indian_foxhound
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well we have talked alot about of muslim condition in india...
lets see what is the condition of hindu in pakisatn
as its is not a ban topic[\b] we can discuss about..
Hindus in Pakistan are a forgotten community
By Naveen Qayyum (*)
For Haroon Sarab Diyal, Hindus in Pakistan are a forgotten community. The trend of forced migration among members of the community is evident by the decrease in population numbers from 20% to less than 2% since the countrys independence. This trend of migration is a reaction to religious intolerance and class disparities, Sarab Diyal believes.
Representing the Hindu community in a recent public hearing on the rights of religious minorities in Pakistan, organized by the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland on 17 September, Sarab Diyal asked the international community to listen to voices of the members of Hindu community in Pakistan.
Sarab Diyal comes from Peshawar, capital of mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, where non-Muslims are few in numbers and the presence of religious extremist groups can be felt more than ever.
Sarab Diyal also serves as chairman of the All Pakistan Hindu Rights Movement, an organization engaged in promoting rights of the Hindu community.
Hindus in Pakistan, who happen to be from the less privileged economic strata of society are more vulnerable to discrimination, both by unjust laws and abuse of state policies, as well as through social behaviours. Keeping ourselves safe and voicing the demands of our community is not easy, says Sarab Diyal.
Many Hindus are forced to pay regular sums, as a type of ransom to extortionists and local leaders in exchange for the physical security of their families, he added. Another issue that concerns us today is the molestation and abduction of Hindu girls, forced conversion and forced marriages.
Recently there have been several cases of forced conversions in Pakistan where Hindu girls were forced to marry influential Muslim men and subsequently were asked to change their religion. Among these was the case of 19 year old Rinkal Kumari, who was forced to marry a feudal leader of Mirpur Mathelo town in Sindh. The incident was soundly condemned by the religious minorities and civil society groups in the country.
There is hardly any support given to Hindu women and youth in Pakistan, Sarab Diyal observes. Within our community we dont have any programmes for womens empowerment. We also feel that we do not get any support from the international community despite the grave issues of discrimination we face on a daily basis.
For Sarab Diyal, having an opportunity to express his concerns in a public hearing with Christian, Muslims and civil society representatives in Geneva was unique. I am grateful to the WCC for this platform, where among other religious minorities we could discuss our problems and communicate the issue with the international community, he said.
While, we go back home and work for our communities, their safety and their better future, we anticipate support and solidarity from the churches, as well, concluded Sarab Diyal.
The issues of forced conversions and marriages in Pakistan were discussed at the recent WCC Central Committee meeting in Greece in September. At the meeting a statement was issued urging the Pakistani government to ensure adequate protection of women from the religious minority communities.
[519 words]
(*) Naveen Qayyum from Pakistan is the WCC staff writer.
Pakistan A nightmare for Hindus[\b]
Once again, the reports of exodus of religious minorities from Pakistan have come to light. This is not the first time that we are hearing about forced conversions, threats and intimidation of non-Muslim citizens in Pakistan. The cases date back to the countrys inception.
In Pakistan, a country of over 175 million people, Muslims comprise approximately 95 percent of the population. The remaining belong to Pakistans religious minorities, such as Christians, Hindus, Zikris, the Ahmadiyya, Sikhs, the Bahai, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, the Mehdi Foundation and Jews.
A country, which has been failing miserably in the fight against terrorism, has proved to be a disappointment as far as protecting minorities is concerned. The vast majority of members of religious minorities, especially Hindus belonging to Balochistan and Sindh provinces, face sexual assault (including rape), threats, oppression and violence.
Of late, a Pakistani TV channel showed a Hindu boy converting to Islam during a program that was broadcast live before Iftar. The worst part was that the anchor was heard hailing the conversion. What message did the channel think it was sending out to the minority communities, who feel threatened all the time? This is
reprehensible manifestation of attitude towards Hindus.
