such, the Sindh Assembly was the first to demand the creation of Pakistan in as many words. He later dissociated himself from the party over disagreements with the leadership, including Muhammed Ali Jinnah.

Disillusioned eventually with what he referred to as the hegemony of certain ethnicities and classes over the polity of the newly-formed country, Syed distanced himself from the idea of Pakistan, and thus began a movement for the ‘independence’ of Sindh. Today, if one goes by the sheer number of people who visit Sann every year to pay homage to him, one would understand how much currency GM Syed’s ideology that combines nationalism with communism and Sufism has in Sindh. He also warned followers against sectarianism, and preached international peace and harmony: begin with your homeland and liberate it; then liberate the rest of the country; and then spread your ideas to the rest of the world, he said. …

Read more : Pakistan Today