Taking note of BJP veteran LK Advani’s remarks about Sindh’s historical ties with India despite the partition, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said that “borders may change” and added, “one day Sindh may return to India.”
Addressing an event organized by the Sindhi community here, he said that “Advani ji has written in one of his books that Sindhi Hindus, especially those of his generation, have still not accepted the issue of Sindh’s separation from India”.
Pakistan was created as a result of the partition of the then undivided India in 1947, and the Sindh region near the Indus River has been part of Pakistan ever since.
“Not only in Sindh, but across India, Hindus considered the river Indus (Sindhu in Hindi) sacred. Many Muslims in Sindh also believed that the water of the Indus was no less sacred than the Aab-e-Zamzam (holiest of waters) in Mecca,” he added.
“This is Advani ji’s quote. Today the land of Sindh may not be a part of India, but civilizationally Sindh will always be a part of India. And as far as the land is concerned, the boundaries may change. Who knows, tomorrow Sindh may return to India. Our people of Sindh, who hold the Indus River as sacred,” he said, will always be our own; they will always be ours, no matter where they are ours.
However, Singh did not mention the title of the book he was referring to.
In 2017, Advani, who also served as Deputy Prime Minister, said at an event in Delhi, “I believe India seems incomplete without Sindh.
Advani, who was born on November 8, 1927, in Karachi, the capital of Sindh province (now in Pakistan), lamented that his birthplace was no longer part of India.
In his speech on Sunday, Rajnath Singh said that after the partition, a large part of the Indus River has gone to the Pakistani side and the entire province of Sindh is in Pakistan.
“But that does not mean that the importance of Sindhu, Sindhu and Sindhi has diminished for us. It still has the same importance as it did thousands of years ago,” the defense minister said.
According to him, the word Sindh is associated with the cultural identity of India and the Sindhi community.
Referring to the national anthem, Singh claimed that “even today people sing with pride, ‘…Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha’, and they will continue to sing and sing and sing it forever until we exist”.
