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About 35 families of Hindus which left Pakistan after 1971 and landed at Kalian village, 7 km from here, are still unsettled, trying for Indian citizenship.
They arrived here on Pakistani passports which expired years back and which need renewal to legalise their stay. They have no money to review their passports and they are determined not to back, fearing persecution.
Besides Kalian village, families of Pakistani Hindus, as they are called by local residents, also now reside at other villages and towns of Rajasthan like Jatsar, Vijaynagar, 3LC, Pandatanwali, Amargarh and Suratgarh, besides Rania and Ellenabad in Haryana and Jalandhar in Punjab.
In total some 400 families of Pakistani Hindus are scattered in these areas. Many of them came in 1983-84. There are curbs on their movement. They can’t legally purchase property, but some have acquired houses, it is learnt.
On paper they can’t send children to school or get employment, or even get married. Ishwar Das Sindhi, a spokesman of these families and residing at Kalian village, got a licence to work as a deed writer in the local courts. When someone complained that he was a Pakistani Hindu, the administration withdrew the licence. He has now gone to court to contest this. He is the only deed writer in English and Urdu here. He speaks Punjabi and doesn’t know Hindi.
With such curbs and without any relief or help from anywhere, these nowhere people are now piqued at the latest directive of the Union Home Ministry requiring them to renew their passports.
Renewal of each passport costs about Rs 1,800. Each family has at least three or four members. With limited or little income, they are hard pressed to cough up such amounts. For them the very survival is difficult.
Besides, the directive makes no sense to them. Why should the Indian government tell them to pay such large amounts to a country it regards as hostile, they wonder. And why renew passports when they don’t want to go back?
In a representation to the Rajasthan Home Secretary, a copy of which was made available to The Tribune, signed by 10 of their representatives based at Kalian, these families have demanded withdrawal of the directive, extension of the visas and grant of Indian citizenship to enable them to lead a normal life.
Most of these families are from Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan. Asked if they suffered harassment in Pakistan, Ishwar Das said they were under pressure to convert to Islam.
Showing a news item in Roznama
Jang with the heading in Urdu Hindu nauzwan ka Islam kabool
and with a photograph of the youth, the report, as read out by Ishwar Das’s
son, described how one Sewak Ram chose to become Shaukat Ali. Sewak Ram
fled Pakistan and now lives in Faridabad. He is married to a girl
of Kalian village.
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