THE WHITE STRIPE FADES TO GREEN

According to the first census held after the independence of Pakistan in 1951, five percent of the 34 million people residing in what now constitutes Pakistan (former West Pakistan) were minorities.
But in today’s population of 180 million, the country’s non-Muslim population, including Ahmedis, has declined to only three and a half percent, according to a BBC Urdu report.
This dramatic decline brings into one’s mind the question: how and why it so happened?
It is commonly held that more than around 1,500 Jews lived in Karachi and Peshawar in 1947, but within the next five years, all of Pakistani Jews migrated to Israel. At the time of partition, about 10,000 Parsi inhabitants lived in Karachi and Lahore, but it is almost impossible to find even 45 Parsis in Lahore nowadays, whereas those in Karachi are mostly above the age of sixty.
Owing to the ever-changing domestic situation, the younger generations of minorities have either migrated or are in the process of immigrating to the Europe or US.
About 20,000 Goanese Roman Catholics lived in Karachi when the British left the subcontinent – they had migrated from Goa to Karachi. Education, office work, music and cooking were some of the fields these Goanese were skilled in and hundreds of them could be seen walking leisurely in Karachi’s Saddar area in the evenings.
But instead of their number going up, only 10,000 of them are now left, and one is almost clueless where these 10,000 people now reside in the city of about 18 million.
The Hindus constitute the biggest non-Muslim minority in Pakistan. Notwithstanding this fact, Sikhs find a more polite and accommodative Muslim society than do the Hindus. Local Muslims take an interest in interacting with the Sikhs, their behavior towards them based on curiosity.
Although a feeling of insecurity was suddenly aroused among 20,000 Pakistani Sikhs when four Sikhs were kidnapped two years ago – two of whom were beheaded later – by the Taliban in Khyber agency, the Sikh community has generally had no major complaints living in Pakistan, with the exception of one or two cases of the majority’s claim over their property and lands.
A majority of the Sikhs lives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Nankana Sahib, with most of them placed in the professions of the traditional medicine (hikmat), agriculture, small merchandise, etc. It is interesting to see, however, that some of them are even the media’s “poster-boys”.
Whenever a media channel has to make some report on the religious co-existence in Pakistan, the producers always make sure to include some footages of Member Punjab Assembly Kalyan Singh Kalyan or the first Sikh warden Gulab Singh of the Lahore Traffic Police or the first Sikh to be inducted in the Pakistan Army Harcharan Singh. A clip from the music album of pop-singer Jassi Layalpuria would also suffice for the creative appetite of such producers.
According to the most recent census, about three million Hindus live in Pakistan. The Pakistan Hindu Council, however, takes the number up to more than seven million. Ninety-four percent of the Pakistani Hindus live in Sindh alone.
The Hindu community has had to face serious problems since the partition, especially at four particular junctures due to specific events involving the Hindu-majority neighbor India.
During the 1965 war, more than 10,000 thousand Hindus migrated to India leaving all their properties and possessions in Pakistan.
During the 1971 war, and right after it, more than 90,000 Hindus were taken into the Indian refugee camps in Rajhastan from Tharparkar (Sindh) which had come under the Indian military’s occupation.
They were not allowed even to leave these camps until 1978. Many wanted to return to Pakistan, but the in-power Bhutto government, though it managed to gain the occupied territory back, never showed any interest in getting these citizens of Pakistan back.
Neither succeeding governments nor anyone else ever tried to impress upon the Indian government to allow those Pakistani Hindus living in refugee camps return.
Then, during the Babri Masjid tragedy, almost 17,000 Pakistani Hindus migrated to India owing to the bitterness which the incident ignited in Pakistan. This time, the majority of the migrants was from Punjab.
The Hindus who went to India during the 1965 and 1971 war were at last given the Indian citizenship in 2004, but those who left Pakistan in the consequence of the Babri Mosque incident were not so lucky to achieve the desired goal. Even today, more than 1,000 Hindu families in Indian Punjab are living with Pakistani passports, without ever abandoning their demands of getting the Indian citizenship.
Now, the Pakistani Hindu community has been cast under the shadow of fear with lawlessness in Balochistan, alarming rate of kidnappings in northern Sindh, confiscation of their properties, rise in religious fundamentalism and forced conversions of young Hindu girls to Islam.
The Christian community, the second biggest minority in Pakistan after the Hindus, consists of about quarter to two percent of Pakistan’s population. Nazir Bhatti, leader of an organization called the Pakistan Christian Congress, commenting on the Hindus leaving for India said while they (Hindus) could go to India, “where are we to go…”.