Indian scholar Prof Dr Ram Puniyami has described as dismal the general lot of Indian Muslims in secular India as the situation of minority rights has worsened over the last three decades. Ghettoized and alienated for long from the mainstream, the Indian Muslims were now awakening and realizing that the way out for them was acquisition of modern knowledge. Still the dream of equity for the Muslims was a far thing and their security had been made precarious by the infiltration of communal elements in the state organs.
Dr Puniyami was speaking here at the regional conference on the “Rights of Religious Minorities in South Asia: Learning from Mutual Experiences” organised by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) of Germany in Islamabad. The Indian scholar said the growth of communalism was not something new as it was the existence of two communal streams of religious nationalism which had caused the division of the British India.
However, India’s secular constitution which exhorts affirmative action to safeguard the minorities had all along struggled against the forces of Hindutva led by the RSS. He said the Sangh Parivar was persecuting the Muslims. The other religious minority that was being oppressed was Christians. He said communalism in South Asia was of a competitive nature as persecution of the Muslims in India aroused negative sentiments in Pakistan and vice versa.
The visiting speaker further said violation of human rights anywhere should be treated as a violation everywhere. He said there were many men and women in India who had devoted their lives to fighting the menace of communalism and evolving a polity that was truly secular. They were trying for the passage of a communal violence bill that would hold the state apparatus responsible if violence against a minority persisted for more than 24 hours.
He also advocated reservation in jobs for the Muslims to bring them up to a threshold of economic and social survival. But it was going to be a long and hard fight.
Former federal minister and minority rights activist J Salik called upon the United Nations to devote a day to the rights of the minorities and create a body to monitor violations of minorities’ rights in various countries. He said that minorities were not represented at the UN and in Pakistan they did not enjoy equal rights as no member of the minority community could become the head of the state or the chief executive.
Professor Imtiaz Ahmad of Bangladesh said that polity in Bengal was more tolerant as public reasoning there was enriched by the Sufi tradition and the influence of Hanafi school of thought which tended to separate religion from politics. Ambassador Nihal Rodrigo who spoke on the Sri Lankan civil war said the Muslims had also suffered a lot during the conflict and faced dislocation a t a large scale. The country was now engaged in the task of resettlement and rehabilitation.
Pandit Channa Lal, senior representative of the Hindu community in Pakistan, said the community faced no problem in the observance and celebration of religious rites and festivals, but the children of his community did not consider them part of the mainstream. Hindus could not climb to the top in service careers; there were no foreign office jobs for them and the doors of the presidency and the PM House were closed to them, he said. He added the PPP was no more a liberal party as it used to be in the time of ZA Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.
Dr Maqsudul Hassan Nuri, acting president of IPRI, in his welcome address, said that it was an ‘age of rage’ and that there had been a marked rise in religiosity in South Asia over the years. “We need to understand the causes behind this phenomenon and devise pragmatic solutions”. He said the IPRI was holding a series of conferences to deliberate on the burning issues of the day.
