Religious discrimination is a never-ending issue in Pakistan which has been running since 1947 and there is no remedy till now. Pakistan has over 20 crores population, out of which around 3.4 million people belong to the Hindu community and the majority of which are Dalits or people of Scheduled Castes.
Minorities have never been treated equally in the country, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to eradicate this issue but hasn’t chalked out any plan for the minorities so far. Even under his leadership, so many Hindus are still going through painful torture like the religious conversion (Hinduism to Islam) and forced marriages to elderly men.
The world knows that atrocities against Hindus and Sikhs have grown to a great extent in Pakistan since it came into existence. Minorities in the neighboring country are being persecuted. Thousands of minority girls have been abducted and forcefully converted to Islam and married off in Pakistan. No one can raise their voice against atrocities, if someone does, his voice is suppressed.
British Hindu organisations have written a joint letter to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urging him to take immediate action over Pakistan’s “rampant persecution” of Hindus in light of the recent incident in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when a temple was burned.
“We the representatives of the national umbrella bodies for Hindus in the UK would like to seek urgent action to demand that the Prime Minister of Pakistan does everything possible to stop the rampant persecution of Hindus in Pakistan… in the recent past the situation for minorities like Hindus in Pakistan is getting extremely perilous,” the letter says.
The Hindu groups said that the persecution of minorities has been on-going for many years now in the Islamic republic. However, in the recent past the situation for minorities like Hindus is getting dangerously perilous, they said.
Citing the Temple destruction by a mob in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, the groups lamented that vast majority of the UK and International news organisations failed to cover this religiously motivated-hate crime in Pakistan.
The letter endorsed by Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh UK, Hindu Council UK, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and National Council of Hindu Temples UK, said that such incidents are part of a systemic anti-Hindu agenda.
“This is just the tip of what we believe to be the systematic mass scale anti-Hindu agenda, fed by anti-Hindu sentiments openly promoted by Islamic clerics….such as late Islamic clerics….such as late Islamic extremist Khadim Rizvi,” the letter read.
The high-profile Islamic figure in Pakistan, Rizvi had publicly opposed the construction of a temple in Islamabad.
“The systematic targeting is of course not only against Hindus, the Christian community stands testament to the same persecution,” the Hindu groups said.
“We ask you Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) to set up a governmental inquiry into this issue and to ask all good democracies around the world, via the United Nations, to replicate a similar type of inquiry,” they said.
“The mass murder, genocide and persecution of minorities in Pakistan must be stopped,” the Hindu groups said.
