Sindh: A Vision of a Secular Non-Military Pakistan
Mr. Munawar Laghari, UNPO Representative for Sindh, explains the Sindhi position regarding Pakistan, advocating secularism, demilitarization, and women’s rights.
Below is an article by The Human Rights Tribune:
The Sindhis are a Sufi people from
"If women ruled the world, there would no longer be any problems." This terse statement doesn’t come from the mouth of a militant feminist but from Munawar Laghari, executive director of the World Sindhi Institute (WSI), an organisation based in
The Sindh, whose headquarters are in the big city of
Laghari came to the Human Rights Council, at the invitation of the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organization (UNPO) to criticise
The Sindhis are opposed to the islamisation of society by the government and are calling for a non religious state, clearly separated from the mosques. “It’s not up to the Imams to make law. Besides Sufis don’t need a place of worship to pray, they can pray anywhere”. They are also asking for democracy and the decentralisation of the state which would guarantee them the internal autonomy that was originally foreseen in the 1940 resolution, but never granted. Without forgetting women’s rights: “In the countryside, women don’t wear the veil, otherwise how could they work? And in our religion, if a woman is not happy with her husband, she has the right to go and find another man”, he says.
What then is this strange religion which smells of patchouli and is reminiscent of New Age philosophy? Sufism Sindhi goes back to the time of the Indian emperor, Ashoka (three centuries before Jesus Christ) and takes its inspiration from Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Jainism. This mystical movement, which has the Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as one of its most well known followers, is quite difficult to understand. “The Sufi, like the dervish, is searching for truth and the annihilation of himself. He strives to get rid of his ego, his greed and lust” explains Laghari with passion.
"Since 1947 the government has accused us of being anti Muslim and anti Pakistani, but that’s not true. We want equal rights, peace, justice and democracy. But our main weapon is non violence and love”, he stressed. And to listen to him, that has always been the case. The proof? At the time of the excavation of Mohenjo Daro, one of the oldest cities in the world, founded three thousand years ago in the
But the Sindhis are not only discriminated against because they are Sufis. The Sindh, with the nearby