Manto and Sindh – Excellent write up of Haider Nizamani, it helps to understand why Sindh is tolerant and secular society in nature.

Punjab at the time of partition in 1947.

Manto and Sindh

By Haider Nizamani

SINDH has no equivalent of Saadat Hasan Manto as a chronicler of Partition. And the absence of a Manto-like figure in Sindhi literature on that count is good news. It shows the resilience of Sindh’s tolerant culture at a time when Punjab had slipped into fratricidal mayhem.

While Amrita Pritam called out for Waris Shah to rise up from the grave to witness the blood-drenched rivers of Punjab, Sindhi woman writers such as Sundari Uttamchandani were not forced to ask Shah Latif to do the same.

The tragedy of Partition inflicted different types of pain on the Punjabi and Sindhi communities and these peculiarities shadowed and shaped post-Partition communal relations between people of different faiths who traced their roots to these regions. What Manto endured and witnessed in 1947 and afterwards, became, through his eloquent writings, simultaneously an elegy and indictment of Punjab losing its sense of humanity at the altar of religious politics. The political air in Sindh was filled with religious demagogy but it did not turn into a communal orgy.

Urdu literati and historians interested in Partition and its impact on the subcontinent have used Manto’s birth centennial, that was recently observed, to remind us of his scathing sketches of lives destroyed by Partition. Ayesha Jalal in her essay ‘He wrote what he saw — and took no sides’ published in the May issue of Herald, writes Manto “looked into the inner recesses of human nature…” to “fathom the murderous hatred that erupted with such devastating effect” …in “his own home province of Punjab at the dawn of a long-awaited freedom”.

There was no eruption of murderous hatred between Sindhi Hindus and Muslims. They did not lynch each other en masse as was the case in Punjab. The violence against Sindhi Hindus and their mass migration to India was a tragic loss scripted, orchestrated and implemented by non-Sindhis in Sindh. As result of varying trajectories of interfaith relations during the Partition period, the intelligentsia of Sindh and Punjab evolved and adopted different views towards Hindus and India.

The collective memory of the Partition days in Punjab is marked more by the stories and silence of the victims and perpetrators of violence. Even the journey towards the safer side was fraught with danger. People who survived had bitter memories of the ‘other’.

The Sindh story is not the same. Ram Jethmalani, a leading lawyer in India today and a member of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was a young advocate in Karachi in 1947. His senior partner was none other than A.K. Brohi, a right-wing Sindhi lawyer who became federal law minister during the Zia period.

Jethmalani has no compunction in saying that there was no love lost between the two because of Partition. Jethmalani stayed back in Karachi and only left for Mumbai in 1948 when Brohi told him he could not take responsibility for his safety as the demography of Karachi had changed with the arrival of migrants from the northern Indian plains. That arrival was accompanied by violence against Sindhi Hindus.

Kirat Babani, a card-carrying communist, chose to stay in Sindh after 1947 and was thrown in prison in 1948. Released 11 months on the condition of leaving Karachi within 24 hours, Kirat took up a job with Comrade Hyder Bux Jatoi, pioneer of the peasant struggle in Sindh. The administration pressured Jatoi for harbouring an atheist. Jatoi advised, much against his desire, Kirat to go to India. Even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that groomed L.K. Advani, a native of Karachi who later became India’s deputy prime minister, acknowledges that Sindhi Muslims did not push Hindus out of the province.

In memory of: 30th death anniversary of man who brought ‘Sindh’s history to life’

By Z Ali

HYDERABAD: Hundreds of people, besides scholars, historians and writers attended the 30th death anniversary of historian, Pir Hasamuddin Shah Rashdi at Makli, also his final resting place. Rashdi was born in Larkano on September 20, 1911, and spent most of his life in Karachi, Sindh.

