The latest is Interior Minister Rehman Malik
Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship.
's reaction on hearing a media report that several Hindu families from Jacobabad had chosen to emigrate to India to escape persecution: he termed the migration a "conspiracy" to defame Pakistain, ordered the FIA to investigate the situation before the travellers could be allowed to cross the border, and asked the Indian High Commission to explain why it issued visas to 250 Hindu citizens of Pakistain.
This reaction was disgusting, to say the least. Pakistain has sunk so low that it can cast itself as the victim when members of one of its minority communities potentially feel so persecuted that they take the harrowing decision to leave their homeland. This 'conspiracy' may be the most perverse incarnation of Pakistain's persecution mania yet.
As it turned out, the families were only travelling to India to perform a pilgrimage and plan to return to Pakistain. But it is telling enough that the rumours of mass exodus -- duly amplified by irresponsible media reporting -- were sparked by the kidnapping earlier this month of a teenage Hindu girl, a resident of Jacobabad. Read between the lines of last week's (incorrect) coverage of Hindu emigration, and a narrative emerges: of course they're leaving; why wouldn't they?
The treatment meted out to minorities, including Hindus, has been poor since Partition and has become progressively worse in recent years (and before I'm inundated with reminders of the maltreatment of Moslems in India or elsewhere, let me just say that one injustice does not justify another). In present-day Pakistain, Hindus find that their faith earns no respect, their businesses are looted or boycotted and many have complained that their daughters are kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam through marriage.
Just earlier this year, we witnessed the dramatics surrounding Rinkle Kumari's 'marriage'. The Supreme Court intervened to determine whether or not she had been kidnapped and forcibly converted, but could reach no clear conclusions and left it up to Kumari to decide her own fate. Kumari chose to stay with her Moslem husband, but we will never know whether hers was actually a love marriage or a forced conversion -- our society and justice system offer no opportunity for the truth of her circumstances to emerge and be upheld. Kumari's family and civil rights activists maintain that she received threats from a local parliamentarian that prevented her from leaving her husband. While the mystery around Kumari's circumstances endures, human rights
...which often include carefully measured allowances of
freedomat the convenience of the state...
groups report up to 25 instances of forced conversions each month.
Also earlier this year, controversy erupted around the historic Gorakhnath Temple in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, which was vandalised three times within two months. On the third attempt, the vandals were able to remove idols and burn pictures, leaving the Hindu community to wonder how hard it was for the authorities to provide security for their temple. The incident was a tragic case of one step forward, two steps back: the attacks occurred barely months after the Peshawar High Court ordered that the 160-year-old temple, which had been closed since Partition, be reopened.
In addition to such incidents, hatred against Hindus is enshrined in our public school curriculum. Government-issued textbooks repeatedly describe Hindus as intrinsically cruel and unjust, the eternal enemies of Islam.
To add injury to insult, our proliferating private media has decided that nothing can be more entertaining than the live, on-air conversion of a young Hindu man to Islam (or an inaccurately reported story about Hindus migrating, when they were only travelling to India for a pilgrimage -- no doubt, this uproar will make life even more difficult for the Sindhi and Baloch Hindus on their return).
It probably doesn't help matters that the mere possibility that Hindus might travel to India and complain about Pakistain -- or, horror of horrors, deliver the ultimate snub by choosing to emigrate -- can provoke a high-level FIA investigation and lead to the seven-hour-long detention at Wagah border of more than 250 Hindus, all equipped with required travel documentation.
Need I go on? In this context, how could Malik possibly suggest that an 'external' factor may have prompted a decision by Pakistain's Hindus to leave the country? How far can we push our state of denial? This incident has made Pakistain seem simultaneously ridiculous and brutal in the eyes of the world. It has also reminded those who favour closer India-Pakistain ties just how tentative recent gains in the bilateral relationship are given the chronic paranoia that afflicts the powers that be.
Confronted with the possibility of a mass exodus by one of Pakistain's religious minorities, the best
President Asif Ali Ten PercentZardari
... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ...
could do was constitute a three-member parliamentary committee to visit Hindus across Sindh to express solidarity and order local authorities to submit a report on the grievances of the Hindu community (as if these need any further documentation). Rather than waste time and energy on barely cosmetic measures, why not form a committee to revise all anti-minority sections of the public school curriculum? Or arrest some leaders of beturbanned goon organizations who routinely incite hatred and violence against all Pakistain's religious minorities? Or deploy some enlightened holy mans to preach tolerance and genuine Islamic values of acceptance and coexistence in multi-faith communities?
The only conspiracy against Pakistain is the one being hatched by politicians who lack the strength, vision and credibility to bring about genuine social and economic reform in this country.