Beyond Borders and Binaries

By Shabir Ahmed Chandio 

Why Sindh needs democratic devolution, not territorial division

A province is easy to draw on a map. A homeland is not.

Maps describe administrative jurisdictions; they do not capture the historical memory and human relationships accumulated within a territory over generations. A homeland lives in rivers and cities, villages and marketplaces, languages and literature, family histories and shared memories. Its boundaries may change, but its sense of belonging can endure.

The debate over Sindh’s unity or division deserves better than slogans. It is not simply a dispute over boundaries. It is a deeper question: what makes a political community a homeland?

Is it bureaucracy, ancestry, language or political power? Or is it the accumulated experience of generations who have lived and built their futures in the same historical space?

Sindh should be understood through the last of these.

Its contemporary boundaries are products of political history and have changed over time. Yet the idea of Sindh reaches far deeper than any modern administrative map. The Indus, centuries of commerce and migration, and an extraordinary literary tradition have created a civilisational landscape that cannot be reduced to a line drawn by an office. Sindh’s continuity has never depended on ethnic or linguistic uniformity; its history is one of interaction and cultural synthesis.

That history also matters to Pakistan’s creation. On March 3, 1943, the Sindh Legislative Assembly passed a resolution supporting the creation of separate Muslim states. It was a consequential moment in the history that eventually produced Pakistan. But history should explain the present, not determine who is entitled to belong in it.

Partition makes this question particularly important.

For millions, 1947 was not an abstract constitutional transition but a human catastrophe. Sindh, particularly its cities, absorbed large numbers of displaced people whose descendants became deeply embedded in its economic, educational, professional, literary and civic life. Urdu-speaking communities are now an integral part of Sindh’s contemporary social reality.

Acknowledging this does not diminish Sindhi identity. A confident civilisation can protect its language, literature and historical memory while allowing other traditions to flourish.

Partition and its aftermath also produced serious conflicts over property, employment, language, political representation and resources. These grievances should neither be erased nor converted into permanent collective guilt. History explains the present; it cannot dictate how citizens should treat one another today.

This is where the distinction between ancestry and citizenship becomes crucial.

The first generation of migrants naturally carried memories of another homeland. Their children and grandchildren, however, grew up here, studied here, built careers here and invested their futures here.

For someone born in Karachi, educated in Hyderabad and rooted socially in Sindh, “Where did your ancestors come from?” may be historically interesting. It is not an answer to the more important question: where do you belong?

At some point in a society’s evolution, ancestry must yield to citizenship.

Citizenship does not erase history. It transforms history into a shared future.

This is why Sindh must move beyond the exhausted Sindhi-versus-Muhajir binary.

The questions should no longer be who arrived first or who has the greater historical claim. The more constructive questions are: What are our rights? What are our responsibilities? What government do we deserve? And what kind of society will we build together?

Sindhi should remain a protected and celebrated language of Sindh’s cultural inheritance. Its literature is an archive of memory, philosophy and social thought. Protecting one language does not require diminishing another. Languages should be bridges into civilisation, not walls around citizenship.

The same principle applies to geography.

Karachi, the capital city of Sindh, and the province’s other cities, towns and districts are economically interdependent. Karachi depends on the province for agricultural produce, labour and raw materials; the rest of Sindh depends on Karachi’s port, markets, industries, universities and commercial networks.

The urban-rural divide is real. Karachi faces acute problems of transport, water, waste, land use, policing and housing, while many districts and communities across Sindh continue to face deficits in education, healthcare, employment, infrastructure and municipal services.

These grievances are legitimate. But a legitimate grievance does not automatically establish the correctness of a particular constitutional remedy.

The strongest argument for new provinces is governance: that existing arrangements have failed to deliver adequate services, representation and fair resource distribution. That argument deserves to be heard seriously.

But before drawing a new line across Sindh, another question must be asked: have we exhausted the possibilities of democratic decentralisation?

If Karachi is badly governed, why should the first solution be separation rather than an empowered, accountable and financially capable local government? If services are failing, why not reform municipalities? If resources are unfairly distributed, why not establish transparent fiscal mechanisms? If representation is inadequate, why not strengthen local institutions?

The distinction is fundamental: administrative decentralisation is not the same as territorial fragmentation. A province can remain intact while becoming politically decentralised; strong provinces require strong municipalities, districts and metropolitan institutions.

Autonomy should not stop at the provincial capital.

Karachi, as the capital city of Sindh, needs genuine local empowerment. Hyderabad and the province’s other cities and districts likewise need effective municipal governance and accountable institutions capable of delivering basic services without waiting for decisions made elsewhere.

The answer to administrative failure should be institutional reform before territorial surgery.

The existing system is not sacred. Administrative boundaries can change when there is a compelling constitutional and public-interest case. But division should not become a substitute for governance, nor unity an excuse for denying Karachi legitimate political and administrative rights.

The challenge for Sindh’s political leadership is to defend the province without defending dysfunctional institutions.

Sindh’s future should not be imagined as a contest between two frightened identities. It should be imagined as a civic compact.

Sindhis should not have to surrender their language, history or cultural inheritance to demonstrate inclusiveness. Urdu-speaking citizens should not have to deny their family histories to demonstrate loyalty to Sindh. Other communities living in Sindh should not have to choose between their cultural identities and their provincial citizenship.

The mature position is neither cultural erasure nor ethnic exclusivity. It is pluralism within a shared political home.

A homeland becomes durable when people do not merely inherit it but participate in sustaining it. Citizenship ultimately succeeds where ancestry cannot: it creates a relationship between people and place based on lived experience, constitutional rights and shared responsibility.

The real test of Sindh’s unity, therefore, is not whether its borders remain unchanged. It is whether its people can build institutions worthy of those borders.

Do not divide Sindh merely because we have failed to govern it well.

Understand it. Reform it. Decentralise it. Strengthen it.

The writer is a PhD student in Criminology.

Email: srchandio@gmail.com