GAGAN MEIN THAAL AARTI BY GURU NANAK DEV JI

                                   

 ‘Gagan Mein Thaal’ : Aarti Written by Guru Nanak Dev Ji

This celestial Aarti was composed by Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the first Guru of Sikhism, in the early 16th century. It is enshrined in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Raag Dhanasari, on page 663.

 The Shabad was composed during Guru Nanak’s first Udasi, his great spiritual journey to the East. In 1506-1510, he arrived at the revered Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha and stayed for some days in Puri.

One evening, the temple’s magnificent ritual Aarti commenced. Priests held a jewelled platter filled with lamps, incense, flowers and whisks, circling it before the deity. Guru Nanak did not join. When asked why, he replied that the Almighty, who created the universe, cannot be worshipped with a mere platter. The entire cosmos is already performing His Aarti. He then sang this hymn that had been composed by him.  It shifted worship from ritual to realisation ,  from a man-made ceremony to nature’s eternal worship.

 In Sikh tradition, it  is sung as a hymn of praise. It is recited daily after Rehras Sahib and Ardas in the evening at Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar, and in most Gurdwaras worldwide. It is also recited upon completion of an Akhand Paath. Among Nihang Singhs and at Takht Patna Sahib and Hazur Sahib, an elaborate form  of Aarti with lamps, conch shells and bells is still performed. Here is the Aarti

"Gagan mai thaal, rav chand deepak bane, tarika mandal janak moti.

Dhoop mal-aanlo, pawan chavro kare, sagal banrai phoolant jyoti. ||1||

Kaisi aarti hoye, bhav khandana teri aarti.

Anhata shabad vajant bheri. ||1|| Rahao ||

Sahas tav nain, nan nain heh tohi kau, sahas murat nana ek tohi.

Sahas pad bimal, nan ek pad gandh bin, sahas tav gandh iv chalat mohi. ||2||

Sabh meh jyot, jyot hai soye.

Tis dai chaanan, sabh meh chaanan hoye.

Gur sakhi jyot pargat hoye.

Jo tis bhaavai, so aarti hoye. ||3||

Hari charan kaval makarand lobhit mano, an-dino mohi aahi piyaasa.

Kripa jal deh Nanak sarang kau, hoye jaate terai naam vaasa. 

(Sky is the platter, Sun and Moon are the lamps, stars are the pearls.

Fragrant wind is incense, wind is the fan, all forests are flowers and light.

What an Aarti is this, O Destroyer of fear, Your Aarti!

The unstruck sound of the Universe plays like drums.

You have thousands of eyes, yet You have no eye. Thousands of forms, yet no form.

Thousands of lotus feet, yet no feet. Without nose, You have thousands of fragrances.

In all there is Your Light, Your Light is in all.

By Guru's wisdom, that Light is revealed. Whatever pleases Him, that itself becomes Aarti.

My mind like a bee craves the nectar of Your lotus feet, day and night I thirst for You.

Give Your mercy-water to Nanak, the chatak bird, so I may live in Your Name.

The Tagore Connection:

Rabindranath Tagore held this Aarti in the highest esteem. When actor Balraj Sahni, then a teacher at Santiniketan, asked Tagore why he did not write an anthem for the world as he had written Jana Gana Mana for India, Tagore answered, “It has already been written  in the 16th century by Guru Nanak, not for the world, but for the entire universe.” So inspired was he that he translated it into Bengali himself, beginning: “Gagane thal rabi chandra dipak jwale, taraka mandal chamake mukuti…”

This universal Aarti has been sung by almost all great Hazuri Ragis and artists including the most famous version by Bhai Harbans Singh Ji Jagadhari Wale, Bhai Nirmal Singh Ji Khalsa whose version was composed by Uttam Singh for the film Nanak Shah Fakir, Bhai Balwinder Singh Ji Hazuri Ragi, Bhai Surinder Singh Ji Jodhpuri, Bhai Satwinder and Harvinder Singh Ji Delhi Wale, Bhai Gurmej Singh Ji, Bhai Ravinder Singh Ji and Bhai Harjinder Singh Ji Srinagar Wale who has kept its traditional style alive, as well as by Sufi and classical voices like Jagjit Singh, Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan, Hans Raj Hans and Anup Jalota.

