Having been systematically decimated over the last seven decades, Hindus in Pakistan as of now, according to the available data from Pakistani sources, are just 1.04 percent of the total population of Pakistan as against 21.82 percent in 1948. Though no voices of concern have been raised from any quarter of the world especially including strangely from a country like India which has been forcefully articulating the rights of the Palestine people, South Africa during the dark days of apartheid, Lebanon, South Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Korea, Cambodia, Mozambique, Somalia, Rwanda, Angola and other parts of the world affected in one way or the other politically or due to host of other reasons. India has taken part in a number of peace keeping missions with unexpectedly enviable positive and peace generating results but all the successive Central Governments have never taken up the plight of Hindus in Pakistan simply as human beings facing the worst type of religious and consequently political persecution, either at International levels like the World Body or effectively with the Pakistan Governments. Today’s plight of Hindus especially of the minor innocent Hindu girls in Pakistan puts this question to the highest champion of the oppressed and suppressed communities anywhere in the world, India – about their continuous misfortune.
It is not that the statistics provided by any Indian agency or an institution are taken as any base or any premise to put forth the shocking condition of the levels of persecution faced by the Hindus in Pakistan who are not any immigrants or the similar sort but the indigenous inhabitants of that country from days immemorial but the Human Rights Organisations of that country who are moved on humanitarian considerations to garner support and pity for these hapless people. The figures put by each one of them may comparatively differ not in terms of being on the higher side but being abysmally on the lower one. In 2018 alone, the reported cases of such abductions and forcible conversion stood at over 1000. Unreported ones or those which were under coercion not allowed to travel beyond the affected families stood at more than five times these figures. This is corroborated by a well known Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. This institution has cited the worst affected areas as Umerkot, Tharparkar, Mirpurkhas, Badin, Karachi, Tando Allahyar, Kashmore, Ghotki and others where such conversions took place in a routine manner. This Human Rights Group has revealed that only on the eve of Holi festival this year, two Hindu sisters Raveena, aged 13 and Reena 15 year old were kidnapped right from their home in Ghotki in Sindh. Every month, as per official reports circulated in Pakistan, 25 forced marriages preceded by abductions take place in Umerkot district of Sindh alone.
Only a few days back, a shocking incident of an innocent minor Hindu girl came somehow into the limelight of how an “influential” Muslim desired, decided and arranged execution of the plan to lift a poor innocent minor Hindu girl in Pakistan’s Punjab province, forcibly converted her and married her. The shocked aggrieved miniscule Hindu Community members were forced to protest and press Imran Khan Government to trace and recover Naina, the victim girl reminding him of his tall promises of “providing protection” to Hindu minority community in Pakistan and save them from total extinction. They blocked some roads as they were mortified to face any eventuality or consequences of asking for justice and a riddance from the perpetual threat of lifting their girls for forcible conversion and marrying them against their wishes and consent. Raghu Ram, the unfortunate father of the girl threatened self immolation in case his child was not recovered and handed over back to her family. The forcibly converted girl has the new forced name of Noor Fatima. The hapless girl is a Minor, since as per practice, the brunt of such persecution is more on teen aged girls, hence the worst victims. The modus operandi of the entire operations associated at times even by macabre proportions is forcibly abducting, threatening parents with death and other harm, chanting slogans while carrying the victim for conversion and “marriage” and manipulating court proceedings, if any, which are otherwise of the nature of utter sham. Pakistan must remorsefully introspect on civilization(al) and humanitarian grounds, learn from how minority in India is treated, honoured and allowed full religious freedom besides fully enjoying all rights and privileges which are guaranteed under the constitution of India to all citizens, the second example of which can be found nowhere in the world.
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