The specter haunting minorities

Attack on Ahmaddiya family is reminder of polarisation

Do religious minorities have a place in Pakistan? The recent attack on the home of an Ahmaddiya family in Lahore has again served up an answer in the negative. Worse is that the attack comes in the wake of the furor over the Joseph Colony mob attack which left around 200 Christian homes burnt. Many promises were made that such an incident would not be repeated but the fact is that the situation on the ground reveals that Pakistan’s track record on the question of how it treats its religious minorities is getting worse by the year.

And while an attack on Christians or other religious minorities do provoke public outrage, attacks on Ahmaddiya’s are considered kosher. The trouble is that the problem is reinforced by the attitude of the state. When two Ahmaddiya worship places were attacked in Model Town and Garhi Shahu, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led Punjab government remained silent. From being declared ‘legitimate to murder’ on live television, having their graves desecrated and being disallowed to preach their faith, the Ahmaddiya community faces both social and state persecution. The fact is that Ahmaddiya’s are not considered equal citizens in the state of Pakistan – and more so than other minority groups. In many ways, it has been forced to reject all practical manifestations of Pakistani citizenship. It deserves being reminded that the community will not cast votes in the 2013 general elections in their tradition of protest against religious discrimination against them. This means that neither does the community have a stake in the electoral process nor does any member of it reach any of the legislative assemblies.

The Lahore incident appears to have been the response to a failed attempt to convert an Ahmaddiya family. Forced conversions, as these are known, are becoming more and more regular. So much so that over 200 Hindu families from Sindh, the province with the most religious diversity in Pakistan, fled to India in the year 2012. The incident raised the spectre of the partition of the subcontinent once again. Cases of forced conversions that have been taken to the Supreme Court have also not been addressed in a satisfactory manner.

Within such a polarised situation, the Lahore attack has only served to accentuate the sense of insecurity that religious minorities in Pakistan face – and the Joseph Colony response appears to have been only electoral point scoring. The real problem is that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is equally complicit in reducing minorities to second-class citizens. No amount of repeating the narrative that Islam preaches that minorities be treated well means anything concrete. On the ground, attacks on religious minorities have become so frequent that it appears as one is repeating the same narrative to deaf ears each time.