( Avtar Mota )

PS

After completing his Masters, Balraj Sahni and his wife Damayanti joined Tagore's Vishwa-Bharati University, Shantiniketan as teachers of English and Hindi from 1937 to 1939 and worked directly under Gurudev, who even named their son Parikshit. It was during these intimate interactions at Santiniketan that the famous conversation took place where Sahni asked Tagore to write an anthem for the world and Tagore replied that it had already been written some centuries ago by Guru Nanak as ,"Gagan Mein Thaal".

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

MY NEW POEM ," THE STONES YOU DROWNED"

                                      

(The Stones You Drowned)

You pulled the idols from the riverbank

and threw them into the water,

stone after stone,

as if the river needed them desperately.

The river said nothing.

It kept going.

Years later,

the river came back.

Not angry,

just full.

It filled the lanes,

climbed the stairs,

sat in your kitchen.

And then,

knee-deep in that same water,

you started digging the riverbed with your hands,

looking for them.

The same gods

you had drowned.

You called their names

into the water that had taken them,

asking them to hold back the water.

There is nothing more helpless

than a man searching the flood

for the very stone

he himself threw away.

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

JAPAN INDIA LINKS : ANCIENT PERIOD TO MODERNITY

                                        

                                     

                       ( Sidham script / calligraphy)

JAPAN INDIA LINKS : ANCIENT PERIOD TO MODERNITY 

The connection between India and Japan is not a modern discovery born of trade or diplomacy. It is a civilisational current that began more than fifteen centuries ago and has never stopped flowing. Though separated by thousands of miles of ocean and high mountains, the two cultures have remained linked by Buddhism, by sacred scripts, by deities who changed their names but not their essence, and in recent times by art, literature and people. For Japan, India has always been Tenjiku, the heavenly land where the Buddha was born. For India, Japan has been a distant eastern brother who preserved what India herself had forgotten.

Ancient Travel Routes From India to Japan

There was no direct sea route from India to Japan in ancient times. The journey was long, dangerous and took years. It followed three main stages. First, Indian monks and scholars travelled from the ports of Bengal and Tamil Nadu to South East Asia and to Chang an, the capital of Tang China. This was the maritime Silk Route that connected Tamralipti in Bengal with Sri Vijaya in Indonesia and with the Chinese coast. Second, from China the knowledge travelled to the Korean kingdom of Baekje. Third, from Korea it crossed the sea to Japan.

Buddhism officially entered Japan in the year 552 when the King of Baekje sent a bronze Buddha image and sutras to the Japanese court. But Indian monks themselves also made the full journey. They travelled with Chinese translation teams, often learning Chinese on the way because that was the lingua franca of Asian Buddhism. The overland Silk Route through the deserts of Central Asia and the Hexi Corridor was another path. Indian ideas therefore reached Japan not in one mission but in waves of texts, images, rituals and persons over three centuries. It is remarkable that despite such distance, Sanskrit mantras and Indian monastic rules were transmitted with such accuracy.

The Great Indian Savants Who Shaped Japanese Buddhism

The most luminous symbol of direct Indian presence in Japan is Bodhisena. Bodhisena was a Brahmin scholar from South India, born in 704. He travelled through China and arrived in Japan in 736 at the invitation of Emperor Shomu. In Japan he is revered as Bodai Senna. In 752 he was given the highest honour in the Japanese Buddhist world. He consecrated and opened the eyes of the Great Buddha Vairocana at Todaiji Temple in Nara. This bronze statue remains the largest in Japan and its consecration is considered the official birth of Japanese Buddhism as a state religion. Bodhisena also founded the Kegon school and taught Sanskrit in Nara. He died in 760 and his tomb is still venerated at Ryoanji in Nara.

