By Asif Aqeel, Director Center for Law and Justice, Lahore, Pakistan
The Pakistani nation
was baffled by the news on Thursday, August 9, that 250 Hindus
had been debarred
from crossing into India by the Interior Ministry despite these folks had valid
Indian visas. Interior Affairs Minister Rehman Malik appeared on TV
channels and stated that the
Indian embassy had “hatched a conspiracy” against Pakistan by issuing 250 visas to the Hindus.
Malik, whose Senate membership was suspended
by the Supreme Court over dual nationality but was restored when he revoked the
U.K.’s citizenship, said that the Hindus could leave only after issued “no
objection certificate”. The matter has got so much
attention that the Indian
parliament and Pakistani
Parliament are discussing Hindus’ exodus from Pakistan.
Before these Hindus
were allowed to cross the Indo-Pak border, they shared their woes with the Pakistani
media. They said that “their shops were looted, their houses were raided
by unknown men and their women were forcefully converted” to Islam in the province of Sindh. These stopped
Hindus held a protest after
which the Pakistani government allowed them to cross over to India the next day.
This embarrassing news made the Sindh Chief Minister Kaim Ali Shah and
President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari take notice
of the incident. A presidential inquiry
committee was set up to end plight of Hindus. There is very little hope that the committee’s
recommendations would bring any change that could halt exodus of religious
minorities. In 2009 the Pakistani government set up a judicial commission to
inquire the Gojra attacks in which dozens of houses of the Christians were set
alight and eight Christians were killed. The judicial report identified
responsible elements and also suggested amendments in the blasphemy laws. Alas! To this day, no attention has been paid to
the judicial commission’s recommendations. The outcome of this presidential
inquiry can be assessed from the fact that Malik’s Federal Investigation Agency
(FIA) has submitted its report that no exodus of Hindus is taking place and the Hindu lackeys in the government have also denied any migration of Hindus.
Rather than taking note of flight of 250 Hindus, the
government should identify and mitigate the migration push factors that force
minorities to leave the country. There are roughly 200 million Muslims living
in India but their migration to Pakistan is almost non-existent. It is
religious intolerance which just does
not scare religious minorities but even Muslims, especially those belonging to
the minority sects.
Few very recent
examples would be sufficed to show how intolerant the Pakistani society has become.
These days, the Pakistani Muslims, like rest of the Muslim ummah, are fasting in the month of Ramadan. The police in
Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, are raiding cafes
in posh areas to enforce Ehtram-e-Ramazan
Ordinance, 1981 (the ordinance
prohibits public eating during the month of Ramadan from morning till evening). It is not enough! The people themselves
take law into their own hands for implementation of this rule introduced by a
military dictator in 1981. On July 30 nine Christian nurses in Karachi were
given poisonous tea to avenge their eating and
drinking during Ramadan. No arrest could be made in this incident. On July 30 Airport Security
Staff lady inspector on an airport in Lahore “severely thrashed” an assistant
of passengers handling “for taking a phone call
of her husband on her cell minutes before Iftar” (the fast breaking time).
Religious zealotry by civilians does not stop to beating but can go as far as
taking life of the offender in Pakistan. In a recent harrowing incident, a
fuming mob beat and burned alive a mentally ill man in the city of Bahawalpur
for “throwing pages from the Holy Quran onto the street”. On July 04 the police
had formally arrested this mentally ill person and locked him up in the police
station. But this did not satisfy the angry protestors, numbering from 1500 to
2000. The protestors surrounded the police station, torched four vehicles,
overpowered the few police officers present there and dragged the mentally ill
man in the middle of the road where they burned him to death. These very recent incidents show that not just
religious minorities but even any Muslim man or a woman is not secure in
Pakistan.
Religious intolerance, introduced
by the Urdu-speaking migrant leadership for political mileage in ethnically
divided Pakistan, has been evident since 1947. The Objectives Resolution,
introduced in 1949, divided the nation between Muslim and non-Muslim. The
Hindus were the first, then were the Ahmadis, in 80’s were the Shias and Zikris
and with the dawn of the 21st century the Sunni sects of Brailvi and Deobandi
have got engulfed in its flames. The pre-partition communal violence between
Hindus and Muslims has now been replaced by Muslim mobs ransacking houses of
Christians and setting them on fire.
The Hindu minority
which is in news these days has been perceived with suspicion and was dubbed as
a fifth column
during and after 1971 India-Pakistan War. Pakistani school textbooks and Urdu
media paint Hindus as treacherous, mean, evil and enemies of Pakistan and Muslims. Hindu temples are closed,
vandalized,
or turned into schools or hotels. In response to demolition of Babri Mosque in India
by Hindu extremists in 1992, more than 1000 Hindu temples were destroyed by Muslim mobs across the country.
The Pakistani Hindus
can be divided into two sections: high caste and untouchable Hindus. Both of
them are fleeing Pakistan for different reasons. The high caste Hindus, who are
smaller in number but are educated and wealthy traders, face a challenge of
abduction for ransom in the cities of Quetta
and Karachi.
On the other hand, the untouchable Hindus, the main bulk of the community, are
shunned as evil. There are separate
utensils for these people at
eateries in the province of Sindh. Barbers refuse to give them haircut because
it involves touching them. Even the untouchable Hindu children at school are
mistreated by Muslim students and teachers alike. These Hindus are mostly
uneducated and poor. They serve as bonded laborers and some of them are locked up in private jails of Sindhi landlords if they try to flee bondage.
