Author:
Publication: Rediff.com
Date: March 16, 2009
URL: http://specials.rediff.com/news/2009/mar/18sld1-hindu-families-face-the-heat.htm
In May 2008, Pakistan's tribal province of
Orakzai was in the news. The majority Muslims did not allow the Hindus to
cremate their dead at the place that had been the designated crematorium for
over a century.
The next month, the Pakistan government signed
a peace treaty with the Taliban. It was among many other such treaties and
not much was made of it, especially since the latter agreed that it would
recognise the writ of the government.
But in the next couple of months, the few
Hindu families began facing the heat.
"It was like the smoke before the fire.
The Taliban's presence was not very evident in the following two months. But
things were becoming obvious. A group of locals who supported the Taliban
gave us the distinct feeling that we were not wanted there," says Jagdish
Lal Sharma, who says he is a Pandit from the region.
Though there were no direct threats, the Hindu
families were never left in any doubt about their minority status. Sometimes
it would be a warning not to stare at Muslim women for long, at other times,
it would be the subtle coercion of the local administrators to sell their
land when the situation was still normal. The families were weighing their
options until October when they were asked to wear a red patch in their pagadis
(turban).
"We were told Hindus are not supposed
to wish a Muslim even inadvertently and that is why, in order to make it obvious
for a passing Muslim that we were Hindus, we ought to have some element of
red in our headgear," Hardwari Lal, who is now in Amritsar with his family
of 13, says.
In Amrtisar, they found Surinder Kumar Billa,
a local religious leader at the Durgaina temple in Amritsar, who has promised
to help them get Indian citizenship.
