Author: Vishal Rambani
Publication: Hindustan Times
Date: March 9, 2009
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=3e8d2e5d-bf29-4bf3-a63d-a7a634e666dd&Headline=Taliban+terror+forces+Hindus+to+flee+Pakistan
Introduction: Fear of Taliban drive 35 people
from Peshawar to seek refuge in Amritsar
Their forefathers made a choice 60 years ago
and stayed back in Peshawar despite Partition. And today their unhappy descendants
- a group of Hindu families - have been forced to flee by the rising influence
of the fundamentalist Taliban.
"I think our forefathers committed a
mistake by staying back in Peshawar during Partition and we are now correcting
this mistake so that our coming generations will not suffer what we faced
in Pakistan," said Vijay Kumar from Peshawar in Pakistan.
Kumar sold off his house and every household
item he could, and left for India with his wife and children. They are part
of a group of five families - 16 men, 16 women and three children - that reached
Amritsar recently. They are seeking Indian citizenship.
The Taliban have won major successes recently
and wrested crucial administrative concessions for themselves in the northwest
frontier areas of Pakistan such as the Swat Valley. They are now closing in
on one of the biggest urban centres in those parts, Peshawar.
Posters carrying the Taliban's messages and
rulings have begun popping up all over, and are specially disconcerting for
these Hindu families in villages around Peshawar - directing men not to shave
and women not to go to school.
"The Taliban are approaching Peshawar,"
said Jagdish Sharma, a hakim (practitioner of local system of medicine) from
Peshawar. "We've heard stories of molestation and cruelty against women
there."
Sharma sold a family business started by his
forefathers and left with his family. "I don't know what was the situation
during Partition, but the present situation is so bad that no one can breathe
with freedom. I don't want to bring up my children in a war-like situation."
And they are not going back now. Hardwari
Lal, resident of Orkzai, about 180 km from Peshawar, said, "I was running
a grocery shop which was forcibly taken over by the fundamentalists, who also
captured all our property."
Laxmi Narain simply went out of business because
of the restrictions imposed by the Taliban. He ran a cosmetics store and got
no customers after a while because women were forced to wear burqas - "demand
nose-dived". He sold his store and left.
But Narain is not bitter about it, only practical.
"When law-enforcement agencies are feeling helpless, how can a common
man feel secure? We are not blaming the government, but it's just that terrorists
are calling the shots now."