Another incident, wherein a 14-year-old Hindu girl gets kidnapped, converts to Islam and gets married to a Muslim, raises not just eyebrows but gives a glimpse of how minorities rights are being persecuted in Pakistan.
As soon as reports emerged that 250 Hindus from Sindh and Balochistan sought to migrate on the pretext of travelling to India for a pilgrimage, Pakistans Interior Minister Rehman Malik quickly claimed that the development was a conspiracy to denigrate his country. Really? The minister needs to have a look at the number of reports submitted by world organisations, telling the tale of minorities pleading for help.
Pakistan is a country where ministers have been assassinated for holding liberal views. What can we say about the situation of the hoi polloi belonging to the minority community in Pakistan? Undoubtedly, Pakistan is ranked amongst the worst states for minorities to reside in.
The worst part is that Pakistan's authorities have time and again failed to calm the concerns of the minority communities. Just statements wont do. Or an almost negligible political space would not help the community raise its voice.
David Pinault in his book `Notes from the Fortune-Telling Parrot: Islam and the Struggle for Religious Pluralism in Pakistan deduced systematic ideological warfare against Hindus in Pakistan. In fact, a report in 2006 drew attention towards the Islamisation process during Zia-ul-Haqs regime, which promoted religious bias against backwards, superstitious Hindus with the help of school curricula.
Ironically, on August 11, Pakistan celebrates Minorities Day and on the same day this year, President Asif Ali Zardari has asked authorities in Sindh province to alleviate the sense of insecurity among the minority Hindus. It underscores Pakistan's failure in keeping its commitment to protect and promote minorities.
The President also pointed out that it was on August 11, 1947 when Pakistans Father of the Nation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, laid down the `foundations of a modern, tolerant and progressive Pakistan, where everyone would have equal rights regardless of creed, caste and gender`.
I also quote Mohammed Ali Jinnah as declaring in 1947: "You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the state."
Sounds like a joke now. The Pakistan that Jinnah had dreamt of has become a nightmare for Hindus.
Pakistan
http://dawn.com/2012/11/08/pakistans-hindus-feel-under-attack/
KARACHI: They came after dusk and chanted into the night sky “Kill the Hindus, kill the children of the Hindus,” as they smashed religious icons, ripped golden bangles off women’s arms and flashed pistols. It wasn’t the first time that the Hindu temple on the outskirts of Pakistan’s largest city was attacked, and residents here fear it will not be the last.
“People don’t consider us as equal citizens. They beat us whenever they want,” said Mol Chand, one of the teenage boys gathered at the temple. “We have no place to worship now.”
It was the second time the Sri Krishna Ram temple has been attacked, and this time the mob didn’t even bother to disguise their faces. The small temple, surrounded by a stone wall, is a tiny religious outpost in a dusty, hardscrabble neighbourhood so far on the outskirts of the city that a sign on the main road wishes people leaving Karachi a good journey.
Local Muslim residents blamed people from a nearby ethnic Pashtun village for the attack, which took place in late September on the Day of Love for the Prophet, a national holiday declared by the government in response to an anti-Islam film made in the US. No one was seriously injured in the attack.
It was the latest in a rising tide of violence and discrimination against Hindus in this 95 per cent Muslim country, where religious extremism is growing. Pakistan’s Hindu community says it faces forced conversions of Hindu girls to Islam, a lack of legal recognition for their marriages, discrimination in services and physical abuse when they venture into the streets.
The story of the Hindu population in Pakistan is one of long decline. During partition in 1947, the violent separation of Pakistan and India into separate countries, hundreds of thousands of Hindus opted to migrate to India where Hinduism is the dominant religion. Those that remained and their descendants now make up a tiny fraction of Pakistan’s estimated 190 million citizens, and are mostly concentrated in Sindh province in the southern part of the country.
Signs of their former stature abound in Karachi, the capital of Sindh. At the 150-year-old Swami Narayan Temple along one of the city’s main roads, thousands of Hindus gather during the year to celebrate major religious holidays. Hindus at the 200-year-old Laxmi Narain Temple scatter the ashes of their cremated loved ones in the waters of an inlet from the Arabian Ocean.
