Author: Khaled Ahmed
Publication: The Friday Times
Date: May 14-20, 2004
We don't know much about Hindus
living in Sindh and Balochistan. Because the mainstream media remain silent
we don't get to know about their real plight. The TV channels in the private
sector should focus on these forgotten communities
The Commission sent a team to the
province, which observed the Hindus of Kalat, Mastung, Machh and Kolpur
and discovered that the Baloch and Brahui tribes kept them to do jobs (musicians,
carpenters, merchants) considered below their honour by the Muslims. The
author noted that Hindus were visible in Baloch areas but were scarce in
the Pakhtun areas although in 1941 most of the 54,000 Hindus of Balochistan
lived in the Pakhtun areas. After 1947, the Hindus in the Pakhtun areas
declined by 93 percent but only by 11 percent in the Baloch areas. Now
Balochistan had 27,000 Hindus in all,
The incidents of atrocities and
caste-based discriminations on Dalits are increasing day by day in Tharparkar
- a district where 35 per cent people belong to different Dalit communities
among a million people - because of growing awareness and assertiveness
of the Dalits. Several hundred Dalit employees of low-caste communities
were transferred to far-flung areas under different obnoxious pretexts.
Cases were initiated against the Dalit political activists. Their rural
folks were threatened and even disallowed to graze their livestock on government
lands called Gauchar.
Speaking on Geo TV (25 March 2004)
federal education minister Zubaida Jalal said that she had grown up reading
the same (biased) textbooks and that Pakistan had not been harmed by them.
She said the Hindus of Balochistan and Sindh had not suffered because of
these textbooks.
There is very little information
about the minorities in Pakistan, which are 5 percent of the total population
and are remembered in the flag of Pakistan by the white stripe. While Christians
have highlighted their problems in Punjab, very little is known about the
Hindus of Balochistan. Scheduled caste (Shudra) and Untouchable (Dalit)
Hindus in Sindh have been hit by the double whammy of ill-treatment at
the hands of the Muslim feudal lords and the upper caste Hindus. They have
also been targeted at times by the intelligence agencies because they live
close to the Indian border in Tharparkar and are suspected of spying for
India. Bheels and Kolis, untouchables or Dalits, have been in the news
for bonded labour.
In Balochistan, Hindus were 22 percent
of the population in 1941; today they are only 1.6 percent, according to
the 1998 census report, which may be 27,000 Hindus in all. After 1947,
their exodus from the Pakhtun areas of Balochistan was considerable while
they tended to stay in the Baloch areas. The exodus was the characteristic
of the entire population of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. There was a tendency
among the lower caste Hindus not to migrate. The pattern of settlement
today is such that Sindhi-speaking Hindus live in the Baloch areas bordering
Sindh while further West near Quetta and the region called Jhalawan the
Seraiki-speaking Hindus call themselves Punjabi.
Hindus in Balochistan: The latest
facts about the Hindu community in Balochistan have come to light in a
report by Minority Rights Commission of Pakistan titled Religious Tolerance
in Balochistan: Myth and Reality (2003) by Akram Mirani. The Commission
sent a team to the province, which observed the Hindus of Kalat, Mastung,
Machh and Kolpur and discovered that the Baloch and Brahui tribes kept
them to do jobs (musicians, carpenters, merchants) considered below their
honour by the Muslims. The author noted that Hindus were visible in Baloch
areas but were scarce in the Pakhtun areas although in 1941 most of the
54,000 Hindus of Balochistan lived in the Pakhtun areas. After 1947, the
Hindus in the Pakhtun areas declined by 93 percent but only by 11 percent
in the Baloch areas.
In Kalat there are seven Hindu temples
but the Hindu streets are separate from Muslim streets. There are even
two Hindu doctors in Kalat. The only Brahman in town is Maharaj Roshan
Sharma in charge of the Shiv Mandar there. Hindu merchants still control
the wholesale trade of the area. But in 1992, after the Babri mosque incident
in India, it was the Pakhtun community who intruded and subjected the Hindus
to violence. The police in Balochistan is hardly organised. It keeps no
record of violence against the minorities and is barred from operating
anywhere outside the province's major cities. Conditions have been bad
in the Pakhtun areas of Balochistan.
