New Delhi: Jeay Sindh Freedom Movement (JSFM), which has been spearheading decades-old struggle for Independence of Sindh from Pakistan, has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accord recognition to ‘Sindhudesh’ as an Independent nation and sought Indian intervention to stop genocide of Sindhis at the hands of Pakistan.
In an open letter to the Indian PM, JSFM Founder and Central Chief Organiser Zafar Sahito has pointed out that the historical nation of ‘Sindhudesh’ is under illegal occupation of a fundamentalist Pakistan and appealed for help to establish a Government-in-Exile in India.
He has made the appeal on the ground that Pakistan is committing enormous atrocities on the people of Sindh, with Hindu girls being abducted, raped and converted to Islam and demography being changed by forcing original inhabitants to flee their motherland.
Sahito has appealed for India’s intervention for the “balkanization of Pakistan as a solution to save the history, culture and identity of the Sindhi nation (the focal site of the extended Indus Valley civilization), and to restrain Pakistan from further genocide of the secular and syncretic Sindhi nation.”
Describing Sindhudesh as a Center of Sindhu-Saraswati Civilization, Sahito noted that it was a historical land where the Rig Veda was recorded on banks of the River Indus.
“The word Dharma is a Sanskrit word, a language that evolved in Sindh. Sanskrit grammarian Panini was born in Sindh according to some accounts. The word India is a cognate of the River Indus, which flows in Sindh. The word Hindu is also cognate of the River Sindhu, which flows in Sindh,” the leader said.
“Our historical land of Shiva and Shakti, Sindhu Saraswati Mata, is in the hands of radical Islamist groups and organizations known as Pakistan now, where every other day a minor Sindhi Hindu girl is abducted and forced convert to Islam and married of to much older men,” the Sindhi leader wrote.
In a single year, Sahito said, 800 Hindu girls are abducted and forced to convert to Islam.
Every year, 10,000 landowners and residents are forced to leave their homes and their motherland.
“It is a systematic genocide of the original inhabitants of the land to change the demographics of occupied Sindh,” he said.
Sahito said 65 of leaders and political workers of the Sindhi national freedom movement have been extrajudicially killed by brutal Pakistani intelligence agencies.
“Pakistan’s radical Islamist groups and fascist state-sponsored elements are continuously trying to alter our roots, culture and our secular historical identity by establishing Madrassas in each and every small village and town,” he wrote.
Within recent years, 40,000 new Jihad schools (madrassas) have been set up, especially in border towns adjoining India, he added.
“It is our birthright to live with dignity in our own historical motherland. Pakistan is selling our lands and national resources to China, which will be a worrying situation for India too because Sindh shares long borders with democratic India,” Sahito wrote.
“Therefore, this is not just an appeal on humanitarian grounds or grounds of shared values and civilization, but an appeal to India’s good geopolitical sense and realpolitik,” he added.
He has made similar appeal in letters to heads of other democratic countries like the US, Israel, UK, Japan, Australia, the European Union as well as the UN Secretary General.