Protect Hindus: Leading Pak daily urges Nawaz Sharif govt

The Dawn—Pakistan’s leading daily—urged the Nawaz Sharif government on Thursday to protect the rights and lives of Hindus, referring to its investigative report on forced conversions of Hindus in Thar desert.

“The state has a duty to protect the Hindu community and its right to live as Hindus,” the daily said in an editorial, claiming that Thar has long been a bastion of communal harmony in Pakistan.

The investigative report had earlier revealed how certain mullahs and feudal lords had been exploiting poverty and class distinctions to put Thar’s Hindu community under unprecedented pressure.

“Thar’s benign social ethos is undergoing a change, a change that bodes ill for the future of those who call it home and one that may well have wider repercussions for the rest of the country,” it said.

Maintaining that the spread of the madrasa culture has led to a wave of fundamentalism in which conversion to Islam, whether by force or otherwise, has become a means to an end, it further said: “the conversion of Hindu girls — many of them underage — and young women, is often used to ‘legitimise’ their kidnapping and rape. Cowed into submission, and afraid of rejection by their community if they return, they can do little else but say their conversion was voluntary.”

Accusing certain elements of offering material inducement to impoverished Hindus to convert, it said: “Such assistance, including ration, livestock, proper housing, etc is calculated to appeal to a people who are not even able to meet their basic needs. Surely charity should be predicated on need rather than on faith, or upon a change of faith.”

“It is heartening that most Muslims who live alongside Hindus in Thar as part of an integrated social milieu are equally disturbed by the changes they are witnessing in a land that has seen none of the religious conflict that much of Pakistan has been witness to,” it added.