Hindus in Pakistan: A Community Under
Sustained Pressure
The
Hindu presence in the territories that now constitute Pakistan is ancient and
foundational to the civilisation of the region. The Rig Veda is believed to
have been composed in the Punjab and the upper Indus valley around 1500 BCE.
The great cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, the centres of Taxila and Multan,
and the Shakti Peethas of Hinglaj in Balochistan and Sharada in Kashmir were
all part of a continuous Hindu cultural geography.
At
the time of Partition in 1947, Hindus formed a very substantial minority in
West Pakistan. Estimates vary between 15 and 22 per cent depending on whether
Scheduled Castes are included and whether the population of East Pakistan is
excluded from the calculation. In Sindh, Hindus were about 26 per cent of the
population and dominated commerce, education and the professions in towns such
as Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Shikarpur and Larkana. In Punjab, cities like
Lahore and Multan had large Hindu merchant and professional classes. In
Balochistan, Hindus formed the principal trading community in Quetta and Kalat.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, though smaller in number, Hindus were present as traders
and moneylenders.
The
events of Partition led to large-scale migration. While many Muslims moved from
India to Pakistan, an even larger number of Hindus and Sikhs moved from
Pakistan to India. Yet a considerable Hindu population chose to remain,
reassured by the assurances given by Muhammad Ali Jinnah on 11 August 1947 that
religion would have nothing to do with the business of the state and that all
citizens would be equal.
Present Population
According
to the 7th Population and Housing Census of Pakistan conducted in 2023 and
released in 2024, the position is as follows.
The
total population of Pakistan was recorded as 240.45 million. The number of
persons recorded as Hindu Jati was 3,867,729, which is 1.61 per cent of the
population. The number recorded as Scheduled Castes was 1,349,487, which is 0.56
per cent. Taken together, the total Hindu population is 5,217,216, which is 2.17 per
cent of the total population. This makes Hindus the largest non-Muslim
community in Pakistan. A second set of tables released by the Pakistan Bureau
of Statistics that counts only non-Muslim citizens shows a slightly lower Hindu
Jati figure, but the combined total remains above five million. The community
has increased in absolute numbers from 3.5 million in 2017 to about 3.8 to 5.2
million in 2023 depending on classification, but its share in the total
population has declined from 1.73 per cent to 1.61 per cent for Hindu Jati. This
is the official position. Independent community organisations such as the
Pakistan Hindu Council claim the actual number may be higher as many low caste
Hindus are undercounted.
Population declining rapidly
While
the absolute number has grown due to natural increase, the relative share of
Hindus has fallen dramatically since 1947. From over 20 per cent of West
Pakistan at independence to 2.17 per cent today, the trajectory represents one
of the steepest proportional declines for any minority in the region. The
reasons are multiple. The initial decline was due to Partition-related
migration. The subsequent and continuing decline is attributed to a higher rate
of out-migration to India, particularly among the educated middle class, lower
fertility rates due to economic stress, forced conversions which remove persons
from the Hindu count, and a classification system that separates Scheduled
Castes from Hindus in some tables, thereby reducing the visible Hindu share. If
the current growth differential continues, with the national growth rate at
2.55 per cent and the Hindu growth rate lower, the proportional share will
continue to fall. Demographers warn that in another two decades the share may
fall below 1.5 per cent unless conditions improve.
Area-wise Spread in Pakistan
Sindh
contains about 94 per cent of all Hindus in Pakistan. The 2023 census recorded
4,901,107 Hindus in Sindh, which is 8.81 per cent of the provincial population.
Districts such as Umerkot where Hindus are over 50 per cent, Tharparkar where
they are about 45 per cent, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Badin, Thatta and Tando
Allahyar have very high concentrations. In urban Sindh, Hyderabad, Karachi and
Sukkur still have sizeable Hindu populations. Punjab contains about 249,716
Hindus, which is only 0.2 per cent of the province. Most live in Rahim Yar Khan,
Bahawalpur, Multan and Lahore. Balochistan contains 59,107 Hindus, which is 0.41
per cent, concentrated in Quetta, Kalat, Lasbela near Hinglaj and Sibi. Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa contains 6,104 Hindus, which is 0.02 per cent, mostly in Peshawar
and Bannu.
