Global Voices » Urdu

Pakistan: Demand for Independence of Sindh

Aamir Raz Soomro — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:38:18 +0000

It was not long ago that a bill was tabled in the US Congress in support of giving Balochistan – the land of the Baloch – the right to self-determination against their ‘forced accession’ into Pakistan on March 27, 1948. The day is still mourned as a Black Day throughout the Baloch land, including parts of the provincial capital, Quetta.

In the year 1971, the erstwhile East Pakistan had already witnessed a bloody independence war with Pakistan, which culminated in the creation of the country now known as Bangladesh – it was a real bloody war since hundreds of thousands of people were massacred in this ‘genocide’ to crush the Bengali freedom-fighters.

In the present times, however, it is not just Balochistan which has the separatist sentiments, but Sindh under the leadership of Mr. G.M. Syed, has also been fighting for independence soon after the creation of Pakistan. From the platform of various nationalist political parties, Sindhis demand separation from Pakistan and creation of proposed, Sindhudesh, the Land of Sindhu (River Indus). They support their demand with the arguments that, 1., the British had invaded the independent Sindh and, 2. that they have a distinct rich history and secular culture which dates back 5,000 years.

Blog Citizens Media Alternative Voice Junction relates that:

Before 1843, Sindh had, as a sovereign state, signed a treaty with the British Raj, allowing the latter’s ships to pass through the River Sindhu. The Raj, in return, had to pay taxes to the Sindh government. Karachi port and the Indus River had thus served as an important route for the British army in their war in Afghanistan.

When the British left India creating separate states namely India and Pakistan, Sindh had joined Pakistan on conditions mentioned in the Lahore Resolution of 1940, the base document for the country’s creation. However, since the conditions were not fulfilled, Sindh argues, they have a moral and legitimate choice of withdrawing from being part of the Pakistani federation (also part of the said resolution). Pakistan celebrates the 23rd of March every year to commemorate the event.

Mr. Syed was the first to move the resolution in favour of the newly proposed federation, Pakistan, in the Sindh Assembly for the first time; ironically enough, he pioneered the Sindhi separatist movement calling out for complete independence of Sindh soon after the proposed country was created.

There have been many clashes with the Pakistani state, demonstrations and rallies in favour of an independent Sindh — the latest show of the Sindhi separatist sentiments on a large-scale public platform was on the very day of March 23 when hundreds of thousands of Sindhis from around the province gathered in Karachi and chanted the anti-Pakistan slogans:

“Na khappy, na khappy, Pakistan na khappy” (We say No to Pakistan)
“Sindhudesh muqaddar aa; Saeen G.M. Syed rehbar aa!” (Sindhudesh is our destiny; GM Syed is our leader)
“Sindh ghuray thee aazadi; Tokhy dyanni pavndi, aazadi!” (Sindh demands independence; you will have to free us.)

AK Chishti also tweeted what was heard at the Tibet Center, Karachi:

@AKchisti: “Thumjo desh, Mujho desh, Sindhudesh, Sindhudesh” at 23rd March at heart of #Karachi.

The rally, titled the Freedom March, was quite an impressive crowd (considering it was anti-state and was being held in Karachi (Sindh), the most important city of Pakistan, which has gradually become more of an alien land to Sindhis after the creation of Pakistan 1947) and was organized by the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), one of the biggest Sindhi nationalist parties.

Being an eye-witness of the event, I followed the event and live-blogged it on Twitter. Here is the view of the crowd.

Freedom March by JSQM for Independence of Sindh

Zafar (@sindhixafar) tweeted:

#JSQM #JeaySindh organizes #FreedomMarch in Karachi to reject #Sindh's every affiliation with #PakistanMurdabad #23March #Sindhudesh

In another tweet, Zafar summed up the event at the outset in a tweet saying:

“Happy Pakistan Day” changed into #PakistanMurdabad, millions of people demanded #Sindhudesh in #JSQM rally of #FreedomMarch #23March

Where representatives of many media sections were present and were covering the event live, the news was either blocked or under-reported in the most mainstream electronic Urdu media channels.

