Pakistan seems to be facing more problems internally than externally. The state’s policies have gone so awry in significant areas that signs of anxiety and agitation surface every now and then from different parts of the country. The Sindhis, who have remained relatively peaceful after independence, have been raising their voices since many decades against certain policies of successive governments that they deem have deprived them of their rights on their homeland, which has a rich and distinctive cultural history, identity and economy. There are a number of Sindhi nationalist parties working as pressure groups in the province’s politics after renowned Sindhi nationalist G M Syed’s demise in 1995. His organisation, Jeay Sindh Tehreek, has been the most prominent nationalist party in Sindh. However, a recent phenomenon has emerged, as some sections of the Sindhi nationalists are now nurturing separatist sentiments. On Wednesday, the Sindhu Desh Liberation Army (SDLA) attacked several ATMs of banks in Hyderabad, Larkana, Ghotki, Dadu and Moro. They also damaged the main railway track near Ghotki with a bomb and on the same day, targeted the KESC complaint office with a cracker bomb in Gulistan-e-Johar, Karachi. This is the third major activity of the SDLA, which has registered its presence twice earlier by damaging railway tracks during the last two years. This time too, the SDLA left pamphlets at its targets claiming responsibility for the attacks and declaring its separatist ambitions due to the injustices being done to Sindhis since independence. The SDLA has claimed that it is following in the footsteps of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and other Baloch nationalist parties, which have succeeded in gaining global attention to the decades-long military’s oppression against them.
Sindhi nationalists seem to be on the same trajectory in their movement as the Baloch nationalists, the militant sections of which have taken recourse to armed resistance and want separation from Pakistan as both the governments — federal and provincial — have failed to address their long held grievances. Sindhis feel that they have deliberately been marginalised after millions of Mohajirs (Urdu-speaking refugees fleeing India during partition) were settled in their homeland and caused them political, economic, linguistic, social and cultural disadvantages. Water remains a contentious issue between Sindh and Punjab — the country’s most resourceful and dominating province. It is indeed a failure of our government that has never given due consideration to the grievances of the smaller provinces and their internal ethnic disputes; this has led the situation to this point. This extreme phenomenon, which has lately emerged in Sindh, has to be dealt with sensibly. Their grievances should not be left unaddressed; otherwise it would stoke separatist sentiment further. *