BY YOGINDER SIKAND
Hamey Bhi Jeeney Do: Pakistan Mai Acchoot Logon ki Suratehal
[‘Let us Also Live: The Situation of the Untouchables in Pakistan’] (Urdu)
By Pirbhu Lal Satyani ([email protected])
Publisher: ASR Resource Centre, Lahore, Pakistan ([email protected])
Year: 2005
Price: Rs. 20 (Pakistani)
Caste, the scourge of Hinduism, is so deeply entrenched in
Indian society that it has not left the ad-
herents of Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and Buddhism – theoretically egalitarian
religions – unaffected. So firmly rooted is the cancer of caste in the region
that it survives and thrives in neighbouring Pakistan, where over 95 per cent of
the population is Muslim, as this slim book tells us.
Pirbhu Lal Satyani, the author of the book, is a Pakistani Hindu
social activist based in Lahore, working among the Dalits in his country. Of
Pakistan’s roughly three million Hindu population, he says, over 75 per cent are
Dalits belonging to various castes, the most prominent being Meghwals, Odhs,
Valmikis, Kohlis and Bhils. They reside mainly in southern Punjab and Sindh.
Satyani provides startling details about the plight of Dalits in Pakistan, which
appears to be no different from that of Dalits in India.
In a speech in 1944, Satyani writes, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the
founder of Pakistan, declared that the Muslim League would protect the rights of
Dalits and assured them of full security. Accordingly, Jogendra Nath Mondal, a
Dalit from East Bengal, was appointed leader of the Constituent Assembly of
Pakistan and the first Law Minister of the country. This suggests, Satyani says,
that Jinnah was genuine in his concern for the Dalits of Pakistan. However,
things began to change after Jinnah’s death, and in 1953 Mondal resigned from
the Cabinet and migrated to India. This was an indication of the growing
intolerance towards minorities in post-Jinnah Pakistan. Today, as Satyani shows,
minorities lead a bleak existence in Pakistan, the worst sufferers among them
being the country’s Dalits.
Following the partition of India, Satyani says, most Hindus
living in what is now Pakistan migrated to India. The vast majority of those who
stayed back in Pakistan were Dalits. In the years after Partition, he writes,
there has been a steady migration of Hindus to India, especially in the
immediate aftermath of the 1965 and 1971 wars between India and Pakistan. The
destruction of the Babri Masjid in India in 1992 and the ensuing massacre of
Muslims in different parts of India by Hindutva extremists led to a heightening
of insecurity among Pakistani Hindus, causing a sizeable number of them to
migrate to India. Most of these migrants were ‘upper’ caste Hindus. Lacking
money and resources, Dalits in Pakistan were unable to make the same choice. In
addition, Satyani writes, "The Dalits are so caught up with mere day-to-day
survival issues that Hindu-Muslim conflicts or Pakistan-India disputes are not
as important for them as they are for rich upper caste Hindus". To add to this
is probably the fact that life for Dalits in India is hardly better than in
Pakistan.
Most Pakistani Dalits work as landless agricultural labourers
and sweepers, Satyani writes. In rural areas, their huts are located in separate
settlements outside the main village and they generally lack even basic
amenities. Large numbers of Dalits also lead a nomadic existence, travelling
from village to village in search of manual work. Many Dalits live in temporary
structures on the land of landlords for whom they work and having no title to
the land, can be expelled from there whenever the landlords wish. They generally
earn a pittance and are often forced into free labour by powerful upper caste
Hindu and Muslim feudal lords. Many Dalits eke out a miserable existence as
bonded labourers, being heavily indebted to landlords and moneylenders. If they
protest, false cases are lodged against them and the police do little or nothing
to protect them. Local administrative officers routinely harass them and even
forcibly take away their cattle and other such belongings. Land mafias in rural
Sindh often forcibly grab the land on which Dalits build their huts. In most
places, Dalits have no temples of their own. They have few places where they can
burn their dead, and many of these are illegally occupied by local Muslims.
In village schools, Satyani tells us, Dalit students routinely
face discrimination and are not allowed to use utensils that are used by other
students. In school, Dalit students are often badly treated by Muslim teachers
and students. Despite being the poorest of the poor, they do not receive any
scholarships on the grounds that money for scholarships comes from zakat
funds and hence it is not permissible for non-Muslims to avail of them. Further,
owing to desperate poverty few Dalits can afford to send their children for
higher education, and generally, children are withdrawn from school at an early
age to engage in manual work to help supplement the family’s meagre income. In
many cases Dalits do not send their girls to school fearing that they might be
kidnapped, raped or forced to convert to Islam.