He was not alone. In the eighth century a group of Indian masters including Subhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra travelled to. China to transmit esoteric Buddhism. They brought with them mandalas, mantras and the Siddham alphabet. Their disciples carried this knowledge to Japan. Thus the very foundation of Japanese esoteric Buddhism bears an unmistakable Indian imprint. These savants risked shipwreck and banditry to carry knowledge and they were received in Japan as living Buddhas.

Hinduism in Japan

(Depiction of Hindu deity Krishna playing the flute in a temple constructed in 752 CE on the order of Emperor Shomu, Todai-ji Temple, Great Buddha Hall in Nara, Japan)

Hinduism in Japan is today a minority religion followed by about 320,000 Indian, Sri Lankan and Nepali expatriates as of mid 2025, 0.26% of population, whose liturgical language is Sanskrit and Om is written in Katakana, but its history goes back to 752 CE when Emperor Shomu built Todai-ji Temple in Nara with Krishna playing flute, as Hinduism diffused via trade routes and 6th century Buddhism with transfer of Hindu-derived material from China and Southeast Asia, and today Hindu deities are fully integrated into Japanese religious culture as gods of good luck where many deities still worshipped in Japan have long been forgotten in India, with Saraswati as Benzaiten arguably most revered after Buddha forming part of Seven Gods of Fortune Shichifukujin of which four are Hindu - Benzaitensama as Saraswati goddess of learning music wisdom, Bishamon as Vaishravana Kubera guardian of wealth and warriors, Daikokuten as Mahakala Shiva god of kitchen rice prosperity, and Kichijoten as Lakshmi completing Nipponized Tridevi with Benzaiten and female Daikokuten, plus Ganesha as Kangiten or Shoten prayed for health success in over 250 temples with veiled elephant face bathed in oil, Yama as Enma lord of death judging karma, Garuda as Karura enormous fire-breathing human body eagle face vahana of Vishnu, Tennin as Apsaras heavenly dancers, and complete Tenbu list of Agni as Katen fire, Prithvi as Chiten earth, Varuna as Suiten water, Vayu as Futen wind, Surya as Nitten sun, Chandra as Gatten moon, Brahma as Bonten creator four faces, Indra as Taishakuten king of heaven east guardian, Virupaksha as Komokuten wide-eyed west guardian, Virudhaka as Zochoten growth south guardian, Dakini as Dakiniten, Rahu as Rago, Rakshasa as Rasetsuten, Ishana as Ishanaten northeast guardian Shiva aspect, Skanda as Idaten or Kumar Kartikeya protector of temples, all still revered especially in Shingon Buddhism with Bonji Siddham seed syllables and mantras like Om Saraswatyai Namah chanted daily, proving Japan preserved India's gods with devotion.

Some important Hindu temples in Japan are as follows:

• Shirdi Saibaba  Temple, Tokyo
• ISKCON Temple,Tokyo
• ISKCON Osaka Center, Osaka
• Vedanta Society of Japan, Kanagawa
• BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Tokyo
• Shiva Shakti Mandir, Tokyo

Siddham Calligraphy - The Living Sanskrit of Japan

One of the most extraordinary survivals of this contact is Siddham calligraphy. In Japan it is called Shittan or Bonji. Siddham was the elegant script of North India from the sixth to the twelfth century. It was the script in which many Buddhist sutras were written. This script later evolved into Nagari and Devanagari in India and disappeared as a living hand around the eleventh century.

It was preserved in Japan. In 804 the young Japanese monk Kukai, later known as Kobo Daishi, travelled to Changan to study esoteric Buddhism. There he met the Kashmiri master Prajna and learned Sanskrit and Siddham. When Kukai returned he founded the Shingon school and brought the Siddham alphabet with him. Since then, for more than twelve hundred years, Shingon and Tendai monks have preserved Siddham with astonishing fidelity.

