Forced conversions of minority girls continue unabated in Pakistan

Faisalabad, Pakistan: Amid pin-drop silence in an overcrowded courtroom, everybody breaks down into tears as a non-Muslim teenager revealed how a Sunni Muslim man, almost of her father's age, abducted her in broad daylight and subjected her to rape and torture.

“The man kidnapped me in broad daylight while I was on the way to work with my sister. I was drugged and raped multiple times during captivity. I was then converted forcibly only to get married to a man who had kidnapped me. It was a nightmare. This is what is happening to minority girls in a Muslim state which claims to treat the minorities as equal citizens,” Sabah Nadeem Masih, a Christian teenager told the court while tears rolled down her cheeks.

Also read: How many Hindus live in Pakistan?

“It all occurred on a fateful day of May 20, 2022, when a Sunni Muslim namely Muhammad Yasir Hussain intercepted us as we marched towards our workplace. He stuffed me into his Rickshaw and took me to the Gujrat district. The man repeatedly raped me. I have been requesting him to set me free, but in vain,” Sabah, the teenager revealed in the courtroom.

Her ordeal stunned everybody present in the court.

The court ordered the police to arrest the abductor before sending the teenager along with her parents.

Sabah has reunited with her family.

However, the poor family from Faisalabad can not celebrate the reunion because they know the accused’s relatives would follow her.

Sabah, the 15-year-old teenager, loved the hymns that filled her church with music. But she would not be able to sing them again after she was forcibly converted from Christianity to Islam and married to a 45-year-old man who is on the run now.

Police are raiding suspect places to arrest the accused.  

“His relatives would shoot me. I am afraid,” Sabah told the court.

Sabah is one of the hundreds of girls from Pakistan’s religious minorities who are forced to convert to Islam in the majority Muslim country each year, largely to pave the way for marriages that are under the legal age and non-consensual.

Human rights activists say the practice has accelerated during the Covid-led lockdowns.

Last year the US State Department declared Pakistan “a country of particular concern” for violations of religious freedoms — a designation the Pakistani government rejects. The declaration was based in part on an appraisal by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom that underage girls in the minority Hindu, Christian, and Sikh communities were “kidnapped for forced conversion to Islam… forcibly married and subjected to rape.”

Data obtained from NGOs and independent researchers have revealed that girls from impoverished Hindu families in Pakistan’s Sindh province fall prey to forced conversions in large numbers each year.

However, a couple of new cases involving Christians, including Sabah’s, have roiled the country in recent months.

Last year, two sisters including Reena 15, and Raveena 13 went missing in the evening on ‘Holi’ from Ghotki district of Pakistan’s Sindh province. A few days later, the girls were allegedly forced into religious conversion and married off to Muslim boys.

Not easy to be a Hindu in Pakistan

The conversion of Hindu girls in Pakistan is not a new phenomenon.

Kidnapping and forced conversion of young Hindu girls have been routine matters in Pakistan, an Islamic republic with a 220 million Muslim population.

Hindus constitute 1.6% of the population and are estimated to be 3.6 million (36 Lakhs) in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Sindh province is home to a majority of Hindu communities. They have been battling poverty, discrimination, and hatred (by the Majority of Muslims) for a long time. Above all, the forced conversion of young Hindu girls is adding salt to their wounds.

“We are very worried. We cannot afford to send our young children either to India or other countries to avoid forced conversion,” says  46-year-old Santo Menghwar from Nawab Shah in the Sindh province.

He has enough reasons to panic. Research done by local agencies says on an average, 25 Hindu girls are kidnapped and converted forcibly each year in Pakistan. Only a fraction of those incidents come to light.

In interior Sindh, the situation has deteriorated beyond imagination.

Hindu girls are kidnapped by influential Muslims regularly. While their families are too scared to report the incident to the police.

“Hindu girls are a soft target for influential Muslims. They are kidnapped on a routine basis,” Amarnath Motumal, an activist and council member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told this correspondent.

“Hindu families are too scared. The kidnappings and conversations are done by influential people of the region. The victims prefer to remain silent to save their lives.” he added.

Shedding light on the incident, Bherulal Balani, a former Member of the Sindh Provincial Assembly said the Hindu girls mostly belong to the lower castes which can not even think to raise voices against kidnappings due to the fear of backlash from influential kidnappers.

“Even police prefer to bury the case,” Bherulal said. Officials say kidnappings and forced conversions of Hindu girls have increased in the interior Sindh province during the last couple of years.

Miseries of the Hindu community in Pakistan are not new. Hardships for them started with the birth of Pakistan.

Hindus as a minority in Pakistan have had considerably fewer privileges, rights, and protections.

Cultural marginalization, discrimination, economic hardships, and religious persecution have resulted in many Hindus converting to other religions (Islam, Christianity), and today Hindus constitute barely 1.18% of Pakistan's population as compared to 15% at the time of birth of  Pakistan in 1947.

According to a report by the Centre for Peace and Justice Pakistan, there are 22,10,566 people from the minority Hindu community, comprising only 1.18% of the country's total registered population of 18,68,90,601. 

Hindus are allotted separate electorates to vote by, but their political importance is virtually nil. The Pakistan Hindu Panchayat and the Pakistani Hindu Welfare Association are the primary civic organizations that represent and organise Hindu communities on social, economic, religious, and political issues.

In Pakistan, anti-Hindu sentiments are common. There is a general stereotype against Hindus in Pakistan. Hindus are regarded as "miserly". They are often regarded as "Kaffirs" (lit. "Unbelievers") and blamed for "causing all the problems in Pakistan ".

Jagmohan Kumar, the head of the Hindu community in Rawalpindi said the government was not taking adequate measures to safeguard their places of worship.

“Out of 428 temples across Pakistan, only 26 are operating. We demand the government to ensure the reopening of all of the temples as early as possible so that the Hindu community can worship there,” Jagmohan said.

Talking to this correspondent, Jagmohan said the Hindu community in Rawalpindi was dejected and disheartened followed by demolishing of their much respected religious place ‘The Shamshan Ghat temple which was being used by Hindus and Sikhs to perform the last rituals of their dear ones.

“How the Muslims would feel if their mosques were demolished for residential purposes,” Jagmohan questioned.