Manu Bheel is a living story of such an ordeal of the untouchable Hindus. Nine
members of his family are in a private jail of a landlord since 1998. He is
protesting outside the Karachi Press Club for almost a decade but to no avail. Even
the Chief Justice of Pakistan, who recently sent the Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gillani home over contempt of court, has failed
to recover these nine missing persons. These untouchable Hindus in 2011
devastating floods were forced to live under the sky because the Muslims did not let them in the relief camps. At the same time, both the high caste and
untouchable Hindus face the same challenge. Their young women are abducted, forcibly married and converted to Islam. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported
in 2010 that 20 to 25 Hindu women were being forcibly abducted each month and converted
to Islam.
The Hindus are not the
only minority in Pakistan who are leaving the country since 1947.
Evacuation of Pakistani Christians is also taking place for similar reasons. Like
the Pakistani Hindus, the Pakistani Christians can also be divided into
Anglo-Indian and Goan Christians – who mostly lived in Karachi, Islamabad and
Lahore and now have settled abroad – and the Punjabi Christians who are mostly
backward, poor and uneducated. The Anglo-Indian Christians were the first to
leave the country due to the changing socio-cultural environment. In early 60’s and 70’s they migrated to Canada,
U.S., the European continent, New Zealand but mainly to the U.K. and Australia. Today, we can hardly find an Anglo-Indian
Christian in Pakistan, though few Goan Christians are left, but bulk of the
Christians is of the Punjabi descent.
The Punjabi Christians
are comparable with untouchable Sindhi Hindus. They are mostly uneducated, poor
and leading their lives in suburban ghettoes. Almost 75 percent of their
population consists of laborers, brick kiln workers and sweepers. The
Christians in the Punjab are treated as untouchable and disparagingly called “Chuhra”. Their mere touch is considered
abhorrent. In several parts of the Punjab they are refused haircut because it
involves touching them. For example, in Sikandarpura, Kasur District, we can
find a tea stall that has separate crockery for the Christians. This crockery –
dirty, used and having broken edges – is handled by the Christian clients and
even washed by them after use.
On one hand these
Christians are perceived as untouchable because of their background but on the
other hand they are associated with the West. The Hindus are called as agents
of India while Christians are perceived as agents of the U.S. According to
Lahore Archbishop Saldanha hundreds of Christians were accused of espionage and
arrested during 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. The archbishop in his book “Hamari Dastan” (Our Story) says that
all the accused were released because no charge was proved. In several
instances infuriating mobs have attacked Christian ghettos over blasphemy
accusations, especially after 9/11. Shantinagar (1997),
Sangla Hills (2005), Bahmaniwala (2009)
and Gojra (2009)
are the most notable incidents when the Christians of these areas had to flee.
Their houses were ransacked or burned and in the Gojra incident eight
Christians were burned to death. The only Christian national cabinet minister
Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated
in March 2011 by terrorists for speaking against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. After
his assassination, the Indian government included Pakistani Christians and
Buddhists who could get long-term visas “with ultimate intention” of getting Indian
citizenship. Earlier, this visa type was limited to the Hindus and the Sikhs.
Hence, these are incidents of intolerance that play role in minorities’
evacuation from the country.
Like Hindus and
Christians, the Pakistani Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Jews and Jains have also
decreased in number over the decades. At the time of independence, there lived
the fourth largest Zoroastrian (Parsi) community of the Indian Subcontinent in
the city of Karachi. This community played an exceptional role in Pakistan’s development but their number has steadily decreased
due to Islamization in the country. Similarly, a small but vibrant community of
Jews lived in Karachi but it decreased
especially after Arab-Israeli wars. Today, like the Jews, the Jains are also
non-existent in Pakistan. Several names like Dhalla (now given Islamic name as
Liaquatabad) and Bhabra in Lahore remind Jains’ presence before partition but
hardly a Pakistani knows this fact. There are several Jain temples here in
Pakistan but these deserted religious places are mistaken for Hindu temples.
For example, the Jain Mandir (Jain Temple) in Lahore was demolished by angry
Muslim mobs in 1992 after the Hindus demolished Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India.
The intersection next to this demolished Jain temple was named as Babri Chowk (or
Babri Cross) after the temple was demolished.
Although the religious
minorities are fleeing the country, it would be inappropriate to say that only they
are the ones who are leaving. In 2010 Pakistan was the 8th largest asylum
seeker in industrialized countries. There was 66 percent increase with more than 18000 Pakistani asylum seekers in 2011 and “Pakistan jumped from eighth to fifth place in the
list of countries of origin for asylum seekers”. Obviously, religious minorities make a very small
percentage of these asylum seekers. There are about 2.2 million Pakistanis
living in Europe and most of them are Muslims. In Germany the majority of
Pakistanis are Ahmaddiyya.
Hence, it would be inaccurate that this is only the religious minorities who
are fleeing. It would be more appropriate to say that all insecure sections of
society are evacuating the country. The poor Pakistani Hindus and Christians
are far behind in this struggle due to lack of resources.
Pakistan needs to
revisit its policies that are causing economic meltdown and increasing
instability and insecurity. Flight of religious minorities should be used only
as a yardstick but not for witch-hunt if Pakistan is serious to bringing a
phenomenal change in its social and political landscape and making it congenial
for their living. Religious minorities are fleeing the country because the founding
father Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s words have long been ignored. “No civilised government can be run successfully
without giving minorities a complete sense of security and confidence. They
must be made to feel that they have a hand in government and to this end must
have adequate representation in it. Pakistan will give it”, he told to Associated Press of America on November
8, 1946 when Pakistan had yet to come into existence. If the President of
Pakistan, the Interior Ministry and provincial governments really mean to
address grievances of religious minorities then they must pay heed to the Pakistan
which Mr. Jinnah envisioned for minorities.
Reports of violent attacks against Christians are coming in from India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, five young men in Pakistan stopped a pastor who was returning from preaching the gospel.