KARACHI:
As members of the Hindu community celebrated the colourful festival of ‘Holi’ in grounds behind Shri Swaminarayan Mandir on Thursday, a group of students formed a human chain around the temple to demonstrate solidarity with their Hindu brothers and sisters, providing them security amidst attacks on places of worship of minorities.
The students belonged to the National Students Federation.
NSF were of the opinion that the state may have failed to put a stop to such inhumane attacks but the citizens of Karachi would continue to do their part.
Fawad Hassan, NSF’s general secretary for Karachi, said that it was high time that people stopped investing their hope in the state authorities as they had let them down too many times.
“More than 60,000 innocent people have lost their lives due to such failures of the state. Still, all is not lost because we have to take care of each other,” he said.
Women were seen dressed up in saris and drenching each other in colours screaming ‘Holi hai!’ with Hindi music playing in the background.
Mrs Veena A. Malani, who had specially come down from Mithi in Tharparkar for the occasion, said that it didn’t matter even if her pretty clothes got drenched in colour. “We are all here to play Holi and have fun. Besides, the colours are not the stubborn or permanent chemical ones. These wash off quite easily. And even if they didn’t, they will carry the colour of beautiful memories we make today,” she said, smiling.
Other children with coloured faces and lots of glitter on their faces and hair ran around chasing each other.