With the support of the deep state of Pakistan, there is a concerted effort by Islamic radical groups to ethnically cleanse Sindh of Hindus, where they constitute more than 45% of the population.
According to human rights activists, a large-scale conversion drive is underway to convert Hindus to Islam through all means, including abducting and converting Hindu girls. A report in Pakistani newspaper Dawn said: “Even going by the estimates of those engaged in the conversion of non-Muslims in Tharparkar and Umerkot districts, the annual rate is at least in the several hundreds, possibly more.”
A human rights activist told the paper: “At least 25 conversions of young Hindu girls and women take place every month in Umerkot’s Kunri and Samaro talukas alone. This area is so deprived and the people, most of whom belong to the scheduled castes, are so powerless that the families know there’s no use in them reporting forced conversions to the police, let alone raising a hue and cry.”
Atrocities against Hindus
In May, a riot erupted in Mirpurkhas following accusation that a Hindu doctor had indulged in blasphemy. In February, a temple in Kumb vandalised and burnt. The radicalised Muslims shouting their war cry “Allah-o-Akbar” also burnt the Bhagawat Gita and destroyed idols kept in the temple. More than 20 such incidents have taken place in the area in the last few years. In some cases, temples were razed to ground by the local administration to construct commercial centers and malls. A study in 2014 found that 95% of the places of worship belonging to religious minorities in Pakistan have vanished and in their places malls and restaurants have come up. Moreover, unable to bear the atrocities, on average 5,000 Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs migrate to India every year.
A French news outlet had shown how hatred against Hindus is drilled into young children through the curricula. “Hindus have tried all their means to harm Muslims… The foundation of [the] Hindu set up was based on injustice and cruelty… Hindus… used all means to weaken and harm Pakistan…” are some of the excerpts from the history text books prepared by the education department.
The invaders who vandalised temples and massacred Hindus are glorified in school textbooks. The savage Muhammad bin Qasim is shown as someone who “saved the people of Sindh from the atrocities of Hindu Raja,” as described in the Civics Class IX & X book from the Punjab Textbook Board, Lahore, 2001.
Other heroes who are eulogised are Tipu Sultan who in a 1790 letter to then Bekal Governor Budruz Zuman Khan took pride in forcibly converting 400,000 Hindus. What often united Muslim invaders from the millennium leading up to the Indo-Pak Partition was their vandalizing of Hindu temples. The destruction of the Somnath temple at the hands of Mahmud Ghaznavi in 1024, continues to be celebrated as a “Muslim conquest over Hindus.”
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