The partition of India in 1947 subjected the Minorities of Pakistan to unprecedented dangers and an unceasing series of attacks. Although tensions simmered between the two major religious communities, the Muslims and Hindus, even before the partition, rampant politicisation of religion in Pakistan intensified the magnitude of terror unleashed on its minorities. The demonization of Indians also had a great role to play. In order to sustain the vision of Pakistan and further strengthen it, its core defining feature was metastasized i.e. the Muslim identity. Pakistan is a country made solely on the basis of religion and its offshoot, the two-nation theory. The propagation of this theory involved the alienation of the ‘Enemy’ Hindu. This animosity was further intensified by exploiting the theological concepts of “kufr”, “shirk” and “jihad”. The processes to sustain the shallow and frail foundations of Pakistani nationhood involved Hindus and their religion being chosen as scapegoats.
Harsh Parkash, a young Hindu Activist from Karachi shares, “My personal experience in terms of discrimination is that I have been teased a lot in my school life because of my religion. The students poked fun at our deities (of Sanātana Dharma) and also abused them. Hindus are insulted for their “polytheism” and are labelled as cow-piss drinkers.”
Propaganda through Education
Textbooks issued by the institutions of the Pakistani government are replete with denigration of the Hindu faith and bigoted declaration of Islam as the only true religion. Books issued by the Punjab Textbook Board and Sindh Textbook Board have been found to be excessively laden with hateful religious indoctrination. Hindu hatred is deliberately pushed so as to totally antagonize the Muslim Pakistanis against the Indians who are Hindus. Several stereotypes demonizing the Hindus are propagated. These include stigmatizing Hindus as being violative of their wives’ consent (while in reality, Mahābhārata 1.74.50 clearly states that no man, even when angry, should do anything disagreeable to his wife for happiness, joy, virtue and everything depends on his wife), their temples as being centres of extremism, Hindu Brahmins as those who used to pour molten lead in the ears of Shudras (which has no historical evidence, it is a lie emergent from the false interpretation of a scriptural verse). Even at the college level, chapters like “Somnath ki Fateh” (Victory over the Somnath Temple) are taught to ignite a schadenfreude among the Muslim youth by glorifying historical Islamic iconoclasm using utterances by individuals such as Mahmud Ghaznavi like “Main butparast nahin butshikan hun!”(I am not an idol-worshipper, instead I am an idol-defacer!) when he went to the Somnath Temple for desecrating it.
Legal and Social Prejudices
The social impact of propaganda fed through the Pakistani education system and the bigoted laws like the Hudud Ordinances (which render the testimony of a non-Muslim worthless) and Ehteram-e-Ramzan Ordinance (which makes it dangerous for non-Muslims to even eat or drink at public places during Ramzan) can be seen far and wide among the Minorities of Pakistan.
As has been reported by Movement for Solidarity and Peace in Pakistan, around 1000 underage girls of the Minority communities of Pakistan, are forcefully converted to Islam every year. Due to widespread religious indoctrination and legitimization of violence against the minorities, there exists silent societal support towards such acts in Pakistan. These victims fail to attract any media attention and in most cases such as those of Chanda Maharaj and Meena Bajani, the police, local administration and judiciary passively support the perpetrators of such offences.
Whether it is the absence of efforts from the side of Pakistani government in helping the Hindus of Sindh recover from the devastating floods of 2022 or the Pakistani state discriminating against them in supplying food articles during the COVID-19 pandemic, each natural calamity
worsens the position of Pakistani minorities at multiple fronts. Dehumanization at the societal front is bound to cause economic backwardness due to lesser and lesser opportunities. The lack of opportunities weakens the economic status of the minorities, especially the Hindu community. Economic backwardness reproduces both economic and social backwardness with barely any external support. This is a vicious circle which makes the minorities in Pakistan even more vulnerable to oppression.
In the beginning of 1948, a large-scale outflow of Hindus to India was observed especially due to the religiously motivated attacks on their families. Noticing this trend, the Pakistani government undertook steps to prevent the migration of Hindus justifying which, the then
Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan remarked, “But who will clean the streets and latrines of Karachi in case they [Hindu residents employed as sanitation workers] did not come back?”. This goes on to show what the value of Hindus even among the top national representatives is.
Violence against Minorities in Pakistan
The Pakistani political parties, time and again, go the path of religious polarization after their poor policy decisions rupture Pakistan’s economy. Minorities bear the maximum brunt of such moves. There have been a large number of cases where innocent Hindus and Christians have been abducted, beaten, killed and raped (including boys like Gulab Bheel of Mirpurkhas, Sindh).
Women are at the worst receiving end of fundamentalism unleashed by the irrational belief systems of men. The case of Daya Bheel is a case in point thereof. Daya Bheel was a Hindu widow residing in Sinjhoro, Sindh. She was brutally raped, large parts of her flesh were torturously pealed from her body by the rapists and even her breasts were ripped. At the end, she was beheaded and her body was found in a mustard field outside Dipti village. In addition, the legal legitimization of awarding death for “blasphemy” which has been very loosely defined as ‘defiling the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad’ in Section 295(C) of the Pakistan Penal Code has had genocidal effects on the minorities in Pakistan. These blasphemy laws have been tightened over the years and have been made severe in years as recent as 2023. Over the recent years, there has also been a sharp rise in the incidences of mob-lynching, mostly due to the accusations of “blasphemy” against Prophet Muhammad.
This culture of unabated violence against non-Muslims has also been a major factor in driving the annihilation of temples in Pakistan. The militant zeal to destroy the centres of “shirk” (idolatry) is the major inspiration in provoking such attacks. It goes without saying that this fanaticism fails to account for any metaphysical or philosophical understanding of the concept of Murtipūjā or idol-worship. Narratives such as the destruction of Dhu’l-Khalsah by Jareer and the idols by Prophet Ibrahim (AS) in Mesopotamia [21:58] are often invoked by members of clergy to instigate attacks against the places of worship of minorities. According to a 2014 survey conducted by All Pakistan Hindu Rights Movement, 428 temples across Pakistan existed at the time of India’s partition out of which only 20 are functional. In July 2023, a group of dacoits even went to the extent of shooting rocket launchers on a Hindu temple in Kashmore area of the Sindh province. This attack came after another attack on the Mari Mata in Karachi’s Soldier Bazaar. This was a 150-year-old temple which was bulldozed to the ground under heavy police presence.
Policy Imperatives
Presently, there seems to exist no signal that the abysmal condition of the minorities of Pakistan will anyway improve. Even if radical reforms are introduced, Pakistan would need at least seventy years to recover from the sickness its society has achieved. A whole clean-up of the entire apparatus and institutions of the country is urgently needed. Pakistan needs to be a secular country and must seek to provide a promising protective cover to its minorities. Stringent actions need to be taken against any miscreants who, especially on communal grounds, attempt to violate the human rights of the minorities. Robust policy is needed to stop the exploitation of bonded labourers in rural areas of Pakistan. The Madrasas of Pakistan need to be closely monitored and their curriculum needs to be determined by the government so as to avoid the imparting of inflammatory and alienating propaganda. The education system needs to be freed from the clutches of enmity, hatred and historical revisionism and an inclusive education policy needs to be formulated. International organisations and NGOs should pressurise the Pakistani government in the direction of a mass-scale Deradicalization Exercise.
