KARACHI: “This was the land of Sufis but ‘ye zameen hamaray paon ke neeche se nikal rahee hai,’ I was told by a person regretting the recent attitude of intolerance against non-Muslims in Pakistan,” said historian Dr Mubarak Ali during his lecture on ‘Religious tolerance’ organised by the Social Sciences Department of the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology here on Friday.

According to the historian, the feelings of intolerance witnessed today are mostly a product of British colonisation.

“It was during 1206 and 1506 when many religious Muslim people from Central Asia fled to this region. They believed in tolerating the people of the book, which according to them the Christians and the Jewish qualified as. The Hindus were seen in a different light by them. The Ulema advised to Turk rulers to either convert the Hindus or kill them. But then they were informed that the Hindus were actually in majority so finishing them off would require too many resources. So the next option was to let them live but use them as subjects. The Ulema were satisfied with this as it prevented the Hindus from being treated equally,” Dr Mubarak added.

He said the Mughals were good to the Hindus. Babar, in fact, left instructions in his will for Humayun not to hurt their places of worship and their sentiments by slaughtering cows in front of them.

“Akbar followed the same policy. In fact he appointed capable people, which included Hindus, to high posts. He had a House of Worship that was a meeting place of people from all religions, as he accepted them all and was not in favour of following just one truth.

“Jahangir also brought in a law where the Ulema couldn’t convert anyone to Islam without the state’s permission. Ganga Jamuni culture was the product of the Mughal era. Things became a little bad after Aurangzeb who had himself deviated from the policies,” he said.

Coming to the communal period, Dr Mubarak said that after the 1881 census that showed which community was in a majority, people decided to identify their different religions as then they could win elections due to being more in number.

“That’s when the Christian missionaries arrived, too. They hoped to convert the entire population to Christianity to make it easier for the British to rule over them all. But the Muslims and Hindus didn’t want to convert. Instead the Muslims started preaching Islam. Hence there was a lot of religious activity in India, especially in the Punjab. And the religious activity brought up resentment.

“As a result, history writing was also affected. Muslims started highlighting their contributions and conquerors and the Hindus theirs. And both in their particular versions recorded the conquerors as heroes. In the case of Muslims, one got to hear more of terms such as ‘Ghazi’ or ‘Shaheed’.

“Next, the political parties jumped in with their two-nation theory. This also created religious intolerance. Then after Partition when Islam became the state religion those who didn’t follow Islam felt insecure. The affluent among them left the country and the poor who were left behind were seen as weak who could be exploited easily,” he explained. “And that is what’s happening now. It is something not to be watched silently. Remaining silent over attitudes of intolerance towards non-Muslims means you accept it. This is the age of democracy. We have to raise our voice against injustice. We have to educate others and not contribute towards intolerance. We have to show that we care for humanity,” he pleaded.