Anti-Hindu violence in Balochistan:
The Friday Timesreported in its issue of March 23-29, 2001, as follows:
'Hundreds of Hindus have been forced to flee their homes and cross over
into Sindh. Three Hindus were reported to have been killed in the town
of Chaman after clashes between Hindus attempting to protect their homes
and Muslim mobs in October. Temples and homes were set ablaze and property,
including Hindu shops, destroyed as the growing social intolerance assumed
alarming new proportions in Balochistan. In all cases, local extremist
groups played a role in triggering the attacks.
'Though the precise number of families
which fled was unknown, reports suggested almost half the community of
10,000 Hindus in Lasbela had been forced to leave their homes over the
year. In almost all cases, the increased activism by militant religious
groups imposed new strains on relations between the majority Muslim and
the Hindu communities, who had lived peacefully alongside each other for
many decades. The efforts to forcibly convert the Hindus, especially female
school students, had a direct role to play in violence against Hindu settlements.
At least five Hindu temples were vandalised over the year, with their structures
damaged and the idols and other objects of worship broken. Amidst the uproar
caused by the conversion issue in Lasbela, activists of religious parties
launched an assault on two old Hindu temples and threw to the ground the
idols placed in them.'
At the time of partition, when sectarian
riots ravaged the subcontinent, the Hindu population of Balochistan remained
unharmed, mainly due to two factors. First, the major portion of Balochistan
native/princely Balochistan where majority of Hindus lived was under the
Khan of Kalat, the chief ruler of Kalat state, Yar Mohammad Khan, who respected
indigenousness of the Hindu community. He had assured them of economic
and religious freedom in case they decided to continue living in Balochistan.
Second, reciprocity of mutual relationship between Muslims and Hindus,
and prosperity in business encouraged them to abandon the idea of migrating
to India. They live in Quetta, Kalat, Sibi, Mastung, Dahdar, Duki, Dalbandin,
Chaman, and Gandawa. In Gandawa, a tiny town and newly raised headquarter
of Jhall-Magsi district, they have a big temple, which is claimed to be
the fifth largest Hindu temple in the subcontinent. They dwell in their
own little colonies, usually not away from their temples. They belong to
business class, without any major interest in education and government
offices. Some of them are wealthy merchants owning large jewellery and
general stores, but the majority is of middle and lower middle class businessmen
with their shops/stores in the bazaars of various towns.
Plight of Hindus of Sindh: Newsline(Dec
2000), pages 77-79, stated that 'the status of the 2.7 million Hindus in
Pakistan, who are largely concentrated in Sindh, does not make for a very
encouraging picture. Despite the fact that the Hindus in Pakistan have
generally maintained a low profile, the general attitude towards them is
one of suspicion. A case in point: the editor of a Sindhi newspaper demanded
a car from a Hindu businessman. When he refused the former wrote an editorial
in his paper declaring that the gentleman was a RAW agent who had been
supplying weapons to terrorists in the country. In another incident in
Hyderabad in September, Ashok Kumar, a Hindu inspector of the Income Tax
Department, along with the army monitoring team went to Sadar to collect
tax return forms from shop owners. Instead of complying with the authorities,
one of the shop-owners alleged that the Hindu inspector had threatened
to grab him by his beard if he did not give him the form. Within no time
the shopkeeper managed to muster a group of his colleagues, who shuttered
their shops and took out a procession demanding that the government hand
them the Hindu so that they "could teach him a lesson." There followed
a two-day strike in the city, as a result of which Ashok Kumar was not
only suspended from his job, but also jailed after a case of 'blasphemy'
was registered against him.
'Hindus in Pakistan have faced the
greatest trials when there has been tension between India and Pakistan.
