A Hindu hell on earth: Families are being torn apart by their desperation to flee persecution in Pakistan

[and/or www.mantra.com/jai]

A Hindu hell on earth: Families are being torn apart by
their desperation to flee persecution in Pakistan

By Andrew Buncombe, Delhi
The Independent
Tuesday, May 7, 2013

They had waited for years. So when the opportunity came
they took it, even if it meant leaving behind friends and
neighbours, brothers and husbands. Even a� three-day-old
baby boy. Seven weeks ago, almost 500 Hindus from
Pakistan crossed into India on the pretence of visiting a
religious festival. In reality, they had come to escape
religious persecution and poverty. Some said they would
rather commit suicide than go back.

�Pakistan is worse than hell for Hindus,� said one of
those who managed to flee, Laxman Das, a fruit trader
from Hyderabad.

Though Pakistan was established as a state for Muslims,
the original vision of its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah,
was of a place of tolerance and inclusion.

�You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go
to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this
State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or
caste or creed � that has nothing to do with the business
of the state,� he said in speech in August 1947.

Yet Jinnah�s vision has steadily been eroded. Today, as
Pakistan prepares for a historic election on� 11 May, its
Christians and Hindus, which together comprise perhaps� 3
per cent of the population, face persecution and assault.
Some� have fled.

�If people have any resources, they want to leave here,�
Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, of the Pakistan Hindu Council,
said from Karachi.

The Pakistanis who have made their way to the village of
Bijwasan, not far from Delhi�s international airport, all
belong to the same low Hindu caste and come from the same
part of Sindh province. They have applied unsuccessfully
for visas to India for years and hit upon the idea of
asking to visit the Kumbh Mela festival, the most
auspicious date in the Hindu calendar. Though the
festival is held every three years, it is only every 12
years that it is held at the confluence of the sacred
Ganges and Yamuna rivers in Allahabad. This year the
festival was held in February and March.

�Getting a passport is not so difficult. But getting a
visa is very hard,� said 35-year-old Hanuman Prashad,
another fruit trader from Hyderabad, explaining how they
told the Indian authorities they wished to attend the
festival.

The Hindus, who came in three groups, said their biggest
motivation to leave was the challenge of educating their
children. There was discrimination in government schools,
where they were referred to as �kafirs�, told to go and
work in the fields and obliged to recite the six kalimas,
or tenets, of Islam.

For girls, it was even more difficult, so much so that
few of the families bothered sending their daughters to
school. �For the wealthy Hindus it is easier � they can
send their children to better schools or else abroad,� Mr
Das said.

They said the situation had become worse since the rule
of the military leader General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who
seized power in 1977 and for the next decade oversaw an
increased Islamisation of Pakistan. Following the
notorious destruction of India�s Babri mosque by a Hindu
mob in 1992, the Hindus of Pakistan were often the
victims of revenge attacks.

While hundreds of Hindus received visas to attend the
festival, not everyone did. Almost everyone at Bijwasan �
where they are squeezed more than 20 to a room in a
former school, the air filled with flies � can tell a
story of leaving someone behind.

Hanuman Prashad, who came to India with his wife and six
children, said his parents had not been successful. When
it came to leaving, with the knowledge he would not
return, everyone wept. But his parents were insistent.
�Whatever happens to us, go and save your life. Take your
kids,� they told him.

Bharti Sulanki had travelled to the crossing at the
Pakistani border town Khokhrapar with her husband and
seven children, the youngest being only three-days old.
She said the Pakistani authorities demanded a passport
and visa for the newborn, too young even to have been
named.

She said she pleaded with the guards to let her cross
with the boy she was still breastfeeding but they
refused. Dazed and tear-stained, Ms Sulanki said she
believed she had no alternative but to hand the child to
a relative who had come to the border with them. Since
then she has been unable to make contact to discover what
has happened to her baby.

She said she had prayed they would get their visas
earlier so she could have given birth in India.

�I had no option,� she sobbed. �I sacrificed the baby for
the sake of the other six children, so they can have an
education.�

A 30-year-old pregnant woman called Laran Keswari was
equally distraught. She had crossed with her five
children but her husband, who is disabled, had not
obtained a visa. She told him she did not want to go
without him but he insisted she go ahead for the sake of
their children. �God is on your side,� he told her.

Ms Keswari is anxious about� how she will manage by
herself with her children, hoping against hope that her
husband will be able to join them. �We speak on the phone
but we are both always crying,� she said.

An irony of the group�s exodus from Pakistan, a journey
to escape discrimination, is that it was made possible by
people with fundamental and, in some cases, extremist
views. Their host in Bijwasan was Naher Singh, a former
customs officer and policeman, who accommodated another
smaller group of refugees in 2011. He asked his rent-
paying tenants to leave� his property and housed the
Pakistanis instead. �These people are my God and Goddess.
I worship them,� he said.

Mr Singh said the cost of feeding and housing the 483
people was met by various hardline Hindu groups,
including the Vishva Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal and
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Some of their members
have been linked to confrontations with minority groups
across India.

Mr Singh, who has been rousing his refugee guests at 3am
to lead them in yoga and religious chants, said he wanted
to forcibly drive Muslims from India. He made a series of
inflammatory remarks.

Mr Singh was accompanied by a Hindu priest. Asked if Mr
Singh was not displaying the sort of bigotry from which
he claimed to be saving the refugees, the priest replied:
�This is God talking through him. And I agree with him.�

The government of India has yet to publicly comment on
the refugees or its plans for them. Sending them back to
Pakistan would be politically fraught. Pakistan has not
commented on� the matter.

Mr Singh said he would fight any attempt to repatriate
the refugees and claimed they would be accepted by the
local community. He said: �We will find jobs for them
here in the villages.�

More at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-hindu-hell-on-earth-families-are-being-torn-apart-by-their-desperation-to-flee-persecution-in-pakistan-8606774.html

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

o o o

o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used
for the educational purposes of research and open
discussion. The contents of this post may not have been
authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the poster. The contents are protected by copyright
law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely
not be read, considered or answered if it does not
contain your full legal name, current e-mail and postal
addresses, and live-voice telephone number.

o Posted for information and discussion. Views
expressed by others are not necessarily those of the
poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted
material the use of which may or may not have been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This
material is being made available in efforts to advance
the understanding of environmental, political, human
rights, economic, democratic, scientific, social, and
cultural, etc., issues. It is believed that this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research, comment,
discussion and educational purposes by subscribing to
USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more
information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article
for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Since newsgroup posts are being removed by forgery by one
or more net terrorists, this post may be reposted several
times.