Abduction and Forcible Conversion of
Hindu Girls
This
is the most documented and painful issue. Human rights organisations including
the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the National Commission of Justice and
Peace, Global Human Rights Defence and the Pakistan Hindu Council have recorded
a consistent pattern. Young Hindu girls, often between 12 and 18 years of age,
are abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to their abductors. The
Pakistan Hindu Council and the National Commission of Justice and Peace have
estimated that around 1000 non-Muslim girls, mostly Hindu and Christian, are subjected
to this each year. In Sindh alone, civil society groups reported over 150 cases
in 2022 and 2023.
The
method is similar in most cases. A girl goes missing on the way to school or
fields. A few days later, a certificate of conversion and a Nikahnama appear
from a seminary. Police often refuse to register a First Information Report or
accept the conversion documents as proof of voluntary marriage. The courts
often send the girl to a shelter but accept her statement given under obvious
pressure. The case of Mehak Kumari in Jacobabad, Reena and Raveena in Ghotki,
and Arti Kumari in Daharki received national attention but ended without the
girls returning to their families. The law that would set 18 as the minimum age for
conversion and marriage has been repeatedly blocked in the Sindh Assembly after
opposition from religious parties. For the community, this creates constant
fear and is a major driver of migration.
Regular Incidents of Desecration of Religious Places and Demolition /Occupation of Religious Places
Pakistan
had about 428 Hindu temples at independence according to the All Pakistan Hindu
Rights Movement. By the early 2000s, surveys by the same organisation found
that only about 20 were functioning and the rest had been encroached upon, leased or
demolished. Temples suffer from three forms of loss. First, occupation by land
mafia or municipal bodies. The Shri Krishna Mandir in Karachi, Shri Varun Dev
Temple on Manora Island, and several temples in Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas are
examples of properties leased or occupied. Second, demolition during mob
violence. Third, administrative takeover by the Evacuee Trust Property Board, which was meant to protect minority property but is widely accused of selling
or leasing it. According to the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, over
70 per cent of Hindu-owned religious property in Sindh is under encroachment.
Even Hinglaj Mata Mandir, the most sacred Shakti Peetha, has faced encroachment
attempts on its surrounding lands. Regular desecration occurs. Idols are broken
in Tharparkar, temple walls are defaced, and flags are burnt. The Pakistan
Hindu Council recorded 12 incidents of temple vandalism in 2023 alone.
Attacks after Babri Mosque Demolition
in India
The
demolition of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992 triggered a wave
of retaliatory attacks on Hindus in Pakistan that is still remembered as a
turning point. According to reports in Dawn and international agencies, more
than 30 temples were attacked in one week in December 1992. In Lahore, Karachi,
Peshawar, Quetta and Sindh, mobs destroyed temples, homes and shops. The Jain
Temple in Lahore, the Ram Mandir in Karachi and several temples in Sukkur and
Hyderabad were burnt. In many cases, police stood by. Community elders state
that many Hindu families who had stayed through 1947 and 1965 finally left
Pakistan after 1992. The event created a precedent that any communal incident
in India would result in collective punishment for Hindus in Pakistan. Similar
though smaller waves occurred after the Gujarat riots in 2002 and after
occasional statements about Kashmir.
Many Hindus living by hiding identity
In
urban centres outside interior Sindh, many Hindus hide their religious identity
to obtain work, rent and education. In Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is
common for Hindus to use Muslim-sounding names in business, to avoid wearing
tilak or bindi, and to not disclose their religion to neighbours. In Karachi,
many professional Hindus report that they do not declare their religion on job
applications because of automatic rejection. In the formal sector, national
identity cards require religion, but in informal social settings, concealment
is a survival strategy. Scheduled Caste Hindus, who form a large part of the
Hindu population and work as bonded labourers in Sindh, often have no option to
hide and have no protection to assert identity.
Lack of equal employment opportunities
The
Constitution of Pakistan guarantees equality in Articles 25 and 27, but ground
reality shows systematic exclusion. Hindus are largely absent from the army
officer cadre, the judiciary, foreign service, police leadership and senior
bureaucracy. In Sindh, where Hindus are nearly nine per cent, their
representation in provincial government jobs is less than one per cent
according to a 2021 study by the Centre for Social Justice. Most Hindus are
confined to low-paying occupations. In Tharparkar and Umerkot, the majority
work as Hari or bonded farm labourers. In urban areas, many work in sanitation,
a sector where Muslims generally do not work. The Scheduled Caste Hindus are
particularly trapped in debt bondage despite laws banning it. The five per cent
quota for minorities in government jobs exists on paper but is rarely
implemented. Advertisements often show only sanitation jobs reserved for non-Muslims,
reinforcing stigma.
