BHARATA BHARATI

In 1947, minorities, which primarily comprised Hindus, constituted 23 per cent of Pakistan’s population. Today they are less than 3 per cent of their population. … There were more than 300 Hindu temples in Pakistan when it was formed in 1947, at present their number is 20 and even they are in dilapidated condition and constantly under threat of demolition or being taken over by radical Muslims with support of Pakistan. … This hapless Hindu population is subjected to loot, rapes, religious conversions and targeted killings. – Arun Anand

The destruction of Hindu temples in Pakistan over the last few days and the inertia of the Pakistani state have gone unnoticed in the world. Hindus in Pakistan, a dwindling minority, are the facing a genocide. And the world is quiet about it.

In 1947, minorities, which primarily comprised Hindus, constituted 23 per cent of Pakistan’s population. Today they are less than 3 per cent of their population. The Hindu population stands at around 2.2 million, comprising 1.18 per cent of the total population. And this hapless Hindu population is subjected to loot, rapes, religious conversions and targeted killings. There were more than 300 Hindu temples in Pakistan when it was formed in 1947, at present their number is 20 and even they are in dilapidated condition and constantly under threat of demolition or being taken over by the radical Muslims with support of Pakistan.

Farahnaz Ispahani, former aide to Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, says in her Cleansing Pakistan of Minorities: “The small and ever-decreasing Hindu minority has faced a steady barrage of forced conversions and kidnappings, often for ransom. In the last few years there has been an increase in the number of Hindu families migrating or seeking asylum in neighbouring India.”

“One incident of forced conversion of a young Hindu woman that garnered a lot of media coverage was that of Rinkel Kumari. She was abducted with the help of a ruling-party lawmaker and forced to marry and convert to Islam. This is just one case of abduction and forced religious conversion in Pakistan, with around 20-25 kidnappings and forced conversions of Hindu girls in Sindh every month,” according to a report by the Asian Human Rights Watch.

According to Human Rights Commission Pakistan’s annual report in 2022, Hindus have been at the receiving end across Pakistan. Neither do they enjoy any religious freedom, nor do they have any rights to live with dignity. The Commission noticed that in Sindh alone, “There were at least 20 cases involving allegations that Hindu girls had been forcibly converted were reported. In one case, Pooja Kumari Odh was gunned down by the man who reportedly wished to marry her after conversion.”

However, even the Commission is under-reporting the excesses committed on the Hindu community in Pakistan. What is happening with Hindus there can be gauged from the report submitted by DIG Sindh Mirpurkhas division for the year 2020, over 200 dead bodies of Hindu men, women and children were found hanging by neck on branches of trees and inside houses. The bodies also had torture marks. This mass killing was a result of attempts to forcibly convert Hindus into Islam.

The contempt against Hindus in Pakistan has been there right since it came into existence. If one reads the Constituent Assembly debates of Pakistan, it is clear that a strong section was in favour declaring Pakistan as an Islamic state and running it according to Sharia laws. The first law minister of Pakistan, Jogendra Nath Mandal, was a Hindu but he was forced to leave Pakistan and return to India.

In her 2015 book, Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities, Ispahani traced this hostility against Hindus as she mentioned, “Ayub saw Hinduism and Communism as equal threats to Pakistan. In 1959, he wrote in the foreword of a book, The Ideology of Pakistan and Its Implementation, that one of the questions of concern for Pakistanis was ‘how can the offensive of Hinduism and Communism against the ideology of Islam be combated?’ In his autobiography, which was published towards the end of his regime in 1968, Ayub made clear his low regard for Hindus and bluntly expressed his steadfast views on why they could not be friends of Pakistan.”

Muhammad Ayub Khan was a Pakistani military officer who served as the third commander-in-chief of its army from 1951 to 1958. Through a military coup, he usurped the power and completed two terms as President of Pakistan from 1958 to 1969.

According to a New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies (CIHS), Crimes against religious minorities, particularly those committed against girls and women, persist unabated in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with state support and impunity. Minority Hindu, Sikh, and Christian girls are regularly kidnapped, raped, forced to convert to Islam and wed off to their abductors.

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has conducted an investigation and collected data from 2013 to 2020 that shows 162 cases of forced conversion, of which 88 (54 per cent) were Hindu girls, 72 (44 per cent) Christians girls, and (2) 0.62 per cent each Sikhs and Kalash girls.

In terms of province, 84 instances (51.85 per cent) were reported in the Punjab province, 71 cases (43.83 per cent) in Sindh, 2 cases (1.23 per cent) in the Federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa regions, and 1 case (0.62 per cent) in Balochistan. Minor girls make up over half of the converted victims: 75 (46.3 per cent) girls under the age of 18, with 32.7 per cent of them being between the ages of 11 and 15. Accurate age could not be recorded in 37 per cent of the cases.

Case studies

The CIHS has collected dozens of case studies regarding atrocities against Hindus in Pakistan. A couple of them are being share that can give one an idea about what Hindus have been going through in Pakistan:

Kumb, Khairpur district kidnapping and gang rape | 14 March, 2022

A 13-year-old minor Hindu girl named Bindiya Meghwar was abducted on 14 March, 2022, in Kumb, Khairpur District, Sindh province, in full view of her family as they were attending a temple nearby. Bindiya and her family were assaulted after they resisted the kidnapping by five radicalised Islamist men, Ijaz Pathan, Ijaz Ahmed, and their three companions. She was taken by car to one of Mirpur Mathelo’s madrasas. There, she was brutally beaten, and gang raped by the men. The brutality did not stop there; the Muslim men went on to film her while raping her and threatened that they would make her rape tape go viral if she retaliated. The little girl was then forcibly converted to Islam and married to Ijaz Ahmed, the man who had abducted her. She still has to deal with this abuse on a daily basis. Ijaz and his buddies often humiliate and sexually assault the girl, who was made to change her name to Fatima.

Bahawalnagar double rape of Hindu minor girls | 5 June, 2022

Two Hindu sisters, aged 16 and 17, residing in Bahawalnagar, Fort Abbas, which is around 300 kilometres from Lahore in Pakistan were kidnapped and raped by two local Muslim men Umair Ashfaq and Kashif Ali at gunpoint while they were playing in the local fields. The local police officers refused to register a case against the two men as they belonged to the majority Muslim community and came from influential families. On the contrary, the police in fact threatened the minor victim’s family in an effort to silence the victims. After much persuasion and protests, after three days, the police filed a complaint. Subsequently, a medical examination of the girls indicated that they had been sexually assaulted. According to area police official Irshad Yaqoob, Kashif Ali had obtained a pre-arrest bail from the court due to his family’s influence while rapist Umair Ashfaq had been taken into custody.

Conclusion

It is important for Hindus across the globe to raise their voice about what is happening to Hindus in Pakistan as the global media and international forums are maintaining a deafening silence over it. This massive and systemic genocide of Hindus must be exposed to save their lives and dignity. It is also important to create a viable option for them to move to a safer haven in the long run as the very nature of the Pakistani state is anti-minorities, so the Hindus might get a temporary respite, but one cannot expect them to live a safe and dignified life in Pakistan in the long-run. In fact, they might not be able to survive this genocide.

› Arun Anand is an author and journalist.  He is a consulting editor for India’s largest news network, Network18, and contributes regularly to major Hindi newspapers and digital platforms. He is the founder-editor of the research and reference-based digital platform, The Nationalist View.

https://youtu.be/7iMZMhYhC1U

Filed under: pakistan | Tagged: forced conversion, forced marriage, hindumisia, hindus in pakistan, rape |