What Sindhi Peasants Asked For In 1948

A person may open an old register and discover an entire era between its pages. A faded entry may preserve a conversation, a debate, a question, a grievance, or a political argument. What appears to be an ordinary record can reveal the political life of a particular moment. Behind the survival of such records often stands someone who understands their value. Researchers call such people knowledge holders. My friend Rafiq Mangi, a development professional, is one of them. In the last week of September 2026, Mangi handed me an old register. Its title immediately caught my attention: Annual Proceedings Register of the Sindh Hari Committee, Sindh, 1947–48. He believed its pages could open a window onto Pakistan’s formative years.

Before examining the register and what it reveals, it is worth revisiting Sindh’s political landscape in the early years of Pakistan. The creation of Pakistan transformed Sindh’s political life. The Muslim League had achieved its principal objective, but its role in the new state remained unsettled. Short-sighted decisions, factional rivalries, and personal loyalties further weakened its organisation. Partition also brought an end to the Congress’s political role in Sindh. The province was left with a weakened party system just as Pakistan began building its political institutions.

Several interconnected disputes shaped the emerging political order in the province. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan sought greater federal control over Karachi, refugee settlement, and abandoned property. Muhammad Ayub Khuhro, then chief minister of Sindh, defended the province’s authority within the new government. Outside the assembly, G M Syed pressed for greater provincial autonomy. Land, urban property, Karachi’s status, and Sindh’s place in the federation became closely linked questions.

Amid this political fragmentation, one organisation retained a province-wide network: the Sindh Hari Committee. Founded in 1930 by a group of progressive thinkers and political activists, the Committee brought questions of agrarian rights and peasant welfare into Sindh’s public life. Comrade Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi joined in 1945 and helped expand its reach and strengthen its political voice.

The Committee maintained a tradition of annual conferences. This practice had a longer history in Indian political life. Surendranath Banerjea and Ananda Mohan Bose, founders of the Indian Association, used public meetings to advance collective political demands. The Indian National Congress later adopted annual conferences as a major means of political mobilisation. The Sindh Hari Committee sustained this tradition in its own setting. Its annual gatherings brought delegates together to exchange information, debate public questions, and formulate shared demands.

The Sindh Hari Committee accepted Karachi’s role as Pakistan’s capital but rejected the argument that the city had to be removed from Sindh’s jurisdiction for that purpose

The Annual Proceedings Register of 1947–48 shows how the Sindh Hari Committee framed its demands and responded to Pakistan’s emergence as a new state. Although the register’s opening pages refer to 1947, they contain no proceedings from that year. The register records the proceedings of the annual conferences held between 1948 and 1952. Handwritten in Sindhi, it comprises 174 pages in a standard register measuring 7.5 inches wide and 12 inches long.

This article only examines the first, held at Ratodero, Larkana district on the 30th to the 31st of May 1948. It was the Committee’s eighth annual conference since its formation in 1930. Delegates travelled from districts across Sindh as it was constituted at the time: Hyderabad, Karachi, Sukkur, the Upper Sind Frontier District, Thar and Parkar, Larkana, Nawabshah, and Dadu. They represented branches spread across the province.

The conference followed a two-session format. The first, a closed meeting reserved for Committee members, focused on internal affairs, mobilisation strategies, and fundraising. The second, an open session held the following day, brought the Committee’s concerns into the public domain. Delegates placed ten resolutions before the newly established state of Pakistan. Their demands ranged from land rights, tenancy reforms, and the distribution of evacuee property to labour rights, civil liberties, Karachi’s political status, and the future of Pakistan’s federal structure. Taken together, these resolutions reveal the breadth of the Sindh Hari Committee’s political vision. For clarity, they are organised under five thematic headings.

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The first resolution challenged Sindh’s tenancy system. The Sindh Hari Committee opposed the approach of the Sind Farm Tenancy Legislation Committee, headed by Sir Roger Thomas (1886–1960). The Committee questioned whether an official inquiry dominated by large landholders could adequately represent the interests of haris. For Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi, the central problem was the absence of the hari or a representative of the small cultivators from the inquiry. Jatoi argued that the inquiry had failed to give haris an effective voice or protect their rights as cultivators. The resolution therefore demanded permanent tenancy rights. It also called for changes to the batai system, under which agricultural produce has to be divided between the hari and the landlord. It was highlighted that without secure tenure, a hari remained vulnerable to eviction and unfavourable tenancy terms.

The Committee also demanded the abolition of jagirs. A jagir was a land grant that enabled influential families and favoured supporters to acquire extensive estates. The jagirdari system concentrated agricultural land in relatively few hands and strengthened the economic, social, and political power of its holders. Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi moved the resolution calling for the abolition of jagirs. Together, these demands sought to strengthen the haris’ position in Sindh’s rural order.

