HYDERABAD, Jan 12 Dr Sarah Ansari, a British author and historian of modern Sindh, laments absence or disappearance of official record on post-independence Sindh and said the Sindh Archives offered little help to historians.

Dr Ansari said at a seminar organised by the Sindh Education Trust in collaboration with the Sindhi Language Authority at Dr N.A. Baloch auditorium on Sunday that the Sindh Archives did not hold official records on the post-independence period since 1936 when Sindh was made a separate province in its own right.

It posed a big problem for the historians who regarded the 1950s as a pivotal decade in the province`s history and wanted to delve into relevant government records pertaining to that period, said Dr Ansari who has recently arrived from the UK to carry out research on Sindh.

She said that there was a problem of day-to-day records belonging to the decade before independence; if they existed, they had not been collected in such a way as to encourage historians to probe more deeply into the very important events of the years leading up to 1947.

She urged both institutions and individuals in Sindh to address the problem of collecting, maintaining and providing user-friendly access to the province`s archival resources.

She suggested that for the benefit of non-Sindhi speaking academicians; scholarships might be offered to secure new “converts” outside of Sindh to the important cause of exploring Sindh`s rich history. There was also a need for the provision of material in English, she said.

In the wake of infrastructure development carried out during the British era, Sindh in the late 19th century had already gained an edge over many other parts of the world in the fields of communication and irrigation, she said.

Dr Ansari said that development in the two areas helped in transforming Sindh into a far advanced administrative and economic unit as compared with other parts of India under the British rule.

She said that undoubtedly, Sindh had become far better integrated with the outside world by the first half of the 20th century than it had been ever before.

She said that Sindh at the time of independence was a very rich province and it welcomed a huge number of refugees. The towns within the barrage zone, for instance, acted as a magnet drawing in people from other areas to new economic opportunities that Sindh had to offer, she said.

She said that the British took a decision to encourage outside cultivators in Sindh for generation of more revenue but it was termed “invasion” of Punjabi peasants on Sindh. About railway connections both within Sindh and other parts of the British India, she said that Karachi was first connected by rail with the Punjab in 1878, then the subsequent construction of bridges across the Indus at Sukkur and Kotri had had a significant impact on Sindh.

By 1907 railway construction work had for all practical purposes been completed, she said, adding that further additions took place in the 1930s.

Throwing light on the history of naval development in Karachi, the historian informed the audience that by the 1890s Karachi was served by at least five major shipping companies and the naval infrastructure was later expanded to cope with the increased shipping activities.

She said that Karachi was transformed from a little passenger pier with no place for sea-going vessels to a port with the most modern facilities.

She said that apart from being a seaport, Karachi by the 1920s also emerged as the premier international air junction of the subcontinent. She said that although Sindh was a progressive province but it had always been under the influence of pirs and jagirdars.

A large number of academics, scholars and intellectuals attended the moot.