News Analysis |
Sindhi Cultural Day was celebrated throughout Sindh on Sunday, with great enthusiasm and fervour. The event celebrated on the first Sunday of December is both a celebration of the civilization that gave birth to the modern day subcontinent as well as a shrewd political gambit by the incumbent PPP.
Sindhi Cultural Day is widely celebrated with traditional enthusiasm to highlight the centuries-old rich culture of Sindh. The day is celebrated all over Sindh, and among Sindhi people living around the world. Sindhi people celebrate this day to demonstrate the peaceful identity of Sindhi culture and attract the attention of the world towards the rich heritage and culture of Sindh.
Rallies and colourful programmes were held in different cities to highlight the rich centuries-old Sindhi culture. In Karachi, a vibrant programme was held outside Karachi Press Club and was attended by a large number of people.
Local cultures may be the manifestation of the late Harappan over a large area in the region of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
Members of different political parties, including Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Sindh United Party, Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, took out rallies from different parts of the city and reached the press club. The participants were clad in the traditional Sindhi topi and ajrak, and sang and danced to traditional Sindhi tunes.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement also organised a program to celebrate the day in PIB Colony, in which the participants wore ajrak and Sindhi cap to celebrate the culture of Sindh and its soil. In Sukkur, Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Sindh United Party and other social groups took out rallies. They marched through various roads and danced on the tunes of cultural songs. Women and children also took part in the rallies. The main function was held outside the local press club.
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In Nawabshah, various rallies were taken out to mark the day. The women and children participated in the rallies. The participants sang songs and danced to the tunes of folk songs. They vowed to preserve the culture of Sindh at all costs. In Ghotki and Naushahro Feroze, Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz staged rallies to celebrate the day with enthusiasm. Rallies were also staged in Kashmore district.
The event celebrated on the first Sunday of December is both a celebration of the civilization that gave birth to the modern day subcontinent as well as a shrewd political gambit by the incumbent PPP.
On Sunday, people gathered in all major cities of Sindh at press clubs and other places, arranging poetry circles, ‘mach kachehri’ (gathering around a circle with fire on sticks in the centre) musical concerts, seminars, lectures and rallies, while people, as well as the major hallmarks of cities and towns, were adorned in Sindhi ajrak.
The festival also symbolises and commemorates the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation. It is this civilization that can be asserted to be Pakistan’s greatest soft power strength. The Indus Valley Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation mainly in the northwestern regions of South Asia, extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India. Along with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early cradles of civilisations of the Old World, and of the three, the most widespread.
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The Indus Valley Civilisation is also named the Harappan civilisation after Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated in the 1920s in what was then the Punjab province of British India and now Pakistan. Previously, scholars believed that the decline of the Harappan civilisation led to an interruption of urban life in the Indian subcontinent.
However, the Indus Valley Civilisation did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilisation appear in later cultures. Local cultures may be the manifestation of the late Harappan over a large area in the region of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
David Gordon White cites three other mainstream scholars who “have emphatically demonstrated” that Vedic religion derives partially from the Indus Valley Civilisations.
In Ghotki and Naushahro Feroze, Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz staged rallies to celebrate the day with enthusiasm. Rallies were also staged in Kashmore district.
It is this Vedic culture that Hindutva fundamentalists try to assert control over. Their entire ideology is based on their claims that they are the inheritors of the Harappan civilization and the rest (Muslims and Christians) are interlopers. The presence of the Indus valley in Pakistan is a serious impediment to their ideological slogans. It is this strength that Pakistan must utilize to negate Hindutva assertions. Using the Muslim past of the subcontinent as a spiritual foundation Pakistan can use the Harappan civilization as proof of its integrity in the subcontinent.