Inaugural

Volume - 7 : Issue - 4

 

Published : Oct. - Dec. 2008

 

Group : Feedback

Back to the List

Baldev Matlani

Dear Mr. Ranjit Butani,

The article 'A Matter of Faith' by your goodself in Sindhishaan, July - September, 2008, is in no way less than a challenge and a call to fellow Sindhis to awaken them from their deep slumber. Some thirteen centuries back Sindhi Hindus had to give up their homes, businesses, careers and even their life in the wake of Muslim aggression by Mohd. Bin Qasim in 711 A.D. The sole reason behind their sacrifice was nothing but to save their religion. Likewise, at the time of creation of Pakistan when Sindhi Hindus were confronted with the prospect of loosing their religious identity, they decided to abandon their ancestors' land and proceed towards un-charted territories of the truncated India, literally empty handed. Had their identity been of no value to them, why would they have sacrificed all their belongings and head for an alien land?

Hindu religion being most ancient has also been a most modern one, because it is always evolving. It is never static, it never puts any restrictions on the thought process. It never faces any danger from any orthodox ideology. As compared to it, Christianity is a narrow and parochial ideology which awards death sentence to people declaring that the earth is round, just because Bible professes the earth to be a flat. The dislocation of Sindhi Hindus had played havoc with their lives. They had to scatter around all the corners of India, start their life afresh, face all the humiliations and indignities, lose their language, culture and identity in the wake of the partition of India and six decades after that episode they could not even save their religion, for which they had gone through all that hell.

Baldev Matlani