Partition triggered a dispute over agricultural land and urban property left behind in Sindh by departing Hindu and Sikh residents. The central question was who would own this evacuee property. The Sindh Hari Committee opposed the transfer of agricultural land to migrants when haris already cultivated it. Many of these haris were landless tenants who depended on the soil for their livelihoods. It was argued that an absent Hindu or Sikh landlord might be replaced by a new owner, but the haris’ position could remain unchanged. Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi argued that the state should not transfer land to new landlords or influential claimants without protecting the interests of the people already working on it. The resolution proposed that the state grant the land to existing haris and allow them to purchase it through instalments. The resolution reflected a central principle of the Committee’s agrarian politics: the state should consider the interests of those who cultivated the land when deciding how to redistribute it.

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The Sindh Hari Committee extended its concerns beyond agriculture to industrial labour and political activism. Its resolutions linked the haris’ struggle with the wider fight against exploitation and arbitrary state power. Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi moved a resolution demanding the release of Syed Jamaluddin, Sobho Giyanchandani, and other leaders. Both men were left-wing leaders and trade unionists. By defending them, the Committee broadened its political agenda beyond agrarian reform to include the right to organise, voice political demands, and participate in public life.

Another resolution defended freedom of the press. It demanded the lifting of the ban on Al-Wahid, a Sindhi newspaper founded in 1920. The newspaper had played a prominent role during the Khilafat Movement and occupied an important place in Sindh’s political and journalistic history. By defending Al-Wahid, the Committee challenged government interference in public debate. Its demand concerned more than the fate of a single newspaper. It concerned the right of Sindhi readers, journalists, and political organisations to express their views and debate public affairs without censorship. The resolution also opposed restrictions imposed on the newspaper’s editor, Abdul Ghafoor Sita’i. The authorities had ordered him to remain in his native village, curtailing his freedom of movement. The Committee demanded the removal of this restriction.

Another resolution challenged the use of state powers against political workers under the Sind Maintenance of Public Safety Act, 1948. The mover described how the Act’s provisions could be used to impose detention, restrict residence and movement, censor publications, and prohibit public meetings and processions. The Committee objected to measures that punished people for their political views or participation rather than for recognised criminal offences. It called for safeguards against arbitrary detention and restrictions on civil liberties.

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The resolutions also exposed the relationship between landlord power and state authority in rural Sindh. The Committee drew attention to the role of waderas (landlords) and the Sindh Police in intimidating rural people. A landless hari who depended on a landlord for access to land could struggle to challenge exploitation when that landlord wielded local influence and could call upon officials or the police.

The Committee demanded an inquiry into such intimidation and called for a clear distinction between criminal offences and political retaliation. Its concern extended beyond the treatment of individual activists. It questioned whether ordinary people could exercise their rights when powerful landlords and state officials could restrict their freedom.

These resolutions linked agrarian reform with civil liberties. The Committee’s resolutions challenged both the landlord’s authority in the countryside and the state’s power to suppress political dissent.

The dispute over Karachi brought the Sindh Hari Committee’s concerns into the centre of Pakistan’s constitutional debate. The Karachi resolution raised a related question: what authority would Sindh retain within the new federation?

Hyder Bakhsh Jatoi moved a resolution opposing the separation of Karachi from Sindh. The Committee accepted Karachi’s role as Pakistan’s capital but rejected the argument that the city had to be removed from Sindh’s jurisdiction for that purpose.

The delegates resolved that Karachi mattered to Sindh for both political and economic reasons. The city was the province’s principal port, commercial centre, and major urban settlement. Its separation would deprive Sindh of important administrative territory, commercial infrastructure, and revenue-generating resources.

Abdul Wahid Soomro moved a resolution demanding the right to self-determination for the federating units, seconded by Abdul Qadir. Invoking the Lahore Resolution of 1940, it opposed greater federal control over Sindh’s land, resources, and cities and called for provincial autonomy. The Committee also demanded a democratic federal constitution that clearly defined the powers of the centre and the provinces. Together, these demands sought to limit central authority and secure the rights of the federating units.

Seventy-eight years later, these questions remain unanswered. Land inequality, restrictions on civil liberties, the dispute over Karachi, and the denial of provincial autonomy continue to haunt Pakistan.

Turmoil in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, alongside renewed political manoeuvres to divide Sindh, exposes a federation held together by coercion and corruption rather than consent. But another path remains possible: a federation founded on trust, equality, and the right of every national unit to determine its future.

At Ratodero, Sindh’s peasants confronted Pakistan with a question that remains central to its future: whose rights would the state protect, and on what terms would its constituent units belong to the federation? Their challenge remains alive, awaiting an answer in both principle and practice.

Dr. Zaffar Junejo has a Ph.D in History from the University of Malaya. His areas of interest are post-colonial history, social history and peasants’ history. He may be reached at junejozi@gmail.com