The participants, on return from the March, would ask their Facebook friends if the event was covered by the media. Ashique Solangi posed a direct question on Facebook:

سنڱت! ڏيو خبر ڪلھ اردو ميڊيا ڪوريج ڪئي آزادي مارچ جي يا نه؟

Friends, did the Urdu media cover the Freedom March yesterday or not? (sic)

Mr. Nisar Khokhar, a veteran journalist, posted a picture of the March coupled with the following comment (in Romanized Sindhi):

Sindhian Paraan karachi mein Big show karre 23 March wari Qaradad khe rad kayo wayo..per Urdu ain english media coverage mein total Blackout karre cahdiyo…..Sindhyo Jaaago..

Sindhis have rejected the (Lahore) Resolution of March 23 (1940)..but Urdu and English media blocked it from being covered… Wake up, Sindhis! (Sic)

Ravez Junejo, a blogger, expressed his concern over the media's not covering the freedom march as:

Mainstream #Urdu language media of #Pakistan denying news coverage to thousands strong #FreedomMarch of native Sindhis in Karachi! #Shame

The rally was so massive that it was sure to disturb the city’s normal traffic routes – major arteries witnessed sever traffic jams at the time the Freedom March rally passed through.

On the one hand, this massive show of rejection of the Lahore Resolution, which means blatant rejection of Pakistan, was well received by those pro-independence Sindhis; on the other, it boggled the opponents of the Sindhi nationalism and the Pakistani state. And, that’s why, conspiracies followed to defame the rally soon after it culminated, and media reported MQM chief Altaf Hussain saying that people stuck in the traffic jam were looted by the participants of the Freedom March.

However, the news could not get much importance and was soon ignored by the Pakistani media as well, although Mr. Hussain even reached out to the President of Pakistan to take notice of the issue. He did!

Mr. Aziz Narejo, a Texas-based political analyst and blogger, observed:

According to Sindhi press & a news story in daily Times, hundreds of thousands of people participated in the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Muhaz (JSQM)'s “Sindh Freedom Rally” in Karachi today. It was no doubt a major event in Pakistan where a nationalist party gathered the people in large numbers & called for independence of Sindh. It was historic event. But the so-called national media is seen to have ignored or downplayed the event. Some media has even given it a negative look. This must be strongly condemned.

Mr. Bashir Khan Qureshi, chairman, JSQM, made the major speech at the Freedom March and claimed that he entire Sindhi nation was with him when they demand independence from Pakistan. He said that Sindh had joined the federation of Pakistan based on the Lahore Resolution, which states that the joining states, including Sindh, would be sovereign and independent.

Giving out their message to the world - Freedom

Mr. Qureshi also quoted that Sindh contributed to the 80% of the total federal budget including 69% of natural gas and 75% of oil in the country. What it gets is injustice. This was his clear message.

Urdu and Sindhi versions of the transcript of his speech can be found on the given links, respectively:

The main points of his speech included that Pakistan had become an “icon of religious extremism and terrorism”, where the Sindhis are ‘peace-loving’ nation believing in ‘religious coexistence’.

Calling upon the international community, he put forward the 5-point agenda and requested to help Sindh and Balochistan get independence from Pakistan which, according to him, is their right by all standards.

Nevertheless, the newspapers of the next day, i.e. March 24th, carried a good coverage of the JSQM's freedom march, both, in paper and online. Not to mention the strong coverage by the Sindhi channels and newspapers, reports by The Express Tribune, Daily Times, Pakistan Today, and BBC Urdu are worth noting here.

Pakistan: The Rise of a Union of Religious Radicals

Kumail Ahmed — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:25:41 +0000

A religious union by the name of Difa-e-Pakistan Council (Defence of Pakistan Council, DPC) has emerged as the representative of Pakistan's extreme right-wing parties. DPC is an umbrella term for 40 religious parties of different denominations. This group is a union of radical ideologies which is promoting radicalism in the Pakistani society.

According to DPC its primary aims are to prevent the Pakistan government from giving MFN (Most Favourite Nation) status to India, and secondly, a continuation on the ban of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) trucks from passing through Pakistan's soil to Afghanistan. Its Facebook page says:

“Difa-e-Pakistan” is a single point cause to defend Pakistan by all threats it faces internally and externally.

Local leaders of the DPC address the gathered religious groups protesting American foreign policy. Image by Majid Hussain. Copyright Demotix (12/2/2012)

The aforementioned primary goals go into delusion because the council contains banned groups such as LeT (Lasker-e-Taiba - The Army of Pure), JuD (Jamaaat-ud-Dawa - The party of Islamic Call) and SSP (Sipha-e-Sahaba - The army of Companions). These groups have an history of sectarian violence in Pakistan and are banned by law.