In towns and cities, Dalits generally live in the poorest parts,
in squalid slums. There are no organisations working among them for their
welfare and lacking a strong political leadership of their own, they are not
able to effectively assert their voice in demanding their rights from the State
or from larger society, not even to protest in cases of human rights violations.
Many of them do not possess national identity cards and so cannot access various
government developmental schemes. Government facilities for religious minorities
are almost monopolised by the country’s more powerful and organised Christian
and upper caste Hindu communities, leaving the Dalits untouched.
Because of acute poverty, rampant illiteracy and discrimination
and the absence of a Dalit movement as in India, Dalits in Pakistan have no
political influence at all, Satyani says. In many places, Dalits are not allowed
to vote freely for candidates of their choice. They are often forced by powerful
upper caste Hindu and Muslim landlords to vote for particular candidates, and if
they refuse they are pressurised into leaving their homes or are beaten up. The
problem of Dalit political marginalisation is complicated by the acute divisions
among the Dalits, with various Dalit castes practising untouchability among
themselves. For its part, the Pakistani State, Satyani says, prefers to promote
the economically and socially more influential upper caste Hindus as leaders of
the Hindus instead of trying to promote an alternate Dalit leadership. Thus, for
instance, in 2002, of the nine seats reserved for the Sindh provincial assembly
for religious minorities, seven were for Hindus and only one for Dalits, while
Dalits account for more than 70 per cent of the Hindu population of the
province. The State’s lack of commitment to helping the Dalits is also evident
from the fact that despite there being some 3,50,000 Dalits in southern Punjab
(mainly in the Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur districts) there are no reserved
seats for Dalits or Hindus in the provincial assembly. All the seats reserved
for minorities in the assembly for minorities are occupied by Christians.
Further, government affirmative policies meant especially for
Dalits have been done away with, Satyani writes. While Jinnah had provided a six
per cent job quota for Dalits in some government services, in 1998 the Nawaz
Sharif government, assisted by some upper caste Hindu and Christian leaders,
changed the Dalit quota to a general minorities’ quota thus effectively denying
Dalits assured access to government jobs.
Dalits, like other minorities in Pakistan, Satyani tells us, are
also victims of religious discrimination by both Muslims as well as upper caste
Hindus. Despite the Hindus being a minority in Pakistan, upper caste Hindus
continue to discriminate against the Dalits. Generally, Dalits are refused entry
into Hindu temples belonging to the upper castes. Upper caste Hindu landlords
and businessmen in Sindh, Satyani writes, show little concern for the plight of
Dalits and instead are often complicit, along with Muslim feudal lords, in
oppressing them.
As in large parts of India, in eateries in the rural areas of
Sindh, owned by both upper caste Hindus as well as Muslims, Dalits are forced to
use separate utensils and are expected to wash them themselves after use. When
they visit hospitals for treatment they are generally left unattended and being
considered untouchables, are not allowed to touch utensils meant for public use
there. Often Dalit women are gang-raped, murdered or are forced to convert to
Islam, but no action is taken against the perpetrators of these crimes. Besides
this, due to discrimination by upper caste Hindus, many Dalits have converted to
Islam and Christianity of their own accord.
Satyani ends his book with a list of recommendations for
addressing the plight of Dalits in his country. He suggests that the Government
of Pakistan should insist that the question of Dalit human rights and
amelioration of their pathetic conditions be included as part of the SAARC
agenda. This, presumably, would force all SAARC member States, including India,
to take the issue of caste oppression seriously. He calls for the setting up of
a national commission in Pakistan to monitor the conditions of the country’s
Dalits and to work for their welfare. Dalits, he says, should be given reserved
seats in the national and provincial assemblies in accordance with their
population as well as adequate representation in all government services. In
areas with a high Dalit population, councils should be created by the State for
development of the Dalits. All ‘black laws’ against religious minorities should
be repealed, Satyani advises, and to improve relations between different
religious communities the educational curriculum should be revised and negative
portrayals of non-Muslim communities and their religions should be deleted.
Landless labourers should be granted titles to land. Hindu,
including Dalit, employees should be given holidays on the occasion of their
festivals. Dalit communities that do not have any cremation grounds of their own
should be provided with such facilities. Dalits should be given the right to use
public wells and taps and to live within the villages, instead, as of now,
outside them. And Hindu temples currently under the control of the Waqf
department should be given back to the community. In schools with a sizeable
Hindu population, Hindu children should be provided with the facilities to study
their own religion instead of Islam.
Whether the State authorities are willing to accede to these
demands, however, is another question.
Pirbhu Lal Satyani can be contacted on [email protected].
Indian Dalit readers could help Pirbhu Lal by sending him Dalit literature in
English or Urdu.
(Dr. Yoginder Sikand; Email: [email protected]).