Remebering Pakistan’s great poet, activist & comrade of all times Jalib : the word of truth

Jalib: the word of truth – Dr Mohammad Taqi

Jalib’s revolutionary poetry is in a league of its own in Urdu literature. Unlike the many greats including Faiz, Ahmed Faraz and Iftikhar Arif who were influenced by the Progressive Writers Movement as well as classical Urdu poetry and world literature, Jalib’s verse is rooted deeply in the land and idiom of those whom he wrote for

“Aur sab bhool gaye harf-e-sadaqat likhna

Reh gaya kaam humara hi baghawat likhna

Kuch bhi kehtay hain, kahain shah kay musahib Jalib

Rang rakhna yehi apna, issi soorat likhna.”

(Everyone else forgot how to write the word of truth

It was left to me to write of dissent and disobedience

Whatever the king’s companions may say Jalib

Maintain this colour of yours, and write just as you do.)

Read more » Daily Times

via » Twitter

Pakistan – Mother of all conspiracies

Mother of all conspiracies

by Omar Ali

A narrow coterie of military officers, mullahs and bureaucrats relies on the conspiracy theories to keep their flock in line. They use them to cover up their own crimes and shortcomings and hide their own dirty deals

Conspiracy theories exist in every corner of the globe and the world being what it is, some must be true. As social animals, we naturally organize into an endlessly branching tree of groups and subgroups, all eyeing relatively scarce resources. Sometimes we cooperate with other groups in mutually beneficial arrangements, but all too frequently we fight, literally or figuratively. This competition takes all forms, from ordered and rule-bound competition to a vicious struggle without rules or limits. In this endless struggle the existence of conspiracies is not only expected, it is the norm. For after all, what is a conspiracy? It is a certain group of humans getting together in secret to plot against other humans. Looked at it this way, all nations and groups probably launch some secret cooperative efforts against their competitors.

But when we talk of conspiracy theories, we are talking about deeper and darker myths, not these run of the mill plots and plans. We are talking of paranoid fantasies that connect disparate events and usually imagine one vast conspiracy where a hundred different conspiracies may be working at cross purposes. These are the big daddies of the conspiracy world: the protocols of the elders of Zion, the trilateral commission, the black helicopter people. These theories inflate the cohesion, camaraderie and capabilities of one group of people (the Jews, the corporate barons, the “Hinjews”) well beyond the realm of the humanly possible, while demoting everyone else to helpless victim and clueless idiot. Such paranoid fantasies are not confined to any one country or people. Moronic paranoid conspiracy theories circulate at the fringes of every society. But some countries and populations do seem to have a special fondness for them. Luckily or unluckily, we are one such country, and Muslims in general seem to be one such people.

Why? The psychology and sociology literature overflows with explanations. One theory holds that conspiracy theories are the last refuge of the powerless. People who feel they have no control over their own lives look for supermen (and women) who are responsible for their predicament. Others blame modernization, or the dislocation caused by the collapse of traditional society, or sky-god religions that are already primed to see the invisible hand of one grand actor behind all events. Some of these theories are probably correct, but there is another factor that deserves consideration: a conspiracy; a conspiracy to promote conspiracy theories.

I am saying that people in Pakistan do not just believe in wild conspiracy theories because they are un-informed or illiterate (in fact, that last chestnut is clearly false, the biggest believers are all literate). Neither do they do so just because they are powerless or because their traditional worldview is collapsing in front of their eyes or because they already believe in an all-powerful deity. All those may be factors, but let us not forget one more reason they believe in wild conspiracy theories: because their leaders of public opinion tell them it is so. In other words, the widespread belief in conspiracy theories is itself a conspiracy; a small group of men (it is always men) pick up the juiciest theories from some idiot American website (usually a White supremacist or paranoid brain-dead Leftie website) and spread them far and wide in the land of the pure. They plant them as stories on their websites. Then they get their own “news” outlets to pick up these stories, quoting their own websites as sources. Then they get their opinion leaders to repeat these conspiracies, using the media and the websites as sources if needed. There is, in short, a conspiracy to spread these conspiracy theories.