The very name of the council has also been criticised. For many, ‘Defence of Pakistan' is a vague term which has little meaning whatsoever. Muhammed Rizwan plays with words by renaming Difa-e-Pakistan to “Defy Pakistan”. Hasan Nisar - a prominent newspaper columnist - questions in his column [ur]:

جغراقیائی دفاع؟ نظریاتی دفاع؟ روحانی دفاع؟ اقتصادی دفاع؟ سماجی دفاع؟

[What are they defending? Are they defending] Geography? Ideology? Spirituality? Economics? Society?

The blogger community criticised the role of DPC in Pakistan's Realpolitik. Criticising DPC's remark of besieging the parliment, Tazeen Javed writes that the overall effect of DPC would be chaos, anarchy and increase in suicide bombing. She writes that giving MFN status to India would reduce cross-border smuggling and foster better relations between the two countries. Isolating relationship with United States is nothing more than a Utopia as the country cannot survive with “this ultimate isolation”.

The DW's Blogwatch distils the the debate on Pak-US relationship by calling Pakistan “a nation in self-denial”. It can be implied that DPC has no knowledge of the current world order.

The orthodoxy show of power had zero percent presence of women in their rally. Women make up more than 50% of the country's population. S T Hussian writes:

It is interesting to note that women, who make up half the country’s population, are completely missing from these rallies. And the reason for that is that those who are part of the DPC would not consider women as equal members of society. Quite clearly, the views of those who make up the DPC are similar to those of the Taliban.

There are clues that DPC might not even believe in democratic principles. Rhetoric against democracy might lead to a political turmoil in Pakistan. Yaqub Javed of JuD commented:

We do not believe the current political system is Islamic and that is why we are not going to contest.

The next rally being organized by DPC is in the city of Peshawar. Formerly, they have conducted popular rallies in Karachi, Islamabad and Multan.

The civil society has criticised this growing trend. Mass protest was organized in Peshawar demanding a ban on the activities of Difa-e-Pakistan. It was appreciated across twitter:

@akbaralishah: Finally some people with courage have spoken !! All the banned outfits now come under one umbrella.

@Rubabaz: Sane voices, should be echoed from all over Pak.#Peshawar civil society demands ban on #Difa-e-#Pakistan

@AroojZahra: Peshawar rocks: Civil society in Peshawar took to the streets and demands ban on Difa-e-Pakistan

@HassamKD: I stand corrected. We Rock - Peshawar civil society demands ban on Difa-e-Pakistan

With a proactive civil society which severely opposes extremism, the chances of Pakistan becoming a radical state are quite low. Abdul Majeed Abid writes:

It is the responsibility of the moderate elements of civil society to coalesce and try to control these elements [added: such as DPC] from going out of control by raising awareness and educating people. People should be educated about their role in a democracy. Efforts such as being done by Centre for Civic Education, PILDAT, Pakistan Youth Alliance, Teach for Pakistan and Youth Parliaments should be highlighted.

Pakistan: Internet and the challenge of language

Ivan Sigal — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:28:22 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

Pakistan today would seem primed for rapid growth in internet use. The country has had explosive growth of FM radio, satellite and cable TV set in motion by regulatory changes that allow non-state ownership of mass media. Cell phone use has also skyrocketed, with over 90 million subscribers. With a growing middle class that numbers some 30-40 million in a country of some 180 million people, Internet use should also see similar growth.

However, there are several constraints that mitigate that expansion, both structural, as in chronic electricity shortages, and social, particularly focused on language. Literacy hovers at around 50% in Pakistan, but while most people understand Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, less that 10% of the population speaks and writes it as a native. Provincial languages such as Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto, and Balochi, as well regional languages such as Seraiki and Kashmiri are native languages for the majority of the population, and English is the official language of governance.

This language fragmentation has consequences for internet use. No one Pakistani language effectively serves both the reading and content creation needs of Pakistan’s netizens. As a consequence, English remains the popular choice online. In an interview, Adnan Rehmat of Intermedia Pakistan says that English is an “aspirational” language, a marker for education and access to resources, and because English provides access to a global linguistic community. Additionally, several regional Pakistani languages such as Punjabi are primarily oral languages, without strong literary cultures.

