Sherry Rehman slams Indian defence minister’s remarks on Sindh as historically ignorant

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party Senator Sherry Rehman has strongly criticised the Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s recent remarks about Sindh, calling them offensive and reflective of a “wilful ignorance of history that borders on self-sabotage.”

Rehman said the minister “does not know, or chooses to forget,” that Sindh was the first province to vote in favour of joining Pakistan well before partition and independence in 1947 — a commitment, she added, that was not limited to Muslim Sindhis.

She noted that Sindh’s political history is officially recorded, pointing out that even under British rule the province resisted inclusion in the Bombay Presidency and was formally separated from it on April 1, 1936.

Rehman criticised what she described as an attempt to play the “ethno-nationalist card” for a province that consistently votes for one of Pakistan’s largest federal parties, the PPP, whose leadership, she said, “has fought against terrorism and wars brewed in India.” She termed the remarks “a new low in strategic desperation.”

The senator added that the Indian minister “should focus on the large swathes of disaffected regions in the north-east of his own country, and also wake up to the reality that India’s blatant and illegal occupation of Kashmir is not working, despite deploying a million security forces there.”

Rehman warned that if hawkish rhetoric were to be reciprocated, Indian officials would be reminded that Sindh gives its ancient Sindhu name to the Indus River and the Indus Valley Civilisation — from which India derives its pre-Bharat name. “By his own logic, Pakistan could be asking for certain Indian territories to secede,” she said. “But we don’t play that game.”

“We don’t put up expansionist maps in parliament that trigger such delusional dreams,” Rehman said, adding that Pakistan remains a modern, peaceful, Westphalian state that knows “how to flex in defence of its sovereign territory on any battle space when needed.”