So it is that we find that large sections of the Pakistani middle class believe that everything that is wrong with Pakistan is due to a Hinjew conspiracy against Pakistan. Those Hinjews, otherwise so accursed and incompetent that their Akash tablets melt when used (and are, of course, no match for our superior PacPads), are so capable in the conspiracy field that hundreds of suicide bombers blow themselves up in their service and don’t even know they are serving the Hinjews. They are so brilliant that their controllers never get caught as they go around coordinating vast legions of agents in every civilian party and media outlet. They are so tightly knit that there has never been a fissure within the Hinjew ranks. No disgruntled Hinjews have come on TV to tell us that us all about their evil plot against GHQ. While our own ambassadors, prime ministers and presidents are all foreign agents, no Hinjew traitor betrays his own country. While our own intelligence service (the finest in the world) cannot catch one of these conspirators, their incompetent intelligence service has recruited our best and brightest by the thousands.

Why make people believe such things? One answer is that a narrow coterie of military officers, mullahs and bureaucrats relies on these conspiracies to keep their flock in line. They use them to cover up their own crimes and shortcomings and hide their own dirty deals. They use them to focus public resentment on a convenient faraway (and even mythical) enemy while ignoring proximate causes of their predicament. They use them to create an atmosphere where their own demented “policies” start to appear sane by comparison.

Or it may be that they themselves believe these things. Maybe there are psychological factors that drive our elite to first believe and then sell these conspiracies; this implies that the drivers are not narrow self-interest, but widespread self-delusion amongst the elite. Maybe because of the difficulties of patching together an identity from a flawed and rather superficial foundational myth; or the cognitive dissonance between their own partly (or even mostly) Indian cultural and biological roots and their professed un-Indian ideals. One could make up socio-psychological mumbo-jumbo for days with this rich material. And it could be that both theories are true. Self-delusion and self-interest are happily married and produce endless red-hatted conspiracy theorists when they bed together. But is that all, or could there be, perhaps, a conspiracy behind this conspiracy to sell conspiracy theories to our middle class?

Here, I revert to my own Pakistani roots and present to you the mother of all conspiracies; this conspiracy that peddles incredible bullshit with unbelievable vigor on a hundred Paknationalist websites is itself a Hinjew conspiracy! Our conspiracy theorists are themselves the agents of RAW and Mossad. They have been directed to plant these conspiracy theories in order to ensure that middle class educated Pakistanis remain mired in stupid, moronic, illogical and contradictory conspiracy theories and never figure out how they are being screwed and by whom. Just think about it. If you were a Mossad officer tasked with destroying Pakistan, would you waste time recruiting dangerous fanatics in faraway mountains when you could recruit a few people in Islamabad and make monkeys of the educated middle class? Doesn’t this explain everything? As the conspiracy theorists always tell us, just think about it….connect the dots.

Courtesy: ViewPoint

Via – Brown Pundits

India – The Parso Gidwani Center for Sindhi Studies.

By Gul Agha

Saaiin Parso Gidwani had a bhuungo constructed in a small village Kutch and stayed there. His love of Sindh was legendary. I went to visit Saaiin Parso Gidwani in 2000 in Kutch but he had gone for treatment to Mumbai they said. Some time after I returned to the US, he wrote to me and very kindly sent a copy of his book on the Sindhi language. “The Parso Gidwani Centre of Sindhi Studies was created in 2011 in memory of the Ethnolinguist Parso J. Gidwani (1937-2004) who was a pioneer in the field of ethnology and linguistics related to the Sindhi world. The PGCSS results from a cooperation between Dr Michel Boivin, Centre for South Asian Studies, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France) and Dr Charu Gidwani, R. K. Talreja College (Ulhasnagar, India). The Centre is a first step towards realizing Parso Gidwani’s wish for an Institute for Sindhi Studies. Its policy is framed by an Advisory Board whose members are scholars of international fame. The PGCSS is an integrated approach to Sindhi Studies with perspectives on Sindhi History, Culture, Literature and Language.”