But there are also signs of how far the community has fallen. Residents in a city hungry for land have begun to build over Hindu cemeteries, the community’s leaders say. Hindus helped build Karachi’s port decades ago, but none work there now.
Estimates of the size of the Hindu population in Pakistan are all over the map — from 2.5 million or 10 million in Sindh province alone to seven million across the country — a reflection of the fact that the country hasn’t had a census since 1998.
It isn’t just Hindus who are facing problems. Other minorities like Christians, the mystical Muslim branch of Sufis and the Ahmedi community have found themselves under attack in Pakistan, where the rise of religious fundamentalists has sometimes unleashed a violent opposition against those who don’t follow their strict religious tenets.
The discrimination has prompted some Hindus to leave for India, activists warn, though the extent is not known. Around 3,000 Hindus left this year, part of a migration that began four years ago, sparked by discrimination and a general rise in crime in Sindh, said DM Maharaj, who heads an organisation to help Hindus called Pakistan Hindu Sabha.
He said he recently talked to a group of Hindus preparing to move to India from rural Sindh, complaining that they can’t eat in Muslim restaurants or that Muslim officials turned them down for farming loans. Even during recent floods, they said Muslims did not want them staying in the same refugee camps.
Other Hindu figures such as provincial assembly member Pitamber Sewami deny there’s a migration at all, in a reflection of how sensitive the issue is. Earlier this year, there were a string of reports in Pakistani media about Hindus leaving the country, sparking a flurry of promises by Pakistani officials to investigate.
In India, a Home office official said the Indian government noticed an upward trend of people coming from Pakistan but called reports of Pakistanis fleeing to India “exaggerated”. He said he does not have exact figures on how many Pakistani Hindus have stayed in India after entering the country on tourist visas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
There’s more of a consensus of the seriousness of the problem of forced conversion of Hindus.
Zohra Yusuf, the president of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says the pattern goes like this: A Hindu girl goes missing and then resurfaces days or weeks later married to a Muslim boy. During court hearings to determine whether the conversion was voluntary, students from nearby Islamic schools called madrassahs often flood the room, trying to intimidate the judges by chanting demands that the conversion be confirmed.
Maharaj says he’s tried to intervene in roughly 100 cases of forced conversions but has only succeeded in returning a girl safely back to her family once. If a girl decides to renounce Islam and return to Hinduism, she could be signing a death warrant for herself and her family even if her conversion was forced.
The Hindu community has also been hurt by a lack of unity within its ranks. Hindu society within Pakistan and elsewhere has historically been divided by caste, a system of social stratification in which the lower castes are often seen as inferior. Members of the lower castes in Pakistan say it wasn’t until two girls from a high-caste family were forcibly converted this year that high-caste Hindus took the issue seriously, although it’s been happening for years.
“We always fight our war ourselves,” said Bholoo Devjee, a Hindu activist from Karachi, speaking about the lower castes.
In recent months the government has begun to take the concerns of the Hindu community more seriously. In Sindh province, legislators proposed a law to prevent forced conversions in part by implementing a waiting period before a marriage between a Hindu and a Muslim can go forward, and there’s discussion about proposing such a law on the national level as well.
In the case of the Sri Krishna Ram temple, law enforcement authorities opened a blasphemy case against the people who rampaged through the building. But residents here are skeptical that these developments signify any long-term improvement in their plight. Weeks after the incident no arrests have been made, and the Hindus complain that no high-ranking Hindu officials have come to visit them or help them get compensation.
Sunda Maharaj, the spiritual leader at the temple, which was first attacked in January 2011, said he and the other residents do not want to move to India. “We are Pakistani,” he said.
But he would like more help from the government, specifically a checkpoint to stop people from getting close to the temple and money for the Hindus to buy weapons.