In Japan Siddham is not a museum piece. It is a living sacred art. Monks learn to write Bonji with a brush to create mantras and dharanis. The seed syllables known as bijakshara such as Om, Ah, Hum, Hrih and Kham are written in Siddham and are believed to embody the deity itself. You will find these letters carved on temple pillars, on tombstones, on mountain rocks, on wooden memorial tablets and on amulets that people carry for protection. A Japanese lay person may not read Sanskrit but recognises Bonji as holy. In this way Japan has acted as a time capsule, preserving an ancient Indian script that India herself no longer writes.

Kashmiri Savants in Japan

According to Dr Lokesh Chandra, the divine script Siddham was carried to Japan not by Chinese monks alone but by Kashmiri savants, as Kashmir then known as Sharada Desha was the world centre of Sanskrit, Tantra and Buddhist logic where Chinese pilgrims like Hiuen Tsang came to study, and the most important among them was the Kashmiri Brahmin Acharya Prajna (734-810) who went to Chang'an in 781 and in 804 taught Sanskrit and Siddham to the great Japanese monk Kobo Daishi Kukai who became his direct disciple and on returning founded the Shingon school and introduced Siddham as Shittan or Bonji, the sacred script that gives siddhi, and other masters of the Kashmiri tradition like Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra also transmitted Mantrayana with its seed syllables Om, Hum and Hrih, and Dr Chandra notes that even the first Constitution of Japan in 604 AD was consecrated by a Sanskrit manuscript of Usnisa Vijaya Dharani in an early Siddham form, and while Siddham vanished in India in the 11th century it has been preserved alive for 1200 years in Japan at Koyasan where monks still write it with a brush on temple pillars, tombstones and amulets, so that Bonji seen in Japan today is the living handwriting of Kashmir preserved by Japan.

Japanese Medicine System and Ayurveda Link

The traditional Japanese medicine system known as Kampo has deep roots in Ayurveda brought through Buddhism, as Ayurveda called Ayurveda in Japanese texts travelled from India to China as part of Buddhist medical science and then reached Japan in the 8th century through Korean and Kashmiri monks, where the basic principle of three doshas - Vata, Pitta, Kapha became in Kampo as three essences of Ki, Ketsu and Sui, and the use of herbal decoctions, moxibustion which resembles Agnikarma, acupuncture linked to marma points, fasting and purification, seasonal diet and meditation for healing, and the ancient Japanese medical text Ishimpo written in 984 AD by Tamba Yasuyori quotes directly from Indian Ayurvedic texts like Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita regarding diagnosis through pulse and tongue, use of turmeric, ginger, pepper and mercury preparations, and the Buddhist monk physician tradition of yakushi or medicine Buddha worshipped in Japan is none other than Bhaisajyaguru from India, showing that Kampo is essentially Ayurveda adapted to Japanese herbs and climate.

Japanese Way of Life - The Indian Imprint

The Japanese way of life still carries a deep Indian imprint seen in everyday habits where sitting on the floor in seiza style to eat and conduct tea ceremony mirrors the Indian baithak tradition of sitting on tatami which is like chatai, while the daily prayers at day begin and day end in Japanese homes and temples with lighting of incense, offering of flowers and food and ringing of bells is identical to Indian puja and sandhya vandana, and the use of incense or agarbatti called senko in Japan for purification and meditation came directly from Indian dhoopa ritual, and bowing with joined palms which Japanese call gassho is the same as namaste and pranam, while greetings like ohayou gozaimasu with deep bow reflect the Indian respect for elders, and other customs like taking off shoes before entering home, ritual bathing before prayer as in Japanese ofuro and Indian snana, vegetarian shojin ryori cuisine of Buddhist monks similar to sattvic bhojan, and tying sacred threads and beads of juzu mala like rudraksha mala all show how Indian Buddhist lifestyle brought by Indian savants became the Japanese way of life.

Japanese Artists Visit Shantiniketan and Kolkata :A Modern Renaissance

In the modern era this spiritual link was transformed into a cultural friendship. The centre of this was Rabindranath Tagore and his school at Shantiniketan. At the beginning of the twentieth century Tagore looked to Japan as a model of an Asian nation that had modernised without losing its soul. He visited Japan three times in 1916, 1924 and 1929 and was received with great reverence. His book Gitanjali had already been admired in Japan.