Via » above article adopted from Gul Agha’s facebook page.

Sindhi is a very sweet and melodious language – Dr. Annemarie Schimmel

Sindhi is a very sweet and melodious language. Writes Dr. Annemarie Schimmel, Harvard professor of linguist: “Since every word in Sindhi ends in a vowel, the sound is very musical.”

Sindhi is a very rich language with a vast vocabulary; this has made it a favourite of many writers and so a lot of literature and poetry has been written in Sindhi. Writes K. R. Malkani in “THE SINDH STORY”: ‘The Sindhi language and literature reflect the rich variety and quality of Sindhi life and thought. Sindhi has 125 names for as many varieties of fish. From Hyderabad to the sea, a distance of less than one hundred miles, the Sindhu river has half a dozen names — Sahu, Sita, Mograh, Popat, Bano, and Hajamiro — to reflect its many moods. The camel has a score of names, to indicate its age, colour, gait and character.’

It is the language of Saints and Rishis of ancient Sindh. It has been the inspiration for Sindhi art, music, literature, culture and the way of life. Many great poets and literatis have been profoundly inspired by the beauty of Sindhi language.

Japan – One of the most inspiring approach and attitude towards other cultures and languages

Professor Asada Yutaka has taught Urdu language and literature at the University of Tokyo in Japan for the last 30 years. Two years ago he was honoured with the Sitara-e-Khidmat by the Government of Pakistan for his services to Urdu. You will notice that professor Yutaka is speaking better Urdu than the young Pakistani woman interviewing him.

Courtesy: → A Tv, A Morning with Farah→ YouTube

Our beloved friend, dynamic soul, beautiful poet and brilliant human being Hassan Dars is no more with us!

Our eyes are wet while sharing this tragic, painful, untimely and unbelievable news that our beloved friend, dynamic soul, beautiful poet young and brilliant human being Hassan Dars has died in a road accident in Hyderabad at 5 am. His departure is great loss for Sindh, Sindhi poetry and Sindhi literature. This video clip was recorded during his journey to Jhok Fareed.

Read more about Hassan Dars: BBC urdu,  YouTube

M.F. Husain dies; famous Indian painter, 95, was in exile after death threats from Hindu hardliners

India’s most prominent painter, M.F. Hussain, dies in self-imposed exile at age 95

By Associated Press

NEW DELHI — M.F. Hussain, a former movie billboard artist who rose to become India’s most sought-after painter before going into self-imposed exile during an uproar over nude images of Hindu icons, died Thursday. He was 95.

CNN-IBN TV channel quoted a friend, Arun Vadehra, as saying that Hussain, often described as India’s Picasso, died at the Royal Brompton hospital in London. His lawyer, Akhil Sibal, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.

Hussain had lived in Dubai since 2006 after receiving death threats from Hindu hard-liners in India for a nude painting of a woman shaped like India’s map, often depicted as “Mother India” in popular arts, folklore and literature. A nude of Hindu goddess Saraswati also angered the hard-liners. ….

Read more: Washington Post

 

Punjabi language movement – interview with Nazeer Kahut

Punjabi language is a most beautiful and melodious language of South Asia (sub-continent). Please don’t let it die. Do learn Sindhi, Saraiki, Balochi, Pashto, Brohvi, Hindi (urdu), English and other languages but keep Punjabi language to flourish along with them.

Punjabi is the language of Baba Guru Nanak, Baba Bulleh Shah and other Sufis. It is the language of love, peace and tolerance. Learning different languages are like skills. Punjabi language, Punjabi literature and rich Punjabi heritage are a treasure for the world. It is the moral responsibility of all to protect and promote Punjabi language and Punjabi culture and keep it alive for the global peace.

