Of the Fleeing Hindus

That about 5,000 Hindus have crossed over from Pakistan to India in the past four years to save themselves from jihadi tyranny in that country, thanks to the surge of the Taliban, speaks volumes about the plight of the minority Hindus under an Islamic dispensation. Ever since the Thar Express was flagged off in 2006, which starts from Karachi, enters India at Munabao (a border town in Barmer) and runs up to Jodhpur in Rajasthan, Hindus from the Islamic state of Pakistan, now the epicentre of jihadi terrorism, have been fleeing the medieval-age fanatic forces in increasing numbers: 392 in 2006; 880 in 2007; 1,240 in 2008; and over 1,000 till August this year — all never to return to their homeland-turned-hell. Their stories of savagery in Pakistan range from kidnapping and rape of their wives and daughters to forceful conversion to Islam. Who says Jinnah’s was a ‘secular’ dream? Even if he had had one, why should the future generation of Pakistanis heed him when they knew that Islam alone was the basis of Partition and that Islam alone was the premise on which Jinnah had founded his sinister two-nation theory? And therefore, why should Bangladesh too be any exception? Hindus comprised over 33 per cent of the East Pakistani (now Bangladeshi) population in 1947, but now they are less than five per cent of the population in that country, due all to persecution at the hands of Islamic forces. But this is not as surprising as the ‘morality’ of the ‘secular’ Indian community as reflected in its silence on the torture of a helpless Hindu community in the two neighbouring countries. After all, both Pakistan and Bangladesh are declared Islamic states where non-Muslims can remain first-class citizens only when they convert to Islam. But what will secular India lose if it raises the issue of a calculated elimination of Hindus in the two neighbouring countries? Does it fear allegations of interference? It will not be interference, but condemnation of a systematic genocide — an issue that every civilized country must raise and help put an end to such cruelty and criminality. THE SENTINEL