Economic Plight
The
economic condition of Pakistani Hindus is among the weakest of any community in
the country. According to a survey by the Pakistan Institute of Labour
Education and Research, over 60 per cent of Hindu households in Tharparkar live
below the poverty line compared to a national average of about 25 per cent.
Literacy among Hindu women in interior Sindh is under 10 per cent. Access to
health care is minimal. Many families own no land despite tilling land for
generations as bonded labourers. The bonded labour system, known as peshgi,
keeps families in perpetual debt. When a child falls ill, a loan is taken from
the landlord, and the family must work to repay it at interest rates that never
allow repayment. In urban areas, lack of property rights and eviction from
temple-associated lands have pushed many families into katchi abadis or slums.
Neglect From Pakistani Intellectuals
Even the liberal conscience of Pakistan appears, at times, to have confronted the question of minorities more readily in private reflection than in sustained public literary discourse. Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ahmad Faraz, Habib Jalib, Intizar Husain and many other major writers wrote with extraordinary force about oppression, dictatorship, poverty, Partition and injustice. Yet the specific condition of Pakistan's Hindu and other non Muslim minorities rarely became a sustained subject of their major literary work. Their progressive vocabulary was largely organised around class struggle, imperialism, democracy, authoritarianism and resistance to state power. This is also a fact that never ever did the progressive writers speak anything hostile about the minorities; indeed, Faiz and Jalib were themselves powerful opponents of the state's coercive Islamisation. But there remained a significant neglect around the 'particular experiences of Hindus: dispossession, attacks on temples, forced conversions, discrimination and the gradual shrinking of their social and cultural space. The question is not simply why individual writers failed to address every injustice. It is whether sustained attention to Hindu suffering would have compelled the progressive intelligentsia to examine a more uncomfortable question: the relationship between Pakistan's religiously defined national identity and the unequal position of those who did not belong to this identity. Such an examination could have challenged assumptions embedded in the very idea of Pakistan, and perhaps this explains, at least in part, why the subject remained peripheral to much of its progressive literary discourse. This also creates an important intellectual paradox: a literary tradition that spoke in the language of universal humanism gave comparatively little sustained attention to one of Pakistan's most vulnerable minorities.
Habib Jalib, the poet of resistance, challenged every dictator but rarely wrote on minority persecution as a specific category. Intizar Husain was different in his recovery of Hindu and Buddhist myths and the composite cultural memory of pre-Partition India. His fiction mourns the loss of that shared heritage, and he accepted in interviews that minorities have been rendered invisible in the national narrative. But he largely addressed civilisational loss and Partition rather than the contemporary condition of Pakistani Hindus, such as abduction of girls, forced conversions, bonded labour in Tharparkar, attacks on religious places, and shrinking of space for them in education and employment.
This pattern continues among contemporary liberal writers, columnists and television commentators. Off the record, they may admit that forced conversions are real, that temple encroachment is wrong and that textbooks need revision, yet when it comes to the pen, self-censorship operates. Fear of backlash from religious groups, fear of being labelled as anti-Pakistan or pro-India, the pressure of state ideology and the concern that speaking for Hindus will alienate the majority readership all combine to produce silence. The result is a double tragedy. The community is not only denied justice by the state, it is also denied solidarity in literature. The very writers who could have immortalised a Thari Hindu woman searching for her abducted daughter or a priest guarding a ruined shrine in Hyderabad have chosen caution. Their private admission confirms that the neglect is known and recognised at the highest levels of conscience, but their public omission ensures that the neglect continues without literary record or moral challenge.