– You Tube

An international seminar, ‘Global Sindhis & World Peace’ was held at Mumbai University

MUMBAI UNIVERSITY HOSTS AN INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR

India – Mumbai: “Un-assuming nature and persistence of Dr. Baldev Matlani compels people like us to say yes, whenever he invites us to such literary events”, said Mr. Nanik Rupani, Chairman, Priyadarshni Academy. He further emphasized the importance of organizing such seminars to keep the flame of Sindhi language, burning forever.

SINDHI & URDU are the most beautiful and melodious languages of South Asia

SINDHI & URDU are the most beautiful and melodious languages of South Asia (sub-continent). Please don’t let them die. Do learn Siraiki, Punjabi, Balochi, Pashto, Brohvi, English and other languages but keep Sindhi and Urdu along.

Sindhi is the language of Shah, Sachal, Sami, Ayaz, love, peace and tolerance and Urdu is the language of Khusro, Mir and Galib. Learning different languages are skills. Sindhi language, Sindhi literature and rich Sindhi heritage are a treasure not only for our coming generations but for the world too. It is the moral responsibility of all to protect and promote Sindhi language and Sindhi culture and keep it alive for the global peace.

– You Tube Link

LAHORE : From Lakshmi chowk to Nisbat Road

Courtesy: GoeTV (Choraha, 22 Jan. 2011)

via – ZemTV – You Tube Link

Blasphemy and the Islamic way

by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Due to some recent events in Pakistan, the issue of blasphemy is again in the news. It is generally held that Islam prescribes capital punishment for those who commit blasphemy; that is, using abusive language against the Prophet of Islam. But this is quite untrue. According to Islam, blasphemy is simply a misuse of freedom and not a cognisable offence; the blasphemer is not liable to incur legal punishment. This kind of law has no basis in Islamic scriptures. If someone uses abusive language against the Prophet, Muslims must take it as a case of misunderstanding, and then try to remove this misunderstanding. They are required to do so by engaging in discussion or by providing the blasphemer with Islamic literature that gives the true image of the Prophet of Islam.
To use abusive language against the Prophet or to praise him are both a matter of one’s own choice. Whatever the choice, it is in God’s domain to pass judgment on it. Muslims have nothing to do in this situation except try to remove the misunderstanding and then leave the rest to God.
If there is such a case – which could be called blasphemy – and in anger one tries to punish the offender, one is simply reacting negatively to the situation. And acting in this way is looked upon with extreme disfavour in Islam. Islam always tries to go to the root cause of any given problem.
When one abuses the Prophet of Islam, it is most probably due to some kind of provocation. Without provocation, this kind of negative attitude is extremely unlikely. That is why the Quran advises Muslims to get at the real reason.

The Quran points to one such root cause behind this kind of act and urges Muslims to try to come to grips with it: “But do not revile those (beings) whom they invoke instead of God, lest they, in their hostility, revile God out of ignorance.” (6:108)
It is on the record that, during the Prophet’s time, there were some non-believers who used to use abusive language against the Prophet of Islam. The Prophet of Islam never suggested any legal punishment for those persons. He simply directed them to one of his companions, Hassan bin Sabit al-Ansari, who would respond to their blasphemous statements and remove their misunderstanding by means of argument.  Islam suggests capital punishment for only one offence, and that is murder.

Read more : The Times of India

Literature and Revolution

Leon Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution

“Trotsky was perhaps the greatest representative in history of the Marxist school of literary criticism, which itself incorporated what was most farsighted in the aesthetic criticism produced by the bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

This extraordinary work of Marxist literary criticism, first published in 1924, is a further illustration of the author’s multifaceted genius. Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian Revolution and its leading orator, Soviet foreign minister and founder and leader of the Red Army, was also one of the leading Marxist critics of this period.

