Avantika D
A Hindu temple was vandalized in Pakistan’s Sindh province and a Hindu teacher was attacked by a belligerent mob over accusations of blasphemy.
This is not very different from the incident of May 2018, when a Hindu doctor in Pakistan was arrested, again on the pretext of alleged blasphemy, and a crowd of combative protestors set shops owned by Hindus to flames.
But this time, it happened under the prime ministership of Imran Khan who is often found sermonizing India on the treatment of minorities.
Imran Khan came to power with promises of a ‘Naya Pakistan’, but the condition of the almost non-existent minority in Pakistan seems to have worsened since he took over.
Earlier this month, a Hindu girl was abducted, forcefully converted and married to a Muslim man. The incident happened in Sindh: a state notorious for its innumerable ‘stolen brides’ since the inception of the country.
On Holi this year, two teenage sisters were kidnapped with a motive of religious conversion. The spine-chilling video of their father begging for his daughters had sent tremors across the virtual world, but was it successful in commanding any retaliation or action in the real world?
Did the United Nations stress over it? Were Pakistan and its leadership confronted at international fora? Did the world media rip that country apart? Did any of the renowned activists, Pakistan’s own Malala being one, condemn this ongoing act of savagery that has become shamefully commonplace there?
In a world that’s waking up to the right of minorities, striving to safeguard their interests, Hindus are the global minority conveniently neglected. We overlook the atrocities the Hindus had to put up with since the past thousand years; but can we afford to ignore the barbarity they are faced with in countries like Bangladesh and Afghanistan even in these modern times?
Nearly 99% of Hindus have left Afghanistan in the past three decades, making it the third country, along with Pakistan and Bangladesh, to have an appalling decline in its Hindu populace.
One may opine that is it only the Third World, South Asian countries withering under the shadow of radicalism where Hindus are being victimized, but this misconception shattered when some of the most developed countries violate the religious rights of this community and the whole world watches silently.
In January this year, the Swaminarayan Temple in Louisville, Kentucky was desecrated and hate-messages were spray-painted all over. The enormity of the crime should have called for a nationwide protest from people of a country that prides itself on its diversity, but nah!
More than 30 statues of Hindu Gods were destroyed, carpets were burnt and the Bhartiye Mandir in Sydney was left in ruins in October last year. The incident sparked widespread condemnation from the Hindu community, but being the more composed society, Hindus fail at creating the kind of stir such repeated attacks deserve.
Let alone in foreign countries, even their natural home, India, failed at being the absolute haven with assured security for them. The highly debated NRC list in Assam has left over 10 lakh Hindu Bengalis in a mental state of displacement. Several cases of suicides have surfaced.
Victims feared detention or stripping off of their citizenship and resorted to the extreme act. These include people as educated as teachers like Nirod Baran Das and as basic the daily-wage earner, Angad Sutradhar.
Chased out of their land in Pakistan and Bangladesh some 70 years ago, thrown out of their homes in Kashmir about 30 years ago, treated apathetically in developed and liberal countries, and now refused in their natural habitat, the Hindu demography forming only 15% of the world population stands alone as a global minority no one cares about; a pacific body that evokes no political empathy and demands no accountability from authorities.
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