The admiration was mutual. The Japanese art historian Kakuzo Okakura, author of The Book of Tea, was a friend of Tagore. Okakura believed that Asia should have its own artistic unity distinct from the West. He sent his best disciples to Bengal. In 1916 the famous painters Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunso visited the Tagore family house at Jorasanko in Kolkata. In 1916 to 1917 the artist Arai Kanpo lived in Kolkata and Shantiniketan. The Japanese wash painting technique known as nihonga, with its soft mineral colours, use of empty space and emphasis on spirit rather than photographic realism, had a profound impact on the Bengal School of Art.

Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of the Bengal School, abandoned Western oil paiinting after seeing Japanese scrolls and adopted the wash technique. Nandalal Bose, the great muralist who later decorated Shantiniketan, studied Japanese brush economy and incorporated it into his own style. The Ajanta frescoes, which Japanese artists came to copy, also became a shared heritage.

Shantiniketan in turn became a pilgrimage for Japanese intellectuals. The poet Yone Noguchi visited in 1916. The scholar and painter Setsu Asahara lived there. The archives of Rabindra Bhavana still preserve Japanese woodblock prints and scrolls gifted by these visitors. This exchange showed that the ancient religious link could be reborn as a modern artistic dialogue between two Asian civilisations.

 Cinema Link - Kurosawa, Imai and Satyajit Ray

                                        

The cinema link between India and Japan is built on mutual respect between masters like Akira Kurosawa, Tadashi Imai and Satyajit Ray, where Kurosawa deeply admired Ray calling Pather Panchali as an overwhelming experience and was influenced by Indian humanism while Ray was moved by Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and its revolutionary use of multiple perspectives which inspired his own narrative depth, and similarly Tadashi Imai the pioneer of Japanese neo-realism known for films like Muddy Waters (1953) and Mahabharata-style humanist dramas shared Ray's concern for the poor and oppressed, and Ray openly acknowledged that he learned the power of natural light, location shooting and non-professional actors from Japanese neo-realism of Imai and Kurosawa, and this Indo-Japanese cinematic dialogue later influenced Indian parallel cinema of Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Girish Kasaravalli who adopted Kurosawa's low-angle composition and Imai's social realism to portray village India, creating a shared aesthetic where silence speaks more than dialogue.

Haiku Adoption in India

Another fascinating chapter is the adoption of Japanese haiku in India. Haiku is a seventeen syllable form arranged in five seven five sounds. It originated in ninth century Japan and was perfected by Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century. It depends on a season word called kigo and on the ability to suggest much more than is stated.

The first to introduce haiku to India was Tagore himself, who translated some Japanese haiku into Bengali and English. But true adoption began in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Indian poets writing in English such as R K Singh, Kala Ramesh and Satya Bhushan Verma began to write haiku seriously. In Hindi, poets like Satya Parkash Agarwal and Kamlesh Bhatt Kamal have published entire collections. Even modern Kashmiri poet Dina Nath Nadim wrote Haikus .

What attracted Indian poets was the kinship with Indian aesthetics. The concept of kigo resonates with the Indian tradition of Ritu poetry celebrated by Kalidasa in Ritusamhara and Meghaduta. The idea of dhvani, suggesting more than stating, is central to both haiku and Sanskrit poetics. The brevity of haiku suited the Indian epigrammatic tradition. Today India has a vibrant haiku movement. Groups like Triveni Haikai India and the World Haiku Association hold regular kukai meetings in the Japanese style. Many Indian schools now teach haiku writing and anthologies of Indian haiku are published every year. A Japanese form has thus taken root in Indian soil.

Modern Migration and Population

The human link has changed completely in the last century. According to Japanese government statistics, only thirty people from British India lived in Japan in 1901. Fifty nine Indians lived in Hyogo Prefecture in 1905. After the Great Kanto earthquake destroyed Yokohama in 1923, Indian traders migrated to Kobe. From then Kobe became the centre of Indian community growth. In 1939 on the eve of the Second World War there were six hundred and thirty two Indians in Hyogo.