Trotsky subjects the leading trends in literature and art in the early years of the revolution to criticism that is sharp but never tendentious. He illuminates and develops the Marxist method of historical materialism, rejecting “art for art’s sake” conceptions as well as their apparent opposite, the theories of “proletarian culture” and “proletarian art,” then becoming fashionable in certain left circles. …

Mehring Books is pleased to make Literature and Revolution by Leon Trotsky available to readers of the World Socialist Web Site. Click here to order

Lahore : A cultural center of South Asia

If you didn’t see Lahore, you didn’t see the world.

Courtesy: Choraha with Hasan Nisar and Yasir Pirzada, guest Mustansar Tarar, Dec. 11, 2010)

via –ZemTv – You Tube Link

The War and Peace of Hindi Literature!

I read War and Peace a number of years ago in Allahabad, India, in March or April, when the temperatures begin to soar. Our roof-top apartment, so delightfully airy during other months, slowly transformed into an oven. …

Read more : Bookslut

Enhancing Peace through Art and Literature

by Jamil Hussain Junejo

Peace has been remaining most desired and higher value of human society throughout the Human history. All the humanist Religious leaders, philosophers, writers, Artists have been laboriously striving hard for establishing societies where the value of peace reigns supreme. Peace holds such high esteem and concern because it is prerequisite for establishing developed and advanced societies aswel states which could be marked with social and economic justice, equality, freedom and rule of law.

SINDH FESTIVAL – NOV 25- 28 AT ARTS COUNCIL KARACHI

Arts Council  ( Near Sindh Assembly Building) Karachi Sindh has planned a 4 day Sindh festival covering Society, Language and Literature in Sindhi on Thu, Fri, Sat & Sunday, 25,26,27 & 28 November 2010. It has planned various things including Literary, cultural and heritage sessions and sittings. You are requested to please keep your four days free  for memorable festival events and make Arts Council Karachi-Sindh  a centre of Excellence for Culture and literary sessions.
IN DIFFERENT SESSIONS WE DISCUSS AND REVIEW THE SINDHI SOCIETY : 1. SINDHI LANGUAGE ITS IMPACTS ON OTHER LANGUAGES AND OTHERS ON SINDHI LANGUAGE,  2. SINDHI POETRY, 3. SINDHI STORIES, 4. SINDHI TRAVELOGUE WRITERS, 5. SINDHI NOVELISTS, 6. EXPERTS ON SHAH LATEEF, SHAH INAYAT, SACHAL SARMAST  7. EXPERT ON COMPUTERS, 8. EXPERTS ON LANGUAGE, 9. EXPERTS IN MEDIA, TV CHANNELS, FM RADIOS,  10. HANDICRAFTS, 11. VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES 12. ARCHEOLOGY &THERE WOULD BE BOOK LAUNCHINGS.
1. BOOK FAIR, 2. PAINTING EXHIBITIONS, 3. BOOK STALLS , 4. SINDHI COOKING, 5. SINDHI MUSIC
All Publishers and Publishing Houses including : Sindh University Press, Sindhology, Sindhi Language Authority,  Sindhika, Roshni Publishers and all others are requested to come for Book Stalls for their Company/ Organizations.  Arts council would provide place, Tables, Covers, Electricty, Free of Cost.

Interview of Gobind Malhi, the leading writer of the Sindhi Community in India

Sada Hayat Gobind Malhi is a legend of Sindhi literature. The language of interview is Sindhi.

– YouTube Link

Sindhi Language and Literature – Current Trends

Dr Baldev B. Matlani, Mumbai, India

… Sindh is an exception in this regard as even in the face of mounting hostilities and pressure from government, Sindhi writers are leaving no stone unturned in Sindh.

Read more >> Dr Baldev B. Matlani

Aman Ittehad – Solidarity Day Celebrated Enthusiastically

Report by ‘We Journalists’

We Journalists, an effective voice of media people, human rights activists, environmentalists and political thinkers, organized a cultural activity on the occasion of Aman Ittehad – Solidarity Day, jointly with CPCS, Women Action Forum (WAF) and Saranga Literary Society on Friday, January 1, 2010 at Hyderabad Press Club. The event with concise introductory speeches, poetry recitation and lyrical music attracted a large number of people ranging from civil society, literature, journalists and teachers to intellectuals to share their little contribution to promote love, peace and harmony in the society.

