- A major difference between India and Pakistan is their treatment o minnorities
The minorities in Pakistan have been granted freedom to practice their religion while their places of worship have been guaranteed protection by the Constitution. It is true that there were sporadic attacks on Christian churches and Hindu temples when terrorism was at its peak. However, following Military operations Zarb-ul-Azb and Radd-ul-Fasaad, the back of terrorism has been broken and the preservation of the rights of minorities has been resumed with full zeal.
Imran Khan’s government has bent backwards to provide additional privileges to the minorities. The inauguration of the Kartarpur Corridor, providing Sikhs the opportunity to visit the holy shrine of Guru Nanak at Nankana Saheb last year on the occasion of the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, has been hailed by the entire world.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, during his visit to Pakistan last month, also visited the Kartarpur Corridor. He was so impressed by the facility that his spontaneous comment recounting Pakistan’s journey from “terrorism to tourism” became a meme.
Last week, US President Donald Trump made his maiden visit to India. While royal protocol was being offered to the visiting dignitary, extremist Hindus were burning mosques, houses belonging to Muslims, numerous houses, schools, gas stations and tyre factories. The death toll was 46 while over 250 were injured. This is a far cry from the tolerant India of Gandhi and Nehru
Pakistan has also made conscious efforts to renovate and revive ancient Hindu temples. A visit to Katas Raj Temple last week was like a whiff of fresh air, seeing the ancient temple fully renovated and beckoning to the Hindu faithful as well as tourists. Imran Khan’s government is also making arrangements to ensure corridors similar to Kartarpur for Indian Hindus to make pilgrimage visits to their holy sites in Pakistan.
The Royal couple of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who visited Pakistan in October 2019, also visited Kafiristan in Chitral. They were amazed at the preservation of the lifestyle of the “Kafirs” of Chitral, where the literacy rate is 98 percent while women empowerment in this region is the highest in Pakistan.
Under these circumstances, the minorities feel secure in Pakistan. India is trying to run propaganda campaigns based on the fallacy that Pakistani Hindus are migrating to India which is welcoming them. In fact, India is trying to divert attention from the gross maltreatment of its minorities. The Muslims of Kashmir are being brutalized. On 5 August last year, Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution, providing autonomy to Kashmir, were abrogated and Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh have been merged into Indian territory. Since the illegal Indian action, the Valley of Kashmir has been in a state of lockdown. Kashmiri children are being deprived of food and nutrition and men, women and children are confined to their homes.
To make matters worse, in December 2019, two other acts of the current ruling dispensation in New Delhi have brought about roars of protest in India. The contentious anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) allows Hindus, Christians and other religious minorities who are in India illegally to become citizens if they can show they were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It does not apply to Muslims. The National Register of Citizens (NRC), which excludes 1.9 million of northeastern Assam state’s 33 million population, demanded the citizens to register themselves but the Muslims of Assam and elsewhere were barred from it. Thus, they remain outside the reach of registration, deprived of their basic rights and if deemed necessary, and are being forced to leave India.
Prima facie India is offering asylum to Hindus to migrate from Pakistan to India but Pakistani Hindus feel safe here. They are aware of Indian machinations and will not fall in the trap being laid by the BJP to ensnare them.
Throughout India, there have been massive rallies protesting the promulgation of both pieces of legislation, which were deemed a usurpation of human rights. Interestingly, it is not just Muslims who are protesting the NRC and CAA, but also citizens of various faiths including Hindus. The rallies have been led by the student community, who have been fired upon and a number of them have been killed.
The US Congress and European Parliaments have taken cognizance of the draconian piece of legislature in the form of CAA and NRC. They have asked India to reconsider. Last week, US President Donald Trump made his maiden visit to India. While royal protocol was being offered to the visiting dignitary, extremist Hindus were burning mosques, houses belonging to Muslims, numerous houses, schools, gas stations and tyre factories. The death toll was 46 while over 250 were injured. This is a far cry from the tolerant India of Gandhi and Nehru.
Renowned India human rights activist Arundhati Roy, in her hard-hitting Clark lecture titled ‘The graveyard talks back’, stated: “the Muslim graveyard, the kabristan, is a ghetto of the new Hindu India— and Kashmir, covered with graveyards after 30 years of war, is almost a graveyard itself.”
She further states: “Graveyards in India are, for the most part, Muslim graveyards, because Christians make up a minuscule part of the population, and, as you know, Hindus and most other communities cremate their dead. The Muslim graveyard, the kabristan, has always loomed large in the imagination and rhetoric of Hindu nationalists. “Mussalman ka ek hi sthan, kabristan ya Pakistan!”—Only one place for the Muslims, graveyard or Pakistan—is among the more frequent war cries of the murderous, sword-wielding militias and vigilante mobs that have overrun India’s streets. As the Hindu Right has taken almost complete control of the state, as well as non-state apparatuses, the increasingly blatant social and economic boycott of Muslims has pushed them further down the societal ladder and made them even more unwelcome in “secular” public spaces and housing colonies”.
