Borders can change, Sindh may return to India again: Rajnath

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday said although the Sindh region in Pakistan is not part of India at present, borders can change and the region may return to India in the future.

This is the third time in the past two months that the minister has spoken about the possibility of Pakistan’s borders with India being redrawn.

Sindh province — the region along the Indus river — went to Pakistan during the 1947 Partition.

Singh said, “Today, the land of Sindh may not be a part of India, but civilisationally, Sindh will always be a part of India. And as far as land is concerned, borders can change. Who knows, tomorrow Sindh may return to India again.”

“People of Sindh, who hold the Indus river sacred, will always be our own. No matter where they are, they will always be ours,” the Defence Minister said.

He said Sindhi Hindus — particularly from the generation of leaders like LK Advani — have never accepted the separation of the Sindh region from India.

Citing a book by Advani, the former Union Home Minister and BJP veteran, Rajnath said, “Advani wrote in one of his books that Sindhi Hindus, especially those of his generation, still haven’t accepted the separation of Sindh from India.”

“Not just in Sindh, but across India, Hindus consider the Indus river sacred. Many Muslims in Sindh also believed that the waters of the Indus were no less sacred than the Aab-e-Zamzam of Mecca,” Singh added, again referring to Advani’s writings.

This is the third time in two months that Singh has commented on Pakistan’s borders. In October, during a visit to the Rann of Kutch sector in Gujarat, he had said, “Any misadventure by Pakistan in the Sir Creek sector will invite a decisive response… If Pakistan dares to act in the Sir Creek sector, the reply will be so strong that it will change both history and geography.”

Earlier, on September 22, in an interaction with the Indian community in Morocco, Singh had expressed confidence that India would regain Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) without taking any aggressive steps, saying people there were demanding freedom from Pakistani control.

“PoK will be ours on its own. Demands have already started being raised in PoK — you must have heard the sloganeering,” he had said.