Fouad Bajwa, writing on Internet’s Governance, describes the problem further:

A key pressing issue with relevance to both the local Internet and Mobile Technology scenario in Pakistan has been availability of local content and making the local content widely accessible to the community at large across Pakistan and the entire world using a variety of currently available technology platforms.

There have been few concerted efforts to create Unicode fonts for Pakistani language scripts. Nastaliq, the popular font for Urdu, is not yet widely adapted in Unicode. Online writing in the main either uses an Arabic font, as with the relatively popular BBC and Google fonts, or it uses image files pasted into text.

There is not yet a broadly accepted font in use for either mass media of citizen media production. Many mainstream media still use image files, which requires that the text be composed on another platform, and discourages hyperlinking, as with a recent issue of the Daily Jang online.

Screenshot of Daily Jang ePaper, May 2010

The Pakistani government has provided little policy guidance for language use. In an interview Ahmad Shahzad of Bytes for All notes that the National Language Authority of Pakistan lacks resources, knowledge of digital issues, and a sense of urgency or policy priorities for Pakistani language expansion online.

There are a number of projects that have been working to fix this problem over the past decade. Perhaps the most comprehensive comes out of the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing, at Lahore’s National University of Computer & Emerging Sciences (CRULP). The Centre’s director, Professor Sarmad Hussain, has been working to support Nastaliq in Unicode since 2002. They describe their objective to ”conduct research for the evolution of computational models of Urdu and Pakistan’s other regional languages.” Their projects develop standard character sets, localize popular software and online applications, such as Microsoft Word, Firefox, and Open Office, and script processing for fonts that can support all Pakistani languages.

They are also working on optical character recognition and speech processing tools such as screen readers for the illiterate and blind users, and language processing tools such as spell checkers and machine translation. CMS platforms in Nastaliq, as well as mobile scripts.

Additionally, CRULP’s PAN Localization project is working to develop local language computing capacity in a dozen Asian languages, including Urdu, Pastho, and Bangla. The project seeks to develop tools to facilitate the use localization of advanced applications.

These scripts and their wider promotion, as well as the availability of content management systems in Urdu and language processing tools, has gone some way to making Urdu a functional language of content creation.

Other tools now available facilitate the shift from English to Urdu, including Google’s Urdu transliteration tool and the Dynamic Language Tools Bookmarklet, which supports transliteration of Urdu to both English and Hindi. Syed Ghulam Akbar, the bookmarklet’s creator, describes his motivation in a post on the Pakistani science blog STEP:

The main inspiration behind this tool development was not actually Urdu writing. In fact, there are many existing tools and applications which let users type Urdu either using a special keyboard layout or by using roman script transliteration. What actually inspired me to develop this tool was to provide a way to easily convert the roman content on all the existing web-pages to Urdu script so that it is more readable.

Together, the advancement of scripts, applications, and platforms in Urdu will go some way to advancing a culture of online production in Urdu. The relative lag in their availability does, however, highlight the general sense that English will continue to be the language of choice for many in Pakistan’s online world.

This lag can be addressed in several ways, including wide promotion of available tools and their application, support for both mass media and citizen media communities to discover, learn about, and implement creative use of these tools, and support to build bridges and networks among communities. For this reason, Fouad Bajwa is seeking to build an Online Urdu Encyclopedia:

It will create a converged environment overtime for presenting updated knowledge that is usable through reading, listening and visuals for both social and economic awareness, education, knowledge application in various fields, higher education, competitive exams, expert resources and endless Urdu language options.

At present there is no Urdu Wikipedia community, and few Urdu-language blog aggregators, such as http://urdublogs.co.cc/, capacity among mainstream media to produce searchable-text, Unicode-based online media, and a lack of mobile telephony platforms and applications for Urdu.

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

Pakistan: Urdu Transliteration Tool

Rezwan — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:23:47 +0000

Saeed at PakFellows blog discusses about the latest developments in the Urdu transliteration tools for ease of computing in Urdu language.

Pakistan: Sania Saeed And The Bloggers

Rezwan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:55:53 +0000

Some Pakistani bloggers (including Global Voices Pakistan Author Sana Saleem) met with renowned theater activist Sania Saeed to talk about her recent play Main Adakara Banun Gi. Read details about this in Jehan Ara's In The Line Of Wire.

Pakistan: Terror Hits Cricket!

