We often get to read or hear about migration of Sindhi Hindus to India or abroad, but the migration of Hindus within Sindh remains unnoticed. There is ten times more migration of Hindus from northern cities of Sindh including Kashmore, Kandhkot, Jacobabad, Ghotki, Mirpur Mathelo, Sukkur, Larkana, Shahdadkot and other cites, to Karachi than to India in last over one decade or so.
There is need to do a proper research study on it and find the causes of their migration. Though, the reasons for migration are obvious i.e, forced conversion of girls, kidnapping for ransom of well-off businessmen, extortion, demanding a share in business by influential goons, and perpetual fear and insecurity. Still, empirical data and results would be of great help to understand the trend, problems, and reasons. Rather making assumptions and weaving conspiracy theories, let’s do a research on it.
Punjab was partitioned in 1947 and the line was drawn between East and West Punjab. But there is non-stop and an invisible partition of Sindh that is still going on since 1947 in the shape of (un)noticed migration of Sindhi Hindus mostly to India and other parts. Sindh suffered a terrible blow to their economy as middle class and merchant community moved to India; to their literature and art as many Sindhi Hindu writers were ‘forced’ to leave their land, and last but not the least to Sindhi at as half of them said adieu.
The Sindhi Hindu middle class, who were mostly professional or entrepreneurs, was replaced with Urdu speaking population in urban areas. Thus, religiously it was an aligned society, but culturally it could never become as Mohajirs never got assimilated in the post-partition Sindhi society. Unlike Sindh, those who migrated from Indian Punjab to our Punjab(Pakistan), there was cultural and religious realignment. Well, this is a good area of research.
Despite all odds the Hindus living in Pakistan facing, I am of the firm belief and opinion that migration is not at all a solution for the persecuted minorities. If it is a solution, then only a well-off, middle class or the most persecuted and vulnerable can migrate, but what about those marginalized within the marginalized castes/classes?
Published in Daily Times, April 14th 2018.