In India, the leading Hindu literary conscience has never hidden behind private sympathy ; it has spoken, written, marched and been jailed. Munshi Premchand wrote Karbala; Bhisham Sahni wrote Tamas indicting his own community's communalism; Krishan Chander, a Hindu writing in Urdu, defended Urdu and Muslim life in Peshawar Express; Harishankar Parsai mocked anti Muslim bigotry; Phanishwar Nath Renu celebrated syncretism in Maila Anchal; Amrita Pritam made Muslim suffering central in Pinjar; Mahadevi Verma, Nirala and Maithilisharan Gupt wrote elegies on Karbala and Muslim heritage; Mahashweta Devi stood physically with Muslim weavers and riot victims in Gujarat; Girish Karnad staged Tughlaq to reclaim Muslim history for India and protested on streets; Vijay Tendulkar denounced majoritarian violence; Mridula Garg, Alka Saraogi, Uday Prakash, Namvar Singh, Ashok Vajpeyi and K. Satchidanandan signed petitions, filed cases and faced trolling for Muslims. This is open, public, documented solidarity at personal cost. The contrast with Pakistan could not be sharper. Stalwart Pakistani intellectuals and their contemporary liberal heirs admitted in drawing rooms that Hindus were dispossessed, temples encroached, and girls abducted, yet their major works avoided the specific plight of Pakistani Hindus. Their progressivism interrogated class, dictatorship and imperialism, but flinched before the religious basis of the state that made Hindus unequal. One tradition risked its popularity for the minority, the other preserved its popularity by abandoning it. That difference explains why Indian secularism retained a living archive of intercession, while Pakistani liberalism left its Hindus only polite silence and undocumented enduring pity.
When Intellectuals Fell Silent, Some Conscience Keepers Spoke
It is only through newspapers like Dawn, a handful of journalists committed to truth, and the Pakistan Human Rights Commission that the stories of atrocities against religious minorities in general and Hindus in particular were made public. Where the literary intelligentsia chose silence, some conscience keepers in journalism rose to the call of humanity, even under threats and unpopularity.
Dawn, despite being branded as liberal and anti-national, consistently reported temple desecrations, forced conversions and bonded labour. Columnists like Ardeshir Cowasjee, the old Parsi conscience of Karachi, wrote for decades about encroached temple lands and Evacuee Trust Property Board corruption when no Muslim intellectual would touch the subject. I.A. Rehman, the heart of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, spent a lifetime documenting the abduction of Hindu girls in Sindh. Asma Jahangir defended Hindu families in courts and called forced conversions what they were, without euphemism. Zohra Yusuf, Harris Khalique, Beena Sarwar, Marvi Sirmed, and Cyril Almeida reported from Tharparkar, Umerkot and Ghotki, naming victims like Reena, Raveena and Mehak Kumari when police refused to register FIRs. Zia ur Rehman prepared a detailed report on the Hindu Exodus from Sindh.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan provided the humanism that literature denied. Under chairs like Asma Jahangir, I.A. Rehman and Hina Jilani, its annual reports recorded what novelists would not: over a thousand Hindu and Christian girls forcibly converted every year, seventy per cent of Hindu religious property encroached, and thousands migrating to India. Its fact-finding missions travelled to interior Sindh, sat with Dalit haris, and published testimonies at great personal risk. These journalists and rights defenders proved that courage was possible, but their isolation also proved how deep the silence was. They were abused, threatened with blasphemy charges and labelled traitors, yet they kept the record alive, ensuring that when history finally judges Pakistan today, it cannot claim it did not know.
Lip Sympathy From Politicians
Political
representation exists but is seen as tokenism. There are 10 reserved seats for non-Muslims
in the National Assembly. These are allocated by parties, not directly elected,
so members are accountable to party leadership rather than the community.
Similar reserved seats exist in provincial assemblies. Politicians visit
temples during Diwali and Holi, issue statements condemning abductions, and
promise commissions. Yet legislation to criminalise forced conversion has been
blocked repeatedly. The Hindu Marriage Act was passed in 2017 after 70 years of
demand, but its implementation remains poor. Many union councils still do not
register Hindu marriages, which makes it easier to claim that a converted girl
was previously unmarried. After every abduction or temple attack, ministers
promise inquiry and compensation, but convictions are rare. The community
therefore describes political attention as lip service.
Exclusion From History Books
Pakistan
Studies textbooks, which are compulsory, give almost no space to the Hindu past
of the region or to the contribution of Hindus after independence. The Indus
Valley Civilisation is described with minimal reference to its continuity with
Hindu traditions. The Hindu Shahi dynasty that ruled the northwest for
centuries, the development of Sindhi culture by Hindu scholars, and the role of
Hindu philanthropists like Jamshed Mehta, the first mayor of Karachi, are
omitted. Minorities appear in textbooks only as problems or as examples of
tolerance by Muslim rulers. The result is that generations of students grow up without
knowing that Hindus were original inhabitants and that temples like Hinglaj,
Katas Raj and Prahladpuri are indigenous heritage. This erasure, educators
argue, normalises discrimination and makes it difficult for Hindu children to
feel belonging.
