Wednesday's excursion

An excursion to Pakistan, in particular to Sindh, prompted by the news that India's Prime Minister has just kicked off construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a 400 year old mosque destroyed by a Hindu mob getting on for ten years back.

This turned up the news that Pakistan's Prime Minister has just kicked off construction of a Hindu temple in Islamabad. See references 1 and 2. With Pakistan having, with me anyway, a bad reputation for religious intolerance and old-speak religious observances. So there is hope yet.

I then wonder about the number of Hindus in Pakistan, and it turns out that prior to partition there were quite a lot. Now perhaps 5,000,000 of them or 2%, rising to 5% and more in Sindh, the south eastern province.

I look at the Times atlas to find that Sindh is the flood plain of the lower Indus, sandwiched between high ground to the west and desert to the east. I think a fertile plain, once home to an important ancient civilisation, comparable to those of the Nile or of the twin rivers of Iraq. Presumably also to ancient river civilisations of China, but I don't know much about them.

I look at Wikipedia, the source of the snap above, to find that the invasion of the Arabs from the west in the second half of the first millennium initiated all kinds of complicated goings on, goings on which are still with us today. About the same time, as it happens, as we were having to deal with Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and others of that sort. Irish pirates. Welsh and Scottish cattle thieves. That said, Sindh appears to be a hotbed of Sufism, a more tolerant version of Islam than that exported by the Saudis.

I close by wondering why the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad, is in the far north of the country, up against the Himalayas. But I leave that for another day.

PS: the original Sindh in pale brown, middle left. The eastern, hilly portion now lopped off.

Reference 1: https://arynews.tv/en/first-hindu-temple-construction-islamabad/. Pakistan flavoured.

Reference 2: https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-work-begins-on-first-hindu-temple-in-islamabad-1.72225096. Gulf flavoured.