Sindh, Marx and Iqbal

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Despite having one of the biggest, and most productive cities in Pakistan (Karachi), Sindh is still one of the worst provinces in Pakistan. 

Sindh and Class Divide

Worse in terms of the standard of living of the common man as well as the class divide that exists between the elite and the proletariat. According to a UN report, Poverty affects 75% of the population of rural Sindh. As an example, in the rural town of Umerkot, located in the interior of the province, with most of the population being Hindu, 84.7% of the population currently lives under abject poverty and are subjected to severe discrimination and almost famine-like conditions every year. 

Horrid Living Conditions

Considering that things are horrible there in general, one can only imagine the kind of horrors the minorities of such a land have to face from the moment they are born. As an example, the Hindu, Sikh, and Christian populace that lives in rural Sindh constantly has to live under the threat of death, rape, and forced conversions of their minors at the hands of the elite. This is not only restricted to these communities but the relatively isolated Kelash tribes have also been subjected to the same kind of treatment and have been exacerbated in recent years. 

Hunger and Malnutrition

Famine and starvation are not a new thing to the residents of interior Sindh. For the longest time, it is a normal thing for 100+ children to die in the Thar region of Sindh. The main cause for the deaths not being sick or accidental, but due to hunger. Simple starvation has killed and is killing one of the most vulnerable segments of our society. Compounding upon that is the recent few year’s worths of locust infestations that have ravaged the little green that the starved lands of Sindh produce for this country. An upsurge of new locust swarms has been damaging the agricultural and horticultural lands of Sindh since the summers of 2019 due to the cyclones that brought water to the Arabian peninsula in 2018 and 2019. 

As horrific as it sounds, the next question that rises to the fore when continuing along this line of questioning is how can this happen? And how have we let this happen for so long? 

Well, the answers are as heartbreaking as they are simple. 

The biggest reasons for malnutrition and starvation in inner Sindh are not the unavailability of resources (the existence of government installations in the area show that logistics is not the issue) but the lack of will of the authorities in power. It is as simple as that. 

Couple that with the horrific feudalism that exists in the region and what you get is a cocktail of misfortune that still clings on to the underbelly of our country like a malevolent leach. 

Marx and Sindh

Feudalism, even though it does not exist as it has in the past, still exists in a very real sense in interior Sindh. In the past, it consisted of the ruling class collecting taxes and having their own militia. In the present, it constitutes vast swathes of land being under the control of one family and the people working that land existing as bonded laborers (read: slaves) whose sole purpose of existence is to please the feudal lords and then go vote for who they say they need to vote for. 

The power dynamics are so horrific that for someone to break these bonds and go live a free life, it would be very difficult for them to escape the country with their lives. We already have quite a few examples of this already and it takes naught but a few clicks on Google to find multiple cases of an escaped bonded laborer being tortured to death or shot point-blank so as the other laborers (slaves) do not get the same idea. 

This problem is not only restricted to Sindh, or even to Pakistan for that matter. The biggest conflict exists not between countries and cross ethnicities but across classes of existence amongst us humans. The difference between Humanity and Animal exists between the treatment that is meted out to the Proletariat by the Bourgeoisie. But I digress. 

Let us end this with an example of an individual who decided to break his own bonds and remember what it felt to have them on. 

Bond Breaking and A continuing Movement

Iqbal Masih for example was an example of a bonded laborer who escaped slavery and helped thousands of others also escape the same bonds, was shot dead by the carpet Mafia in Muridke. 

“Iqbal Masih, a brave and eloquent boy who attended several international conferences to denounce the hardships of child weavers in Pakistan, was shot dead with a shotgun while he and some friends were cycling in their village of Muridke, near Lahore.”

This article is dedicated to Iqbal Masih and all the others like him that are fighting for freedom all across the country.