HYDERABAD, Oct 9: Ms Alice Albinia, author of the “Empires of Indus”, which has won the Royal Society of Literature’s special prize for non-fiction work, has said that survival of the people of Sindh is dependent on the Indus River and the case of the river is not technical but political.

She said at the launching ceremony of her book at the Sindhi Language Authority on Wednesday that almost all the people with different schools of thought she had met during her research were unanimous in their opinion that the river was the only source of survival for the people of Sindh.

She said that she had travelled across the coastal belt of Badin and Thatta and up to Tibet and Himalaya to gather material and information on the river, which revealed that Sindh was the only region in the subcontinent where people of different religions lived in harmony and believed in secularism.

She said that frequency of references to the Indus River in the ancient history of India inspired her to write a research book on the river.

TRD chief Zafar Junejo said that the book had been written specially for the English speaking world and to a very great extent it truly highlighted Sindhi society’s outlook on secularism and non-violence.

Prof Aijaz Qureshi pointed out some factual mistakes in the book and said that it was wrong to say that the name of Indus was “Porali” though the river did have a tendency of Porali (changing its course periodically.)

He said that many chapters of the book were very important and suggested that they be translated into Sindhi.

SDF leader Zulfiqar Halepoto and Ms Rozina Junejo also spoke at the ceremony, which was jointly organised by the Transformation and Reflection for Rural Development (TRD) and the Indus Institute for Research and Education.