“Next time anyone comes we can kill them or die defending our temple,” he said.
lets see what is the condition of hindu in pakisatn
as its is not a ban topic[\b] we can discuss about..
Hindus in Pakistan are a forgotten community
By Naveen Qayyum (*)
For Haroon Sarab Diyal, Hindus in Pakistan are a forgotten community. The trend of forced migration among members of the community is evident by the decrease in population numbers from 20% to less than 2% since the countrys independence. This trend of migration is a reaction to religious intolerance and class disparities, Sarab Diyal believes.
Representing the Hindu community in a recent public hearing on the rights of religious minorities in Pakistan, organized by the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland on 17 September, Sarab Diyal asked the international community to listen to voices of the members of Hindu community in Pakistan.
Sarab Diyal comes from Peshawar, capital of mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, where non-Muslims are few in numbers and the presence of religious extremist groups can be felt more than ever.
Sarab Diyal also serves as chairman of the All Pakistan Hindu Rights Movement, an organization engaged in promoting rights of the Hindu community.
Hindus in Pakistan, who happen to be from the less privileged economic strata of society are more vulnerable to discrimination, both by unjust laws and abuse of state policies, as well as through social behaviours. Keeping ourselves safe and voicing the demands of our community is not easy, says Sarab Diyal.
Many Hindus are forced to pay regular sums, as a type of ransom to extortionists and local leaders in exchange for the physical security of their families, he added. Another issue that concerns us today is the molestation and abduction of Hindu girls, forced conversion and forced marriages.
Recently there have been several cases of forced conversions in Pakistan where Hindu girls were forced to marry influential Muslim men and subsequently were asked to change their religion. Among these was the case of 19 year old Rinkal Kumari, who was forced to marry a feudal leader of Mirpur Mathelo town in Sindh. The incident was soundly condemned by the religious minorities and civil society groups in the country.
There is hardly any support given to Hindu women and youth in Pakistan, Sarab Diyal observes. Within our community we dont have any programmes for womens empowerment. We also feel that we do not get any support from the international community despite the grave issues of discrimination we face on a daily basis.
For Sarab Diyal, having an opportunity to express his concerns in a public hearing with Christian, Muslims and civil society representatives in Geneva was unique. I am grateful to the WCC for this platform, where among other religious minorities we could discuss our problems and communicate the issue with the international community, he said.
While, we go back home and work for our communities, their safety and their better future, we anticipate support and solidarity from the churches, as well, concluded Sarab Diyal.
The issues of forced conversions and marriages in Pakistan were discussed at the recent WCC Central Committee meeting in Greece in September. At the meeting a statement was issued urging the Pakistani government to ensure adequate protection of women from the religious minority communities.
[519 words]
(*) Naveen Qayyum from Pakistan is the WCC staff writer.
Pakistan A nightmare for Hindus[\b]
Once again, the reports of exodus of religious minorities from Pakistan have come to light. This is not the first time that we are hearing about forced conversions, threats and intimidation of non-Muslim citizens in Pakistan. The cases date back to the countrys inception.
In Pakistan, a country of over 175 million people, Muslims comprise approximately 95 percent of the population. The remaining belong to Pakistans religious minorities, such as Christians, Hindus, Zikris, the Ahmadiyya, Sikhs, the Bahai, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, the Mehdi Foundation and Jews.
A country, which has been failing miserably in the fight against terrorism, has proved to be a disappointment as far as protecting minorities is concerned. The vast majority of members of religious minorities, especially Hindus belonging to Balochistan and Sindh provinces, face sexual assault (including rape), threats, oppression and violence.
Of late, a Pakistani TV channel showed a Hindu boy converting to Islam during a program that was broadcast live before Iftar. The worst part was that the anchor was heard hailing the conversion. What message did the channel think it was sending out to the minority communities, who feel threatened all the time? This is
reprehensible manifestation of attitude towards Hindus.
