HYDERABAD, May 11: The people of different walks of life have expressed shock and outrage at the decision of the secretary, ministry of minorities, culture, sports, tourism and youth affairs, to wind up the Department of Archaeology and Museum in Karachi and shift over 150,000 antiquities and thousands of books to the Lahore Fort.
Some intellectuals have questioned the authority of the federal secretary in taking such an important decision in haste and without taking anyone into confidence.
Noted intellectual and educationist, Mohammad Ibrahim Joyo, told Dawn that Punjab had always been playing games with the smaller provinces. He said that our lands and resources were usurped and added that now the province was being deprived of its heritage, history and culture.
Mr Joyo termed the decision immoral and said that Punjab was taking advantage of our political disunity.
The president of the Awami Tehrik, Rasool Bux Palijo, has said the decision is aimed at robbing the province of its wealth and resources and even its past and added that transferring the wealth of heritage from Karachi to Lahore was tantamount to making one province culturally barren in order to enrich the other.
He called upon the government to refrain from transferring the provincial wealth to Punjab.
The former vice chancellor of Sindh University and former chairman of the Sindhi Language Authority, Dr G.A Allana, told Dawn that it was incomprehensible to shift hundreds of thousands of antiquities and books to Lahore which had been lying in Karachi for over half a century and added that he could not understand the motive behind the decision.
He said, “What will our research scholars and students do if all the source material is removed from Karachi”,
He added that the decision was unacceptable.
Noted economist and intellectual, prof Mushtaq Mirani, said that President Gen Pervez Musharraf, in his seven point agenda, had given a commitment to eliminate disharmony prevalent among the provinces but the move to shift antiquities and precious books from Karachi to Lahore would create disharmony. He added that it would also create hatred among the people of Sindh against Punjab.
Mr Mirani said that another point of Musharraf’s agenda was decentralisation but the decision indicated that everything was being centralized, he added.
He said he would welcome the allocation of funds for Lahore so that it could develop libraries and antiquities but Sindh should also be given the funds for the same purposes, he added.
Prof Eijaz Qureshi, regional general manager, the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP) and former director of the Sindh Development Studies Centre and institute of Business Studies, Sindh University, in a statement faxed to Dawn expressed his grief and shock over the decision and added that it was a hasty and one sided decision.
He said the researchers and scholars of Sindh and the people at large were being deprived of their academic and research pursuits.
He added that the scholars and students of the province and other states would have no resource material in future.
Mr Qureshi pointed out that disharmony already existed between the smaller provinces and the federation and the on-going water dispute between Sindh and Punjab had aggravated the situation.
He said the decision had created doubts in the minds of the people of Sindh.
He appealed to the President and the Sindh governor to to reverse the decision.
The former vice chancellor of Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Abdul Hameed Sindhi, in a statement has said that if the government archaeology department has gone bankrupt, then it should transfer the national heritage-antiquities and books to the universities and museum of Sindh instead of shifting them to the Lahore fort.
He said that the nation loved its past. He added that scholars and researches should not be deprived of the source material.