HYDERABAD: Prominent intellectual and writer Amar Jalil has blamed Sindhis for the deterioration of education in the province and said nobody has compelled them to close down their schools but they themselves have snatched the right to education from their children and youths.

The scholar was among a bevy of writers, poets and intellectuals who spoke at the inauguration ceremony for the three-day Hyderabad Literature Festival organised by the Academy for the Promotion of Art, Literature and Literacy at the Hyderabad Club on Friday.

Mr Jalil said that hundreds of thousands of schools were closed in Sindh and their buildings were handed over to feudal lords to appease them.

He said that school-going children were being destroyed under the heavy burden of bags. He had seen three generations of Sindh who were not educated the way today’s children were getting education, he said.

He expressed concern over the growth of seminaries across Sindh to which, he regretted, parents were handing over their children because of abject poverty.

He said the word Sufi had become a misnomer as the people who did nothing were being called Sufis today. It was Sufism when both Muslims and Hindus used to celebrate Sachal Sarmast and Shah Abdul Latif’s melas before the partition, he said.

He said that talented Sindhi people had become fed up with the situation and gone abroad and lamented that Sindh police were patronising criminal elements.

Hyderabad divisional commissioner Qazi Shahid Pervez stressed the need for such festivals to create awareness among youths about their culture, civilisation and literature.

Scholars and writers Hameed Sindhi, Madad Ali Sindhi, Saleem Bhutto, Adal Soomro and others also spoke at the gathering.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2016