Dehant of Sindhi writer Lal Pushp

It is very shocking to know that great Sindhi modern story writer and novelist Lal Pushp passed away. It is no doubt an irreparable loss. He was known as the founder of modern school of thought and Sindhi fiction.

SDF shares its heartfelt condolences with his family, near ones and the men of letters.

March 31, 2009

SINDHI SOCIAL FORUM, NAGPUR, India

SINDHI SOCIAL FORUM, 17-MIG, DAYANAND NAGR, JARIPATKA, NAGPUR – 440014

we have to inform that SINDH SOCIAL FORUM has this year completed 25 years’ journey in the sphere of social service and service to humanity. All-out efforts are made for amelioration of culture and language of our community during this period. On the occasion of Silver Jubilee Year, we have decided to publish a Souvenir. Our main aim behind this is to create awareness in our community of Sindhi Language, Culture, Literature and about our Freedom Fighters, Poets, Authors, Dramatists, Politicians and Literary personalities of Sindhi community.

Sindh & Sindhis

Sindh and Sindhis- The modern literature in anthropology, sociology and linguistics

Ibn Khuldun: The Annihilations of Nations and Sindhis

by Gul Agha

To understand the on going social, cultural and linguistic decline among Sindhis, one can look at the modern literature in anthropology, sociology and linguistics to see how nations perish. But the causes have been long understood — the new twist is that the rates can be more precisely measured (each rapid shifts in vocabulary and grammatical forms). A classic work of Ibn Khuldun, *The Muqaddimma, *provides great insight and is a recommended read for any serious student. Ibn Khuldun, a giant of his time, understood how nations perish, and it is instructive to read him and then look at Sindhi society today. Fortunately, Sindhis were able to overthrown other invaders after short periods of time and never had a large scale invasion, at least after the Aryans, until 1947 when Sindh lost 20% of its native population to diaspora, and the remaining nation was linguistically, socially and culturally subjugated by millions of migrants. Here is Ibn Khuldun’s speculation:

*Book I: Kitab al `Ibar (on the nature of civilization) Chapter 2:23. A nation that has been defeated and has come under the rule of another nation will quickly perish.

**The reason for this may possibly lie in the apathy that comes over people when they lose control of their own affairs and, through enslavement, become the instrument of others and dependent upon them. Hope diminishes and weakens. Now, propagation and an increase in civilization takes place only as a result of strong hope and the energy that hope creates in the animal powers (of man). When hope and the things and it stimulates are gone through apathy, and when group feeling has disappeared under the impact of defeat, civilization decreases and business and other activities stop. With their strength dwindling under the impact of defeat, people become unable to defend themselves. They become victims of anyone who tries to dominate them, and a prey to anyone who has the appetite. * (translated by F. Rosenthal)

Another insight Ibn Khuldun provides is how society’s with greater diversity of ideas, sects and beliefs are better able to resist invaders (because, says Ibn Khuldun, they are not prone to conforming with the dominant ideology imposed by invaders, instead they are used to confronting ideas and beliefs, so if you suppress one sect, others dissidents arise). No doubt the deparature of 20% of Sindhi population seriously weaked the Sindhi nation because of the concomittant loss of diversity, but the continued breadth of Sindhi ways remains their strength, their culture of resistance to adopting a single dominant ideology (fundamentalism) and respect for different religious and anti-religious thinking, provides an immense source of residual strength to this day.

We will have to see if the current processes reach their final completion in the perishing of Sindhi nation (*dharnii panaah dde) *or, Sindhis rise to attain their cultural, linguistic, political and social freedom. There is no other stable equilibrium condition in which a nation can survive for long..