Another incident, wherein a 14-year-old Hindu girl gets kidnapped, converts to Islam and gets married to a Muslim, raises not just eyebrows but gives a glimpse of how minorities rights are being persecuted in Pakistan.
As soon as reports emerged that 250 Hindus from Sindh and Balochistan sought to migrate on the pretext of travelling to India for a pilgrimage, Pakistans Interior Minister Rehman Malik quickly claimed that the development was a conspiracy to denigrate his country. Really? The minister needs to have a look at the number of reports submitted by world organisations, telling the tale of minorities pleading for help.
Pakistan is a country where ministers have been assassinated for holding liberal views. What can we say about the situation of the hoi polloi belonging to the minority community in Pakistan? Undoubtedly, Pakistan is ranked amongst the worst states for minorities to reside in.
The worst part is that Pakistan's authorities have time and again failed to calm the concerns of the minority communities. Just statements wont do. Or an almost negligible political space would not help the community raise its voice.
David Pinault in his book `Notes from the Fortune-Telling Parrot: Islam and the Struggle for Religious Pluralism in Pakistan deduced systematic ideological warfare against Hindus in Pakistan. In fact, a report in 2006 drew attention towards the Islamisation process during Zia-ul-Haqs regime, which promoted religious bias against backwards, superstitious Hindus with the help of school curricula.
Ironically, on August 11, Pakistan celebrates Minorities Day and on the same day this year, President Asif Ali Zardari has asked authorities in Sindh province to alleviate the sense of insecurity among the minority Hindus. It underscores Pakistan's failure in keeping its commitment to protect and promote minorities.
The President also pointed out that it was on August 11, 1947 when Pakistans Father of the Nation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, laid down the `foundations of a modern, tolerant and progressive Pakistan, where everyone would have equal rights regardless of creed, caste and gender`.
I also quote Mohammed Ali Jinnah as declaring in 1947: "You are free, free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the state."
Sounds like a joke now. The Pakistan that Jinnah had dreamt of has become a nightmare for Hindus.
Pakistan
http://dawn.com/2012/11/08/pakistans-hindus-feel-under-attack/
KARACHI: They came after dusk and chanted into the night sky “Kill the Hindus, kill the children of the Hindus,” as they smashed religious icons, ripped golden bangles off women’s arms and flashed pistols. It wasn’t the first time that the Hindu temple on the outskirts of Pakistan’s largest city was attacked, and residents here fear it will not be the last.
“People don’t consider us as equal citizens. They beat us whenever they want,” said Mol Chand, one of the teenage boys gathered at the temple. “We have no place to worship now.”
It was the second time the Sri Krishna Ram temple has been attacked, and this time the mob didn’t even bother to disguise their faces. The small temple, surrounded by a stone wall, is a tiny religious outpost in a dusty, hardscrabble neighbourhood so far on the outskirts of the city that a sign on the main road wishes people leaving Karachi a good journey.
Local Muslim residents blamed people from a nearby ethnic Pashtun village for the attack, which took place in late September on the Day of Love for the Prophet, a national holiday declared by the government in response to an anti-Islam film made in the US. No one was seriously injured in the attack.
It was the latest in a rising tide of violence and discrimination against Hindus in this 95 per cent Muslim country, where religious extremism is growing. Pakistan’s Hindu community says it faces forced conversions of Hindu girls to Islam, a lack of legal recognition for their marriages, discrimination in services and physical abuse when they venture into the streets.
The story of the Hindu population in Pakistan is one of long decline. During partition in 1947, the violent separation of Pakistan and India into separate countries, hundreds of thousands of Hindus opted to migrate to India where Hinduism is the dominant religion. Those that remained and their descendants now make up a tiny fraction of Pakistan’s estimated 190 million citizens, and are mostly concentrated in Sindh province in the southern part of the country.
Signs of their former stature abound in Karachi, the capital of Sindh. At the 150-year-old Swami Narayan Temple along one of the city’s main roads, thousands of Hindus gather during the year to celebrate major religious holidays. Hindus at the 200-year-old Laxmi Narain Temple scatter the ashes of their cremated loved ones in the waters of an inlet from the Arabian Ocean.
