Sindh Festival 2014

Sindh Festival 2014 with Superman, Rap and Hip Hop

This is what they have come up with after the horrible defeat in election 2012, a government organized musical and fashion show named as Sindh Festival. It is a fancy carnival type festival, sort of replica of some fancy festivals from Las Vegas. Lots of music, hip hop, rap, jazz & pop, fashion shows, dazzling lights and gathering of people belonging to a specific class of the society. Sindh doesn’t appear in any act of the festival except of the archaeological site of Moen Jo Daro. The official logo of the festival is Superman’s logo, the comic character and fictional American hero. It has nothing to do with Sindh or Sindhi culture, definitely an irrelevant and lame theme.

Doing politics with a touch of music and musical shows is not something new we are seeing in modern political campaigns, for some it works, and for other it’s just waste of time and resources. The population they opt to target has no interest in their deceitful efforts. Their image is so distorted by corruptions of all sorts and bad reputations that it will take decades for any of such process to work.

The Moen Jo Daro is a UNESCO World Heritage site built around 2600 BC. It was discovered in 1922 by a British archaeologist Sir John Marshall. The site is 425 kilometres (265 miles) north of the port city of Karachi and was one of the largest settlements of the Indus Valley Civilisation. It is one of Pakistan’s six UNESCO World Heritage sites which have special cultural significance.

The site of remains of ancient civilisation has already declared in danger by the experts because of lack of proper take care, now with this festival things going around it will cause more unrecoverable damage to it. Several archaeological experts from inland and abroad warned Sindh government about the devastating effects of this festival, suggested that the organizers should move the arrangements to a different location, someplace else close to the archaeological site, keeping the attachment of the event to the location as well as to keep the national heritage site secure. Civil society activists even filed a law suit in Sindh High Court, and High Court released the order that the arrangements must be moved from the Moen Jo Daro site, but seems like when it comes to them, like ever before, they really don’t care about what High Courts or Supreme Courts say or order.

Large wooden and steel scaffoldings have been erected over and around the sensitive locations. Heavy spotlights and lasers have been installed for the light shows. The site has been transformed into a high security zone, with hundreds of policemen and commandos surrounding the sites. The possible number of the guests is 1000 people, participated in opening ceremony. A good number of foreigner visitors, some of them wearing traditional Sindhi Ajrak outfits, were also seen.

This is the first time that such an event has been organised in Sindh at government level. The challenge is to pull off the entire festival with grace and precision. It would have been great if they had taken care of all the objective points in advance, but since now it is in next stage, people expect it to be constructive and positive for the Sindh. Just remember, show more Sindh in Sindh festival, and no superman or any other comic character next time.
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Tags: sindh festival

Category: Socio Political