ALI SUKHANVER

Bahawalpur is a land of sandy plains in the South Punjab area of Pakistan. Last month on 21^st May a protest was carried out at Deputy Commissioner Office Bahawalpur. This protest was led by two local residents Mansha Raam & Laskshman Raam. They were protesting against demolishing of their houses by the city administration. Some of the Indian newspapers and TV Channels simply misguided the public by misreporting the matter. They said it was an action against the Hindu minorities living in Pakistan. In fact, it was anti-encroachment operation carried out by the local administration. According to the City administration, the protesters are professional state land encroachers and there have been many complaints that they are involved in money-grabbing also and most of the time their target are the people belonging to the Hindu community. Indian media is portraying this incident to propagate negative image and create atmosphere of uneasiness among minorities living in Pakistan.

Pakistan is a very safe country for the minorities and the government always remains very alert regarding their rights. It is not Pakistan but India where the minorities live a life of pain and agony. Once proud of its secularism, India has become a land only for the upper-caste Hindus; others are not allowed even to breathe freely.  Every day, countless Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Dalits have to pass through a grind just because they do not belong to the Hindu community. The Christian Post recently published a report which says that the early quarter of 2020 had been a very frightening period for the Christians in India. Attacks on Christians and their places of worship in India continued to escalate in both number and severity in the early months of 2020 with 27 violent incidents reported in March alone. The report referred to a document prepared by the United Christian Forum which pointed out 56 threats against Christians as well as 78 incidents of violence against the Christian community between January and March of 2020. The UCF said that all these attacks took place in Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Goa. In most cases, the attacks were perpetrated by mobs objecting to Christians holding worship services. There are countless examples of forced conversion of Christians to Hinduism. Hindu extremists are threatening the Christians that they would have to face serious consequences if they do not change their religion.

This cruel behaviour with the minorities is purely an inhuman approach and it must have been discouraged but unfortunately the members of the UN Security Council appreciated this approach by electing India as a Non-Permanent member of the Security Council. The UN Security Council is one of the most sacred bodies responsible for maintenance of peace and harmony all over the world. Whenever there is a situation of anarchy or civil war or any other type of disturbance in any country, it is the UN Security Council which decides about the deployment of UN peace troops in the troubled area. The Security Council is a very sensitive body of the United Nations, so the member-countries must be those having an unblemished reputation. In case of India, the situation is altogether otherwise. Those who voted for India in UN Security Council’s elections were well aware of mistreatment and injustice; the religious and racial minorities have to face in India.  By supporting India they have done nothing but lent a helping hand to extremism.

Though the same horrible situation is being faced by the Sikhs and the Muslims too but the worst of all are the Dalits.  Most of the Dalits or the Untouchables belong to the low-caste tribes. Their fate is to face violence and forced ‘social distancing’ at the hands of the upper-caste Hindus. Even their shadows are not allowed to touch the people from more privileged castes but when the matter comes to the rape of a Dalit woman, the Upper-caste Hindu men try to ignore all that ‘untouchablity’. On 13^th January, 2020 an article of Sumanti Sen was published in The Logical Indian which said, Four Dalit women are raped every day in India. Every time a Dalit woman or a woman from any so-called lower-caste is subjected to sexual violence, it becomes clear that the prevailing structure of caste and the status of women in society are largely responsible for the violation of their human rights.”  From the Dalits to the Muslims, BJP’s India has become a blazing hell for all minorities. It is simply the callousness of the world that such a ‘dangerous’ country has been prized with Non-Permanent membership of the Security Council. Certainly by voting for India, the member countries have expressed their silent support to terrorism.