Apr 24, 2007

Sindh: 'One Man' Sindhologist passes away


Mr. Panhwar passed away on Saturday in his home in Hyderabad, Pakistan. He published extensively and owned a personal library composed of 50,000 books on Sindh, horticulture, engineering, and the environment.

Mr. Panhwar passed away on Saturday in his home in Hyderabad, Pakistan. He published extensively and had a personal library composed of 50,000 books on Sindh, horticulture, engineering, and the environment.

Below is an extract from an article that was published by The Daily Times.

KARACHI: Scholar, agriculturalist and water expert Muhammad Hussain Panhwar passed away Saturday at his residence in Latifabad, Hyderabad at the age of 82, PPI [Pakistan Press International] reported Sunday.


“Five minutes before his death he was working on a chart of climate changes in Sindh,” said his wife Farzana while talking to Daily Times Sunday. “He was working manually, not on the computer. He finished his work and died within five minutes.”


Panhwar, born on December 25, 1925, was an expert in environment, history, archaeology, anthropology, historical geography and geology. After acquiring a BS in mechanical engineering (1949) and an MS in Agriculture Engineering (1953), Panhwar specialized in ground water development, earth moving, agricultural machinery, water logging, salinity control drainage, and agriculture.

He worked with the governments of Sindh and West Pakistan as an agricultural engineer for four years and also worked as a superintending engineer for Sindh and Baluchistan for 12 years up to end 1969. From 1970 to date he was running a consulting company specializing in irrigation, water logging, drainage, agriculture, scientific equipment, and horticulture. He wrote 10 books on ground water in Sindh and many articles on the Thar and Kohistan deserts.


In 1964, he established a horticulture farm specializing in fruit crops. This was later converted into a research farm in 1985 for introducing new fruit crops suited to Sindh’s climate, and which developed many new varieties of fruit crops, including, 17 types of mango, six types of lychee, and many others. He authored 36 books on culture and fruit crop post-harvesting. Many of them are not printed yet.

Considered a one-man ‘Sindhologist’, his hobby was the study of Sindh, and he published more than 500 pages on various aspects of Sindh. Six more books on Sindh are also ready in press. His personal library has some 50,000 non-fictional books almost equally divided on Sindh, horticulture, engineering, and the environment.

 
[…]

He was honored with a number of awards including a medal from Sindh University in 1949 for securing the first number in first class in B.E. (Mech. and Elec.). He was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan in 1992 for outstanding work in engineering and agriculture.

[…]


Linguistic expert, Aftab Abro, said that Panhwar was an encyclopedia of Sindh. “These days he was working on an atlas of Sindh,” he said.


Politician Imtiaz Shaikh said it was unfortunate that none of the governments had tried to benefit from his research.

 
Director of Culture Manzoor Kanasro said that Panhwar’s Atlas of Sindh would have been the first such book in Asia. He said that most countries in Asia didn’t work on atlases, that are usually prepared by people from America, Germany and England.