I am writing this after being perturbed by yet another disturbing incident involving the assassination of three members of the Hindu community at the hands of a gang of tribal murderers in my home district of Shikarpur. Among the killed were a doctor, a paramedic and a grocer, while another doctor was grievously injured and hospitalised. Coincidentally, the incident occurred near another small town in district Shikarpur called Rukk, where one of the most celebrated singers of the pre-partition era, Bhagat Kanwarram, was killed by a brutal communalist. The singer was widely known for his humanism and mystical nature. Legend has it that the murderer asked the singer to pray for his success before shooting him and the singer not only wished him success but, after being shot by him, pleaded “in the name of God” that he must not be harmed! In the former case, the victims’ only crime was that they were Hindus and came from the same town, Chak, where a Hindu boy had allegedly had an affair with a Muslim girl, thus triggering the ‘honour’ killings. More than 300 incidents involving the kidnapping, robbing and murder of Hindus have been reported in recent years. Indeed, kidnapping for ransom of Hindu children, aged between 5-12, and demanding bhatta (extortion) from affluent Hindus by powerful local political-cum-criminal gangsters are flourishing ‘businesses’ in Sindh. Therefore, an increasing number of Hindus are migrating from the interior of Sindh, where they have lived for centuries, to Karachi and Hyderabad. Many of them are also leaving the country. Undoubtedly, the minorities are the softest targets of the obscurantist. But there is no denying the fact that besides communalism there are at least three other forces at play in rural Sindh, threatening all alike — the minorities, the poor, and law-abiding people. First, there has been a nasty resurgence of neo-tribal and neo-feudal forces in rural society, particularly in Sindh. The writ of the state has been receding over the years and making the weaker and unguarded citizens, regardless of their religion, more vulnerable to organised violence perpetrated by the local tribal, feudal and criminal nexus, often under the aegis of the local administration. This trend has gathered momentum particularly since General Musharraf introduced the local government system that gave enormous financial, administrative and political powers to, until then, moribund tribal and feudal relations. Ironically, the Zardari government not only gave political legitimacy to these anti-social forces at the national level under the umbrella of an elitist ‘reconciliation’, but also helped develop at the district level a new synergy and symbiosis between tribal, feudal and bureaucratic interests. The logical result of this troika was the demoralisation and suppression of a nascent but emergent Sindhi rural middle class in the districts and talukas. Today, one watches in awe the glory and splendour of the tribal-feudal forces that have grown unassailable thanks to the large helpings of unaccounted public funds, unbounded political powers and the well carved out rural constituencies. No wonder then that rural Sindh has transformed into a patchwork of feudal fiefdoms. In fact, the whole of rural Pakistan is virtually caught in a tribal-feudal entrapment, notwithstanding the fact that it represents three-fifths of the population, one-fourth of the GDP and one-half of the total labour force. Secondly, the once peaceful and tolerant hinterlands of Sindh are now increasingly becoming hotbeds of various communalist and jihadi forces. New seminaries have sprung up for thousands of the young Taliban students belonging to redundant peasant and impoverished families. The seminaries are surreptitiously increasing their influence over the local socio-cultural space. Yet, strangely, the extremist intrusion faces no feudal-tribal-administrative resistance. Last year, a musical function organised by the local youths in Shikarpur was disrupted by the rowdy local Taliban while the local administration and feudal-tribal leadership looked the other way. No one has dared to arrange another such event. Thirdly, the mainstream political parties, particularly the PPP, have taken to opportunistic politics. Instead of relying on popular support and hence delivering the goods to the electorate, they seem to have conveniently outsourced their electoral and organisational matters to the powerful local feudal and tribal stalwarts. The PPP has gone one step further. It has co-opted even the worst of its foes by offering them ministerial and advisory positions. Interestingly, the tribe that is allegedly involved in the killings of the three innocent Hindus is headed by a notorious chieftain who is also the head of the PPP’s Shikarpur chapter. As a result of this crassly opportunistic political game, principled and socially committed politics is dying away, forcing the weaker lower and vulnerable middle classes to seek protection from their tormentors — the local feudal-tribal chiefs. On a recent visit, I found the people of rural Sindh extremely disillusioned with the PPP’s policies and practices. Particularly the younger and educated lot is enormously perturbed over the possibility of being led by a set of rowdy, rustic and arrogant feudal-tribal patriarchs, who have traditionally identified themselves closely with the establishment. Yet, many of them have no option but to fall in line or leave for the ethnically explosive cities and the metropolis. This situation raises pertinent questions: what should these people do? Should they let the obsolescent feudal-tribal lords, bereft of a modern vision, determine their collective fate? Should they emulate their counterparts in Balochistan, southern Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi, and take up arms for their rights? These are the questions that one commonly encounters in the nooks and corners of rural Sindh. Optimists answer these questions by pointing to a burgeoning culture of protest involving a wide array of individuals, groups, classes and institutions. They also cite a global movement on such common issues as energy, climate, water, security, inflation, governance, rights, corruption and so on. But would such a movement imminently stir the stale rural backwaters, given the fact that it is driven by the powerful consumer and institutional, corporate and non-governmental organisational interests? Obviously, the illiterate and half-literate rural populace, divided among so many creeds, clans and cults, lacks the phalanxes of such powerful forces to bear upon and overcome state-sponsored predatory forces. But then the disjoint between the rural and urban political processes is casting a long shadow over democracy and protection of civil and human rights. Classically, cities have given leaders and foot soldiers have been provided by the country. Small wonder then that the disjoint is getting in the way of affecting a material change in the people’s lives, notwithstanding the recent constitutional reforms, ongoing judicial activism, media blitz and the rights movement. It is time the urban-rural political disjoint, as regards the struggle against the common predatory forces, is removed. Let a common struggle ensue enabling all the citizens, including non-Muslims, to partake of the common pool of state power, wealth and resources. Will it? The writer is a lawyer and academic. He can be reached at shahabusto@hotmail.com