Data from the 2017 Census shows that while Muslims make up 96.2 per cent of Pakistan’s population, Hindus are only 1.6 per cent, Christians 1.59 per cent, Scheduled Castes 0.25 per cent, Ahmadis 0.22 per cent, and other minorities 0.07 per cent. There are countless incidents of minorities having to face rapes, forced conversions, murder and destruction of their property
The persecution and continuous targeting of minorities in Pakistan came into the spotlight on Sunday when two Sikh businessmen were shot dead by the Islamic State terrorists in northwest Pakistan on Sunday.
As per the police, Kanwaljeet Singh, 42, and Ranjeet Singh, 38, died on the spot after being attacked by two bike-borne assailants in the morning in Bata Tal bazaar of Sarband, Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The Islamic State’s Khorasan unity (ISKP) claimed responsibility for the attack — which was condemned by leaders on both sides of the border, as well as human right activists.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, as per a PTI report, said India had registered its “strong protest” with Pakistan on the continued “targeting” of members of the minority community in that country.
Bagchi said India expects the Pakistan government to ensure the safety, security and well-being of its minority communities.
“We have seen the reports on brutal killing of two Sikh traders by unidentified armed men in Peshawar. Sadly, this is not the first such case or a rare occurrence,” Bagchi said.
“We call upon the authorities concerned to sincerely investigate the matter and take strict action against those responsible for this deplorable incident,” he added.
Minorities in Pakistan are often the victims of attacks. Let’s examine the situation of minorities in Pakistan, their numbers, why they are facing persecution and how the authorities are handling it.
Minorities in Pakistan
As per the 2017 Census, Muslims make up 96.2 per cent of Pakistan’s population, Hindus 1.6 per cent, Christians 1.59 per cent, Scheduled Castes 0.25 per cent, Ahmadis 0.22 per cent, and other minorities 0.07 per cent.
Most Christians live in the Punjab, while Hindus and Scheduled Castes are overwhelmingly located in Sindh. Ahmadis are evenly spread throughout the country, with some concentration in Islamabad.
Farahnaz Ispahani, media advisor to the president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2012 in her book Purifying the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Religious Minorities wrote that Pakistan’s minority population has been declining since 1947 — from 23 per cent then to a mere three-four per cent in 2016 and that has shrunk even further today.
She has blamed successive Pakistan presidents and prime ministers for launching a slow genocide against minorities in the country to shore up their political base.
In her book, she portions a major chunk of the blame on Pakistan Army General Zia-ul-Haq, the country’s sixth president, for creating a militant group to target Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians.
Attacks against minorities
Religious minorities in Pakistan are often singled out or deliberately targeted for their religious belonging, and also have less access to resources that could help them cope with these traumas. A glance at recent attacks only show how vulnerable minorities continue to be in Pakistan.
2021: UCA news reported in January that as per a Washington-based International Christian Concern, 24 Christians were imprisoned in Pakistan on blasphemy charges.
Moreover, on 3 January, 11 Shia Hazara miners were killed in a brutal attack claimed by Islamic State gunmen in Balochistan province.
In October, a Sikh ‘hakeem’ Satnam Singh– Unani medicine practitioner — was shot four times and killed instantly by unidentified assailants at his clinic in Pakistan’s Peshawar.
2020: On 9 May, a Christian church in Pakistan’s Punjab province was desecrated in a land grab crime. On 11 May, 21 Hindu homes were set on fire in villages in the country’s Sindh province. In one village, a Hindu woman was sexually assaulted and her family attacked, shows a European Parliament report.
On 30 December, hundreds of villagers led by local clerics stormed the Krishna Dwara temple in Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and set it on fire. The mob also attacked an under-construction house allegedly occupied by a Hindu man. According to reports, clerics made provocative speeches against the alleged expansion of the Hindu temple, leading to the attack.
However, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government to immediately start rebuilding a century-old Hindu temple that was vandalised by a mob in the province, and submit a timeline for its completion.
2019: Violent protesters attacked a school in 2019 after a blasphemy case was filed against Nautan Lal, principal of the Sindh Public School. Blasphemy, which is punishable by death in Pakistan, is a sensitive topic in the country, where 97 per cent of its 180 million inhabitants are Muslim.
2018: In May, a prominent Sikh religious leader Charanjit Singh Sagar was shot dead in Peshawar city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province.
Reports stated that unidentified gunmen shot dead Charanjit Singh in Budhbir while he was sitting in his grocery shop.
2017: A teenage Hindu girl was abducted from a village in Thar and forced to convert to Islam and reportedly forced to marry, her family and relatives claimed. The family of the 14-year-old girl told reporters that three armed men barged into their home and held the family hostage.
2012: On 4 December, six-year-old Vijanti Meghwar was brutally raped in Ghulam Nabi Shah village in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Vijanti belonged to the Meghwar community of the country’s minority Hindu population.
2010: In July, about 60 Hindus were forced to abandon their homes and hide in a cattle pen at Memon Goth in Karachi after influential tribesmen of the area objected to a boy drinking water from a cooler near a mosque.
Besides these attacks, there are countless other incidents of forced conversion. In fact, Professor Kalyan Singh, who is a minority rights acitivist and teacher at Lahore’s GC College University told news agency ANI that the biggest reason for the decline in the Sikh population is forced conversion.
Reason for attacks
The Partition of India on religious lines has had a lasting impact on intercommunal relations in the newly independent states.
As Minority Rights put it: “Because of the British strategies of categorisation and enumeration, notions of majority and minority became equated with dominance and disenfranchisement.”
The BBC reports that the violence against Catholics in Pakistan is directly related to the American-led war in Afghanistan.
In The Diplomat, Jaffer A Mirza writes that the violence against the minorities has a lot to do with the Pakistan military. In the analysis, he writes that the Pakistan military has a long history of supporting extremist groups, using them as proxies both externally and internally.
With inputs from agencies
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