LAHORE: Artist and environmentalist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr says he has always been fascinated by river deltas like those of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, and their intricate network of waterways.

“We imagine Sindh as a very barren and dry place, but at one time in history, the Indus delta was spread from the borders of Punjab all the way to the Rann of Kutch with hundreds of waterways and distributaries that the British destroyed through building barrages in Punjab and then the Sukkur Barrage in 1932. Later, the Pakistan government in the Ayub Khan era signed the Indus Waters Treaty in 1962 that really was a death note of the delta,” he said while replying to question by his sister, novelist Fatima Bhutto, on the opening day of a literary festival at Kitab Ghar, a library and community centre in Rehmanpura.

When asked about his art, focusing on embroidery and mapmaking, he said the latter was an interesting way of visualising history before hydrological imperialism was used to change the river’s course at our bidding.

“For me, embroidery and textile have been an obsession for over a decade. Initially, I was doing a lot of rilli and patchwork, but later I got more into embroidery and Sindhi tanka. For a lot of people, art becomes something holy that can’t be touched, but textile feels very tangible that you can feel,” Zulfikar Jr, the grandson of PPP founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, said in the online session.

He did a series of maps showing that the Indus had never been static, as opposed to the view that the river remained a singular entity under the rulers’ control, forever flowing on the same course in the same direction, calling it an absolute lie. When the British were here, he said, they had to change their maps every year because the Indus used to change its course annually and they had no idea what to do with it.

“I made this map series of the Indus from 2,500BC up until the floods this year, showing how the river has changed its course. The recent floods have actually brought back the waterways that existed earlier, as the deluge filled those waterways.”

Showing an embroidered map of how the Indus may have been in the 1840s, Zulfikar said in the wet season, the river used to be spread everywhere. Sindh was sparsely populated back then; it was mainly a jungle, but the British hated jungles and after the industrial revolution believed that populated areas were something positive, he argued.

Zulfikar said 100pc of Sindh relied on the Indus river as did the Indus dolphin. “The rate at which we are seeing its species go extinct correlates to the extinction of the indigenous tribes in the Indus. There used to be 150 indigenous boat tribes in the river; most of them were the Mohanas. Their removal from the river led to the near extinction of other species too, like the Indus otters.”

“The Mohanas have been saying the barrage and dams have been killing them and their children. We need to listen to the indigenous voices. Even at COP27, there were no fishermen. There was a bunch of politicians with their staff who could do research for them, but no stakeholders. The right people are not being given a chance to set the table.”

In 2013, Zulfikar said, the PPP government had promised to clear the Indus waterways and drainage pathways, but instead it demolished homes along the highways in the name of clearance.

PLAY: Munh Aai Baat Nah Rehndi Aey, a poetic drama on the plight of women and sex workers, was staged by the Baham Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working on HIV/AIDS and sex workers.

Six amateur actors, who were also staff members of the organisation, performed the play that was interspersed with the kaafi of Bulleh Shah. The actors told stories of six women who were victims of underage marriage or abuse, including those of HIV positive patients, sex workers and actresses. The actors included Roma Younas, Maha, Arooj Saleem, Uzma, Alia Rafiq and Yasmeen.

Speaking on the occasion, Bushra Rani, a clinical psychologist and founding member of the foundation, said they had been working with women sex workers since 2018, focusing on control of HIV/AIDS.

“All the six stories presented are true, based on research on sex workers. Ninety percent sex workers said most of their earnings went into running their households that comprised children, parents, and even husbands.”

Saying that sex workers were at the bottom of the suppressed segments of society, Bushra said even those working with the community would feel ashamed about it. “People (in the development sector) stopped inviting us to their meetings since we started working with sex workers,” she lamented.

PERFORMANCE: Theatre actors Abuzar Madhu and Sana Jafri performed Ve Kehra Aen, a Punjabi poem by Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, which is a monologue of a girl addressing her father and complaining about the treatment meted out to her, including abuse.

The first day of the event day included the launch of a quarterly anthology of essays, Sada-i-Waqt, edited by Haris Gondal and Amir Hamza.

Zulfiqar Manan, the founding member of Kitab Ghar, said this was the first edition of the anthology, which would be published four times every year.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2022