Daily Times

Last year in August, six teens drowned in Red River, Shreveport, Louisiana, USA. First, while wading, 15-year-old DeKendrix Warner accidentally stepped into deeper water and panicked. Then six teenagers, one only 13, rushed to help him and each other. All six drowned because none of them could swim. The parents watched helplessly as they too could not swim; a passer-by rescued DeKendrix. An afternoon of fun ended in tragedy.

This incident prompted soul-searching about why so many young black Americans could not swim. A US Swimming/University of Memphis study revealed very disturbing figures. It found that 68.9 percent of African-American, 57.9 percent of Hispanic and 41.8 percent of white children had no or low ability to swim. Almost 3,500 drowning deaths occur in the US annually and is the second greatest cause of accidental death in children under 14; African-American children aged 5 to 14 were 3.1 times more likely to drown.

These perturbing figures agitated minds and Jeff Wiltse’s book Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America exposed the real reasons. He says that, “The history of discrimination…has contributed to the drowning and swimming rates.” Racial discrimination and strictly enforced segregation kept the blacks away from the swimming pools and lent to their overall inability to swim, which persists to date. Jeff Wiltse writes that some 2,000 new municipal pools were constructed across the US in the 1920s and 1930s but the “black Americans were largely and systematically denied access to those pools”. After the race riots of the 1960s, many cities built pools in predominantly black areas but these were small — often only 20 by 40ft (six by 12m) and 3.5ft (1m) deep. The blacks remained systematically disadvantaged.

It also mentions how the whites physically prevented the blacks from swimming. Swimming has always been a social and not a solitary exercise. This historical handicap of the blacks is apparent from the fact that there is only one black Olympic gold medallist, Cullen Jones.

The readers will wonder what has the swimming non-ability of Afro-Americans to do with us. I am presently coming to it. The vice chairman of the Sindh Bar Council (SBC), Ali Mohammad Dahiri, while addressing lawyers at the High Court Bar in Hyderabad last month criticised deferment and non-confirmation of two judges, Justice Bhajandas Tejwani and Justice Ahmed Ali Sheikh respectively, of the Sindh High Court (SHC) by the Judicial Commission (JC) because they are Sindhis. He sarcastically termed it as a reward for Sindh lawyers’ sacrifices in the movement for the restoration of deposed judges in 2007.

He warned that if in the next phase of elevation, lawyers from interior Sindh are not inducted in the high court then lawyers would launch a movement. He lamented that panels contesting elections for the Pakistan Bar Council also discriminated against candidates from the interior and termed it an open bias against them; however, in spite of the odds, Mr Salahuddin Panhwar of Mirpurkhas won a seat.

The JC’s action is all the more unpalatable to Sindhi lawyers because only five out of 24 SHC judges are of Sindhi origin. Sindhi lawyers contend that the ratio of Sindhi judges is not being maintained. They demand equal ratio of judges in the SHC and a just ratio between the interior and Karachi. They say no fresh appointments should be made from Karachi, as 19 out of Sindh’s 22 districts are completely ignored, which is a violation of the fundamental and social rights of the people of Sindh. They say they will not accept the decision of the JC if lawyers from interior Sindh are not elevated.

This sorry state of affairs increases the already acute sense of deprivation and injustice that Sindhis feel and becomes all the more poignant because the ‘self-appointed’ upholders of ‘Sindhi rights’ have been in power for nearly three years now.

The usual plea for not appointing Sindhi lawyers as judges and especially from the interior is that they are not as competent as the urban area lawyers. This is because they have been kept in a systematically disadvantageous position in matters of schooling, higher education and other facilities from day one. Jeff Wiltse says that if other means of discouraging the blacks from using pools were ineffective, then charging money for their use was sure to deter them. The preposterous amounts charged at elite schools leaves the poor and rural people at an eternal disadvantage and this has worsened over time and is a factor that will keep the Sindhi people in an increasingly disadvantageous position interminably.

As in the US blacks’ case, typically those children who could not swim also had parents who could not swim. It is unusual for children of uneducated parents to make a mark in education or careers, though certainly there are exceptions. Unless the state gives up discrimination, those at a disadvantage will continue to remain at a disadvantage forever. People systematically denied opportunities cannot break the vicious circle of disadvantages.

Remarkably, as there are a few black swimmers in the US today, here until 1971, there was no Bengali player in the cricket team. Today, they have a team that comprehensively defeated New Zealand recently. Until opportunities and facilities are provided, there can be no development of talents and capabilities. In spite of positive discrimination towards blacks since the end of apartheid in South Africa, still the majority of cricket players are white; disadvantages built up over long periods are not easily dismantled.

Putting disadvantaged people in a more disadvantageous position acts as an albatross around their neck, which keeps weighing them down perpetually. This is exactly the position that the Sindhis, especially rural, and the Baloch are in and as long as the apathy of judicial commissions and others continue, the situation will not change. Blaming waderas and sardars alone for their backwardness does not hold water because they have systematically been put at a disadvantage and recent decisions and repression prove that this policy of systematic denial of opportunities has been reinforced.

Urban-rural divides do exist in developing countries, but here in Sindh these have been engineered for the sake of favouring some to the disadvantage of others. The hardships created for some with the excuse of being even-handed are in fact intentional injustices committed against the disadvantaged. States that practise systematic discrimination and denial of opportunities for some and positively discriminate in favour of others provide the very ingredients that help undo them, though they in their folly believe that this method strengthens them.

The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com