Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: June 18, 2002
Fearing persecution, about 47 Pakistani
Hindu nationals including children, staying on extended visa at Khanna
near here since 1998, have resolved not to go back to their native place
Kahut in North West Frontier Province (NWFP). They were the last Hindus
to leave the place just before the Kargil conflict.
It is not the first time the Hindus
from Pakistan entered India on a visitor's visa but later extended their
stay here. Here they are part of about 500-strong co-religionists who left
Pakistan at different points of time before them and now claim to have
been granted Indian citizenship by the government.
Staying at New Model Town, most
of them are engaged in petty occupations like selling vegetables or milk
and working as daily wagers. Most of them are barely literate except Datta
Ram who has received education up to F.Sc (equivalent to plus two level).
Forced to leave Pakistan with bare
minimum belongings, they said religious bigots who had been pressurising
them to embrace Islam constantly targeted them. They were not allowed to
carry out their religious ceremonies.
''When my grandfather died in 1982,
we had to cremate his body in a remote tribal area about 200 km from Kahut.
Somehow we managed to send his ashes after three NWFP months to immerse
them at Haridwar,'' said young Datta Ram.
Amidst reports of abduction of girls
several years ago in other parts of Pakistan, they preferred not to send
their girls to schools. Whatever little education was imparted to them
was at home.
With regular exodus of Hindus from
the area, marrying girls posed another problem. And with discrimination
in getting government jobs, they saw no use in getting the boys educated.
''Moreover, compulsory study of Islamiyat at schools offended our religious
sentiments,'' said Datta Ram.
Having overcome the initial aloofness,
these persons now mix well with the locals who have extended full cooperation
in rehabilitating them. ''Leave apart any problem, they have rather helped
expand our business,'' said Khanna Sabzi Mandi Commission Agents Association
president Pritam Singh.
Similarly, Tagore Model School principal
Raghbir Singh offered fee concession to the wards of the poorest among
them. Elated at being united with their co-religionists here, they do not
feel any pull towards the land of their birth.
''We were destined to live in India.
Probably that is why we never felt like building own homes there,'' said
Satma Ram, the oldest member who left year before his family.