Alarming Human Rights Report on Hindus
Every
major human rights report in the last decade has flagged the Hindu situation. The
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended
Pakistan as a Country of Particular Concern. The US State Department
International Religious Freedom Report notes forced conversion, temple attacks
and discrimination. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's annual reports list
forced conversion, bonded labour and extrajudicial discrimination against
Hindus as major concerns. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have
documented that blasphemy laws, though more often used against Muslims, create
a climate of fear for Hindus as well, with accusations sometimes used to settle
land disputes.
The
most alarming trend noted in 2023 and 2024 reports is the increase in out-migration due to insecurity. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported
that over 5000 Hindus migrated from Sindh to India in 2022 and 2023 alone. The
community that once formed the commercial and intellectual elite of Sindh and
that worshipped at the ancient shrines of Hinglaj and Katas Raj now faces a
struggle for physical security, legal equality and cultural survival.
Conclusion
The
story of Hindus in Pakistan is the story of a community that is indigenous to
the land, that shared in its ancient civilisation, that chose to remain at
independence, and that has since been reduced from a substantial minority to a
vulnerable and geographically concentrated fragment.
The
evidence from census data, human rights reports and community testimony shows a
pattern that is not episodic but structural. The population share has declined
sharply. The economic base has been eroded through loss of property, bonded
labour and exclusion from formal employment. Religious freedom is curtailed by
encroachment and desecration of places of worship and by the persistent crime
of abduction and forced conversion of girls. Social dignity is denied through
erasure from textbooks, concealment of identity for survival, and political
representation that offers sympathy without protection.
This
is not a communal issue alone. It is a test of the constitutional promise made
by the founder of Pakistan that religion would have nothing to do with the
business of the state and that minorities would be equal citizens. The
Constitution of Pakistan provides for equality, freedom of religion and
protection of minorities, but implementation remains weak.
Will the government enact a credible law against forced
conversion that sets eighteen as the minimum age and provides for independent
verification of consent? Will the government restore and protect the evacuee trust
properties and prosecute those who desecrate temples? Will the government implement the much-needed employment quotas in a dignified manner and ensure inclusion of the
true history of Sindh and Punjab in textbooks so that Hindu children can see
themselves as equal sons and daughters of the soil? Without such steps, the
present trend points towards further ghettoisation in interior Sindh and
continued outmigration of those who can leave. The loss will not be only for
Hindus. Pakistan also risks losing a part of its own civilisational heritage
when the Hindu past of the country is neglected or allowed to disappear.
Hinglaj Mata, Katas Raj and the old temples of Karachi, Lahore, Sindh, Punjab
and Balochistan did not become Indian monuments after 1947. They remained
within the territory of Pakistan and consequently became part of the historical
landscape of the new state. Their antiquity belongs to the history of the land
itself, not to the political boundaries created by Partition. To preserve them
is therefore not to preserve someone else’s heritage; it is to preserve a part
of Pakistan’s own plural cultural past. When such sites are destroyed,
appropriated, abandoned or removed from public memory, Pakistan loses not
merely places of worship belonging to a minority but chapters of its own
historical inheritance.
(
Avtar Mota )
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
- Pakistan
Bureau of Statistics. 7th Population and Housing Census 2023: National
Census Report. 2024( Internet Archives )
- Pakistan
Bureau of Statistics. Population by Religion, Census 2023 and 2024. ( Internet Archive)
- Book : Historic Temples in Pakistan: A Call To Conscience by Reema Abbasi.
- United
States Department of State. 2023 Report on International Religious
Freedom: Pakistan. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, 2024. ( Internet Archive)
- Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan. Exodus: Is the Hindu Community Leaving
Sindh? Fact-Finding Study, 2025. ( Internet Archives )
- National
Commission for Human Rights, Pakistan. Forced Conversions and Marriages of
Religious Minority Women and Girls in Pakistan. ( Internet Archives )
- Ercelawn,
Aly, and Muhammad Nauman. Bonded Labour in Pakistan. International Labour
Organisation, 2001. ( Internet Archive)
- Book: Religious Minorities In Pakistan by Iftikhar H Malik
- Child, forced marriages of minority girls in Pakistan flagged at UN event ( A report published in Times of India )
- Dawn Newspaper: various issues.
