THIS is apropos a picture of a protest demonstration held in Islamabad regarding the murder of 11 Pakistani Hindus in India who had earlier gone to that country (Feb 17). The horrific murder of these citizens of our country is an extremely serious matter and must be strongly taken up by the Foreign Office with the Indian government without delay.

At the same time, the matter needs to be looked into introspectively at our end to see why members of our minority community would want to leave this country to live elsewhere. Shifting to another country to live there permanently entails leaving once ancestral hearth and home, giving up jobs and businesses, and disrupting education of children, etc. It is invariably a heart-rending experience.

There is a need to look into the reasons why some members of the Hindu community living in Sindh took the bitter decision to move to the neighbouring country in the hope of a peaceful life there, though tragically, not finding it once they got there.

It appears that, apart from a feeling of social discrimination in general, they are also faced with threats to their life and honour due to incidents, such as alleged abduction of minor Hindu girls and their forced conversion and marriage, and the danger of being wrongly implicated in blasphemy cases for ulterior motives, etc.

These apprehensions, real or perceived, must be allayed and they must be made to feel secure and confident that they will live here in peace, with dignity and honour, enjoying all the rights and privileges like other citizens of the state.

M. Zubair Farooqui
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2021