Farhan Janjua — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:11:15 +0000

Today morning a dozen of gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team ahead of a cricket match with Pakistan team in Lahore. This bloody onslaught has left seven people including five Policemen dead and six Sri Lankan players were amongst the number of injured. The terrorists were armed with latest weapons including hand grenades, rockets, rifles etc. Luckily, there were no casualties among the Sri Lankan players and they are on the way back to their country.

I was in classroom when we heard the loud bangs of those firings. We got curious and started making speculations about what really was happening and one of my friends even passed on a joke as we carried on. But I was sensing that something is really wrong and something terrible has happened. After just five minutes I received an SMS from a friend and learned about the attack.

Everyone including our instructor got scared and he was kind enough to let us go. My University is just near the place of attack, Liberty Chowk. We could already see the traffic jam and a panic situation on the road outside my university. Rumors kept on coming from allover that there was a huge casualty in this attack, few said that Sri Lankans were also amongst them.

I immediately ran to the Internet lab hoping to watch the live TV streams about what had really happened. I was shocked to see the bloody fight between terrorists and the Police as SAMAA TV were airing the footage of the attack. I got relieved to know that Sri Lankans are safe, but at the same time, I was sad to hear about the casualties of the local Policemen.

For more details about my personal accounts, please go to my blog.

AlJazeeraEnglish uploaded the following video at YouTube including footage of the attack:

Naeem Sidhu breaks the news with the following words:

On Tuesday morning, our revered Cricketing friends from Sri Lanka were attacked in Lahore, leaving the whole nation embarrassed, shocked and with our heads shaken in disbelief. With the approval of the Colombo Government, SL team decided to tour Pakistan despite security fears and they courageously defied the advice by other Cricketing nations. India was more vocal against the tour by SL team. Due to our security lapse, Tuesday shooting has helped in vindication of their stance and has resulted in closing doors of International Cricket in Pakistan for many years to come – the worst set back to game in its history.

Yasir Imran tries to wake up the current government with these words:

یہ ایک انتہائی افسوس ناک واقع ہے، جو یقیننا پاکستانی کرکٹ کے لیے بہت خطرناک ثابت ہوسکتا ہے ، مگر حکومت وقت کی کچھ توجہ اس خطرے کو کم کر سکتی ہے، پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کو اپنے مفادات سے کچھ ہٹ کر اس قوم کے لیے بھی کچھ وقت نکالنا چاہیے کیونکہ بھٹو کے بعد سےپیپلز پارٹی کا کوئی بھی دور حکومت پاکستان کے لیے اچھا ثابت نہں ہوا، پیپلز پارٹی کے تمام ادوار میں مہنگائی میں اضافہ ہوا کرپشن بڑھی

“This is an extremely sad incident, that can certainly be proved as quite bad for Pakistani cricket. But the current government's attention can lower this danger. Pakistan Peoples Party should think beyond their own benefit, to spare some time for the nation because after the rein of Bhutto's Rule, none of the Peoples Party governments have been proved good for the country. In all of their governments, inflation and corruption has increased”

Pakistani Housewife blog expresses frustration:

What has happened to the world we live in? Is there an end to this madness? The situation in the world in general and in Pakistan in particular is getting worse everyday. These are the streets we walk in, the roads we drive on with our kids but nothing seems to be the same. I think these terror attacks kill a few people but terrorize the minds of hundreds and thousands of us. They make us numb, takes away the desire to live and the hope for a happy future is missing from our lives, in these terrible times.

Teeth Maestro says:

It is now certain that this tragic event marks the end of Cricket in Pakistan for sometime, the blame game with India is already nearing a frenzy, analysts like Kamran Khan on Geo and Hamid Gul have pointed fingers towards India already. One must note that the attack looks erringly too similar to the Mumbai attack but logically one must understand that this could very well be a cover up to instigate a war of words between India and Pakistan. Our politicians, intelligence agencies and media were blood thirsty looking for an excuse to kick back at India for the Mumbai assault and todays events in Lahore might serve them with an opportunity.

Kamran Abbasi at cricinfo summarizes:

The least of the consequences of this disaster is that those who have advocated the continuation of international cricket in Pakistan - including me - have been proved wrong. No international team will now visit Pakistan, and the Pakistan Cricket Board should voluntarily arrange all future tours at neutral venues for the next year, may be longer. This the darkest day in the history of Pakistan cricket and it occurred in a pleasant suburb of Lahore, a once great city of gardens and tranquility,