Desperation pushes Hindus towards Islam
DWINDLING MINORITY MORE VULNERABLE THAN EVER
The Hindus performed the prayer rituals awkwardly in supplication to their new, single god, as they prepared to leave their deities behind. Their lips stumbled over Arabic phrases that, once recited, would seal their conversion to Islam. The last words uttered, the men and boys were then circumcised.
Dozens of Hindu families converted in June in the Badin district of Sindh province in southern Pakistan. Video clips of the ceremony went viral delighting hard-line Muslims and weighing on Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority.
The mass ceremony was the latest in what is a growing number of such conversions to Pakistan’s majority Muslim faith in recent years. Some of these conversions are voluntary, some not.
News outlets in India were quick to denounce the conversions as forced. Religious and political leaders in both countries reckon the driving force behind their change of religion is desperation.
Rising discrimination
Treated as second-class citizens, the Hindus of Pakistan are often discriminated against in every walk of life. Hindu community leaders say the recent uptick in conversions was prompted by economic pressures.
“What we are seeking is social status, nothing else,” said Mohammad Aslam Shaikh, formerly a Hindu known as Sawan Bheel. In June, he embraced Islam with his family at a ceremomy attended by over 100 people. “These conversions,” he added, “are becoming very common in poor Hindu communities.”
Proselytising Muslim clerics and charity groups add to the faith’s allure, offering incentives of jobs or land to impoverished minority members if they convert.
Hindus constituted over 20 per cent of the country’s population in 1947 when Pakistan gained independence . By 1998 - the last government census to classify people by religion - their percentage had dwindled to 1.6.
Once regarded as the melting pot of religions, the Sindh province, has seen people from the minority community leave in droves. Many have fled due to fear of violence or the risk of being accused of blasphemy, which can result in the death penalty.
“The dehumanisation of minorities coupled with these scary times - a weak economy and now the pandemic - may result in a significant rise in conversions,” said Farahnaz Ispahani, a former Pakistani lawmaker who is now a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, a research group in Washington.
Growing fear
“Will they be converting with their hearts and souls?” Ispahani said. “I don’t think so.” She said the economic devastation caused by the pandemic may spur violence against minorities.
Murtaza Wahab, an adviser to the chief minister of Sindh, however. allayed such fears
“Hindus are an important part of our society. We believe in co-existence and feel people from all faiths should live together freely,” Wahab said.
Forced conversions of Hindu
girls and women through kidnapping and coerced marriages occur throughout Pakistan. But Hindu groups are also troubled by voluntary conversions, saying they take place under such economic duress that they are tantamount to a forced conversion
Hindus are an important part of our society. We believe in co-existence. People from all faiths should live together freely.”
Murtaza Wahab | Adviser
Exploiting vulnerability
“Overall, religious minorities do not feel safe in Pakistan,” said Lal Chand Mahli, a Pakistani Hindu lawmaker with the ruling party, who is also member of a parliamentary committee to protect minorities from forced conversions. “But poor Hindus are the most vulnerable among them. They are extremely poor and illiterate, and mosques, charities and traders exploit them easily. A lot of money is involved in it,” he alleged
Clerics like Muhammad Naeem were at the forefront of an effort to convert more Hindus. (Naeem, who was 62, died of cardiac arrest two weeks after he was interviewed in June). Naeem said he had overseen over 450 conversions over the past two years at Jamia Binoria, his seminary in Karachi. Most converts were low-caste Hindus from Sindh, he said.
“We have not been forcing them to convert. In fact, people come to us because they want to escape discrimination attached with their caste and change their socioeconomic status,” ,” Naeem said
Demand was so great, he added, that his seminary had to set up a separate department to guide the new converts and provide counsel in legal or financial matters.