SYED Ghulam Murtaza Shah (1904-95), popularly known as G.M. Syed since 1945, is usually considered the “sage” of Sindh. He had dominated Sindhi politics since 1943, when he got himself elected as president of the Sindh Provincial Muslim League, as few others did.
Whether in mainstream Sindhi politics or outside it, he was, most of the time, a formidable force, one that could not be ignored. He made and unmade seven ministries during 1937-46, and became extremely problematical for the All-India Muslim League (AIML) and for Muslim Sindh when he revolted against the AIML for not accommodating his entire panel in the official list for the March 1946 provincial elections. Although he was elbowed out in the December 1946 re-elections, he returned to active politics early in the 1950s as Sindh Awami Party chief.
The merger of Sindh in One Unit in October 1955, provided him the chance of a lifetime, to stake his claim as the chief spokesman of Sind’s autonomy and rights. A dexterous manipulator, he used the Sindhi card to extract huge political dividends for the next 15 years, till Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the PPP chairman, challenged and elbowed him out in the 1970 general elections. Bhutto donned the role of the tallest poppy in Sindh, and shrewdly used the Sindhi card to keep himself in power and nurse and build up a specifically Sindhi constituency, apart from the socialist oriented one in the Punjab. Syed, with his Sind United Front, continued to inspire and attract Sindhi “nationalists”, occupying the centre-stage as their guru, till his death in April 1995.
Because of his domineering nationalist phase for over four decades, it is not usually realized and acknowledged that during the early 1940s, Syed had donned an all-India orientation, next only to Abdullah Haroon, Syed was accommodated on the dais at the Lahore (1940) session. Such was his enthusiasm for Pakistan that he got a resolution in Pakistan’s favour moved and passed by the Sindh Assembly in 1943, the only legislature to pass such a resolution.
He launched a campaign for the boycott of Hindu goods and “buy from Muslim shops” in 1943, and advocated settlement of Muslims from minority provinces in Sindh, to counterbalance the mounting Hindu influx from Kathiawar and Bombay Presidency, in 1945. His inclusion in the AIML Working Committee in 1943 meant an official acknowledgment of his crucial role in Sindh. He got the AIML invited to hold its 31st session at Karachi in December 1943, and served as its Reception Committee chairman. Such was his attachment to Jinnah that he was shocked into unconsciousness when he heard the rumour of Jinnah’s death in 1941.
Of all of Syed’s pronouncements, his welcome address as chairman of the Reception Committee on December 24, 1943, is important at least on three counts. First, it was delivered in Urdu, not in English or in Sindhi, and it sought to buttress its thesis with copious citations from Iqbal, and not from any local poet. However, there is a solitary reference to Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai as having inspired “the Sufi Muslims of this land.” (Interestingly, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai came in handy in the middle 1960s when Syed founded the Bazm-i-Soofia-i-Sindh, in pursuit of his political ends — i.e., as “the forerunner to another anti-One Unit forum”, to quote Shaikh Aziz). Second, his address sought to attempt a definition of “the land of Sindhu.” Third, it held out an open invitation to the (non-Sindhu) Indian Muslims, arguing that “our (Sindhi Muslims’) future is interwoven with your future,” and pleading for an extension of their “helping hand.” In order to get an idea of Syed’s thinking at the time, he needs to be cited verbatim on the last two points. But, for the present, we would confine ourselves to the second point.
In the light of Syed’s later Sindhu Desh campaign and rhetoric, his enunciation of the “Sindhu land” concept in his 1943 address is extremely interesting. “By Sindhu,” Syed explained, “I mean that part of the Asian continent which is situated on the borders of the River Indus and its tributaries. In past ages, Sind and Hind have been considered separate entities; and Sindh included Kashmir, the North-West Frontier Province, Punjab, Baluchistan and the present province of Sindh. But as time went on, it began to connote a smaller and smaller area, until now it is assigned only to that part of the land which is watered by the tail-end of this great river.
“Today again, fully aware of this fact, we are moving to weld together those different parts into one harmonious whole, and the new proposed name, Pakistan, connotes the same old Sindhu land.... Destiny had ordained the past of this land to be glorious, and we hope its future will be as bright. In many ways, the history of this land is unique.... Nowhere has Nature attempted to weld different civilizations together as it has done here on this soil...new blood has ever been pouring in its veins...the political influence of Babylon, Egypt, Iran, Greece, Arabia and Afghanistan are easily traceable here. In comparison to these, the influence of Southern India is almost negligible. I have narrated the short history of this land and its past glory with a view to remind those who, under the dominant influence of Hind, have forgotten or are prepared to forget the splendour and ascendancy of their homeland....”
As will be easily recognized, Syed’s “Sindhu land” is largely co-terminus with the pre-1971 West Pakistan and post-1971 Pakistan. How this “Sindhu land” vision came to be distorted and got constricted to the administrative boundaries of the Sind province (“Sindhu Desh”) in Syed’s later, specially post-1970 posture, is rather inexplicable and problematical. Even so, it represents a paradigmatic shift. And it direly calls for intellectualizing the problem, if we are to really understand the politics and postures of the Saen of Sind in perspective, specially during the last 25 years of his eventful life.
