Tharparkar District

Tharparkar District
ضلعو ٿرپارڪر
District

view of city in the District
Country  Pakistan
Province Sindh
Headquarters Mithi
Area
 • Total 19,638 km2 (7,582 sq mi)
Population (2015)
 • Total 2,264,653[1]
Time zone PST (UTC+5)
Website Tharparker District

Tharparkar District (Sindhi: ضلعو ٿرپارڪر‎, Urdu: ضِلع تهرپاركر‎), is one of the twenty nine districts of Sindh province in Pakistan. It is headquartered at Mithi. It has the lowest Human Development Index of all the districts in Sindh.

Religion

According to the 1998 census, Muslims constituted 61.42% of the population and the Hindus 35.58% of the district's population.[2] At the time of the independence of Pakistan in 1947, the Hindus were 80% while the Muslims were 20% of the population. In the years 1965 and 1971, population exchanges took place in the Thar between India and Pakistan. Thousands of Hindus (particularly the upper castes and their retainers) migrated from Pakistani Thar to the Indian section of the Thar. 3,500 Muslim families also shifted from the Indian section of the Thar to Pakistani Thar.[3][4][5] The Muslim families were given 12 acres of land each (a total of 42,000 acres).[3]

Administration

The district is divided into 7 Talukas (tehsils):[6]

Towns

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Sindh population surges by 81.5 pc, households by 83.9 pc". Thenews.com.pk. 2 April 2012. Retrieved 2013-04-21.
  2. ↑ Tharparkar District Official Website - District Profile - Demography Archived March 21, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  3. 1 2 Hasan, Arif; Raza, Mansoor (2009). Migration and Small Towns in Pakistan. IIED. pp. 15–16. ISBN 9781843697343. In the 1965 war, Pakistan captured a large area of the Indian part of the Thar desert, and in 1971 India captured a large part of the Thar desert in Pakistan. Many UCs in Pakistani Thar were Hindu majority areas, and Pakistani Thar as a whole was dominated by the Hindu upper caste who controlled most of the productive land and livestock. They also dominated the politics of Thar and strictly enforced caste divisions, making upward social and economic mobility almost impossible for the Hindu lower castes. Their control over the caste system also ensured the maintenance of agriculture-related infrastructure through baigar (forced labour) and the protection of forests and pasture lands. Following the 1965 and 1971 wars, the Hindu upper castes and their retainers fled to India. As a result, the feudal institutions that managed agricultural production and the maintenance of infrastructure collapsed. This has had severe repercussions on the natural environment of Thar. In addition, the lower castes were freed from serfdom and to some extent from discrimination. Many of their members, as a result, have acquired education and are important professionals and NGO leaders. Apart from the migration of Hindus to India, 3,500 Muslim families moved from Indian Thar to Pakistani Thar. They were given 12 acres of land per family (a total of 42,000 acres), thus introducing another factor in the social and political structure of Thar and creating a new interest group.
  4. ↑ Maini, Tridivesh Singh (15 August 2012). "Not just another border". Himal South Asian. It was not 1947 but the Indo-Pak war of 1971 which proved to be the game changer on this part of the border, since it was then that Hindus from Sindh, worried about persecution in Pakistan, fled to India. The cross-border train service had already been stopped following the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, and resumed only in 2006. Hindu Singh Sodha, a 15-year-old at that time he fled Pakistan in 1971, has set up the Seemant Lok Sangathan, which has been fighting for citizenship rights for all Hindu refugees from Sindh. During the war, Muslims from this region also fled to Pakistan.
  5. ↑ Arisar, Allah Bux (6 October 2015). "Families separated by Pak-India border yearn to see their loved ones". News Lens Pakistan. Retrieved 25 December 2016. Another woman, Amnat, a resident of Umerkot had a similar story to tell. She was married at the age of 17 and her husband took her to Pakistan. She is presently 60 years old. Her husband passed away 23 years ago. “My father Abdul Karim had also migrated from Rajasthan, India to Umerkot”. One of reasons is that his daughter lives in Sindh. Her father narrated to her that at the time of Pak-India wars, Muslims in the border’s districts were robbed, killed and harassed by the Indian army, hence he preferred to migrate to a Muslim country like Pakistan to avoid confrontation. She recalled that in the 1965 War between Pakistan and India; Kaprao, Konro, Boath, Vauri, Gahrr jo Tarr, Dedohar, Mate ka Talha, Bijhrar, and a number of other border villages were evacuated. Four persons were killed in the village of Kaprao by the Indian Army based on the allegations that they had been helping the Pakistan Army.
  6. ↑ "District Government Tharparkar".

Coordinates: 24°44′24″N 69°48′00″E / 24.74000°N 69.80000°E / 24.74000; 69.80000

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