Says an analyst, "From the first Indo-Pak war to the demolition of the
Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Hindus in Pakistan have been perceived as enemies
and persecuted." Kidnapping, extortion, and even killing are, meanwhile,
common crimes perpetrated against Hindus in Sindh today. In September this
year, Dr. Kanaya Lal, a Hindu eye specialist, was kidnapped from Larkana
from the heart of the town. He was released after one week following a
ransom payment of 5 lakh rupees (500,000 rupees). Another Hindu, Dr, Darshan
Lal, was killed in Badah town in Larkana when he offered resistance to
dacoits who were attempting to kidnap him from his house. At least four
Hindu have been kidnapped from Sukkur during the last two months, and remain
in the custody of the dacoits who have demanded hefty amounts of ransom
for their release. 'Many Hindus pay regular sums as 'bhatta' to different
groups of extortionists merely in order to be aloud to live in peace. Pak
Autos, an automobile outlet belonging to a local Hindu trader in Larkana,
was torched a couple of months ago when he refused to cough up the sum
demanded by activists of a political party. Another Hindu businessman disclosed
that he had received a call at his Karachi residence a few months ago from
an activist of a Sindh nationalist party who demanded the payment of a
sizeable sum from him. He tracked down the number the caller had phoned
from and discovered it belonged to an agency. When he contacted the authorities
and gave them this information, he was not only refused help, he was told
that "the activists of different groups are important to the establishment,
while the Hindus are of no use," thereby implying that he should not expect
any assistance. Says the businessman "Instead of concentrating on business,
most Hindus in Pakistan are expending their energies in developing their
PR with the authorities and entertaining various influentials to try and
build up a support base for themselves."
Dalits of Sindh want justice: The
Scheduled Castes Federation of Pakistan has a website http://petitiononline.com/scfp2003/petition.html
which addresses a petition to the President of Pakistan asking for a redressal
of the plight of the Dalits. It a flattering website as it talks more about
Islam than about Hinduism.
'In Pakistan, the Dalits face different
issues. Since they are part of a tiny minority that is 5 per cent of country's
total population, and due to also lack of education and literacy, they
continue to stick to different forms of Hinduism whatever their half-literate
Gurus impart them. Caste Hindus continue their domination only in southern
part of Pakistan, especially former Mirpurkhas division, where more than
one million Dalits dwell as landless peasants and labourers. The Caste
Hindus, though small in numbers, dominate the minority politics through
support of their convert relatives and government functionaries. The incidents
of atrocities and caste-based discriminations on Dalits are increasing
day by day in Tharparkar - a district where 35 per cent people belong to
different Dal it communities among a million people - because of growing
awareness and assertiveness of the Dalits. Several hundred Dalit employees
of Dalit communities were transferred to far-flung areas under different
obnoxious pretexts. Cases were initiated against the Dalit political activists.
Their rural folks were threatened and even disallowed to graze their livestock
on government lands called Gauchar.
'Dalits also suffer in many instances
from de facto disenfranchisement. During elections 2002, those unpersuaded
by typical electioneering were routinely threatened and beaten by a pro-government
political party strongmen in order to compel them to vote for certain candidates.
Already under the thumb of local landlords and police officials, Dalit
villagers who do not comply had been victimized, beaten, and harassed.
In Tharparkar, violence against Dalits is normally treated as a very minor
and marginal issue, even by the law-enforcement machinery, whether be it
police, the prosecution, or the medico-legal fraternity or often even the
judiciary. Non-registration of crimes against Dalits is one of the main
problem in Tharparkar. Political influence over the police, and caste,
class, religion and gender biases are rampant. It is extremely difficult
for helpless Dalits to file complaints, particularly against the powerful
individuals and or perpetrators. The theft of livestock of Dalits in Tharparkar
is rampant as police never registers any such case. These are very few
examples as to how Dalits are dealt with if they display an act to show
equality. Hundreds of the incidents of caste discrimination go unreported.'