But there are also signs of how far the community has fallen. Residents in a city hungry for land have begun to build over Hindu cemeteries, the community’s leaders say. Hindus helped build Karachi’s port decades ago, but none work there now.
Estimates of the size of the Hindu population in Pakistan are all over the map — from 2.5 million or 10 million in Sindh province alone to seven million across the country — a reflection of the fact that the country hasn’t had a census since 1998.
It isn’t just Hindus who are facing problems. Other minorities like Christians, the mystical Muslim branch of Sufis and the Ahmedi community have found themselves under attack in Pakistan, where the rise of religious fundamentalists has sometimes unleashed a violent opposition against those who don’t follow their strict religious tenets.
The discrimination has prompted some Hindus to leave for India, activists warn, though the extent is not known. Around 3,000 Hindus left this year, part of a migration that began four years ago, sparked by discrimination and a general rise in crime in Sindh, said DM Maharaj, who heads an organisation to help Hindus called Pakistan Hindu Sabha.
He said he recently talked to a group of Hindus preparing to move to India from rural Sindh, complaining that they can’t eat in Muslim restaurants or that Muslim officials turned them down for farming loans. Even during recent floods, they said Muslims did not want them staying in the same refugee camps.
Other Hindu figures such as provincial assembly member Pitamber Sewami deny there’s a migration at all, in a reflection of how sensitive the issue is. Earlier this year, there were a string of reports in Pakistani media about Hindus leaving the country, sparking a flurry of promises by Pakistani officials to investigate.
In India, a Home office official said the Indian government noticed an upward trend of people coming from Pakistan but called reports of Pakistanis fleeing to India “exaggerated”. He said he does not have exact figures on how many Pakistani Hindus have stayed in India after entering the country on tourist visas. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
There’s more of a consensus of the seriousness of the problem of forced conversion of Hindus.
Zohra Yusuf, the president of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says the pattern goes like this: A Hindu girl goes missing and then resurfaces days or weeks later married to a Muslim boy. During court hearings to determine whether the conversion was voluntary, students from nearby Islamic schools called madrassahs often flood the room, trying to intimidate the judges by chanting demands that the conversion be confirmed.
Maharaj says he’s tried to intervene in roughly 100 cases of forced conversions but has only succeeded in returning a girl safely back to her family once. If a girl decides to renounce Islam and return to Hinduism, she could be signing a death warrant for herself and her family even if her conversion was forced.
The Hindu community has also been hurt by a lack of unity within its ranks. Hindu society within Pakistan and elsewhere has historically been divided by caste, a system of social stratification in which the lower castes are often seen as inferior. Members of the lower castes in Pakistan say it wasn’t until two girls from a high-caste family were forcibly converted this year that high-caste Hindus took the issue seriously, although it’s been happening for years.
“We always fight our war ourselves,” said Bholoo Devjee, a Hindu activist from Karachi, speaking about the lower castes.
In recent months the government has begun to take the concerns of the Hindu community more seriously. In Sindh province, legislators proposed a law to prevent forced conversions in part by implementing a waiting period before a marriage between a Hindu and a Muslim can go forward, and there’s discussion about proposing such a law on the national level as well.
In the case of the Sri Krishna Ram temple, law enforcement authorities opened a blasphemy case against the people who rampaged through the building. But residents here are skeptical that these developments signify any long-term improvement in their plight. Weeks after the incident no arrests have been made, and the Hindus complain that no high-ranking Hindu officials have come to visit them or help them get compensation.
Sunda Maharaj, the spiritual leader at the temple, which was first attacked in January 2011, said he and the other residents do not want to move to India. “We are Pakistani,” he said.
But he would like more help from the government, specifically a checkpoint to stop people from getting close to the temple and money for the Hindus to buy weapons.
“Next time anyone comes we can kill them or die defending our temple,” he said.