Today the profile is of highly skilled professionals. As per the Immigration Services Agency of Japan, there were 53,974 Indian nationals in December 2024 and 58,999 in December 2025. This makes Indians the twelfth largest foreign community in a country with almost four million foreign residents. Most live in Tokyo, particularly in Nishikasai in Edogawa ward which is now affectionately called Mini India, and also in Yokohama and Kobe. The community is predominantly male and works in information technology, engineering and finance. There are Indian schools, a Murugan temple in Tokyo, Sikh gurdwaras and mosques.

In 2025 India and Japan signed an Action Plan for Human Resource Exchange aiming to bring 50,000 additional skilled Indian workers to Japan by 2030 to help address the labour shortage caused by an ageing population. Cultural life is also vibrant with Diwali and Holi celebrated publicly in Tokyo parks.

Indo-Japanese Collaboration in Present Day

Present day Indo-Japanese collaboration has become a strategic partnership of mind and material extending from Bullet Train to Buddha, where Japan is building India's first Shinkansen Bullet Train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad with Japanese Shinkansen technology, Japanese companies like Suzuki, Toyota, Honda, Sony and Hitachi have made India their largest overseas base, while India provides Japan with over 50,000 highly skilled IT professionals and engineers concentrated in Mini India Nishikasai in Tokyo, and culturally the Japan Foundation, ICCR and temples like Koyasan and Nara Todaiji preserve Sanskrit and Siddham calligraphy taught by Kashmiri savants, and in 2025 both nations signed an Action Plan for Human Resource Exchange to bring 50,000 more Indians to Japan by 2030 and collaborate in semiconductors, green hydrogen, space with ISRO-JAXA joint moon mission LUPEX, and defence and Buddhism diplomacy, continuing the ancient link of Prajna and Kukai in a modern form.

Conclusion : A Continuity That Lives

The story of Indians in Japan is not a story of two separate phases, ancient and modern, but of one unbroken continuity. In the eighth century an Indian monk consecrated the Great Buddha of Nara. In the ninth century an Indian script found a permanent home in Japanese temples. In the twentieth century Japanese painters came to Bengal to learn how to paint emptiness and Indian poets learned from Japan how to capture a whole season in three lines.

What makes this relationship unique in world history is that Japan did not merely borrow from India and move on. It preserved. While Siddham disappeared from the land of its birth, it remained alive on the brush of a Shingon monk. While many Hindu deities lost their public worship in their original context, they continued to receive offerings in Japan as Benzaiten and Daikokuten. In that sense Japan became a cultural archive of ancient India.

Today the wheel has turned full circle. The children of those who once travelled for years by ship and desert to carry a manuscript now travel in a few hours by air to write software in Tokyo. The little India of Nishikasai, with its spice shops and temples, is the newest layer on a foundation that is fifteen hundred years old. From sacred script to software code, the journey of Indians in Japan shows that true cultural exchange does not erase identity. It allows two civilisations to remain distinct and yet recognise themselves in each other.

( Avtar Mota)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

THE CRUEL AFGHAN RULE IN KASHMIR

                                   

( A painting by artist Ravi Dhar shows Pandit Birbal Dhar and his son in the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Lahore )

The Cruel Afghan Rule in Kashmir (1753-1819)

The Afghan rule in Kashmir began with the collapse of Mughal authority in India. Ahmad Shah Abdali, the founder of the Durrani Empire in Afghanistan, saw the rich valley as a prize. His forces first raided Kashmir in 1747 under Abdullah Khan, and by 1753, Kashmir formally passed from the Mughals to the Afghans. For the next 66 years, the valley was ruled by 28 Afghan governors appointed from Kabul, and this period is remembered by historians as the most oppressive in Kashmir's history.

The Afghans ruled Kashmir as a conquered colony meant only for revenue extraction. Heavy annual tributes, often up to 20 lakh rupees, had to be sent to Kabul. To meet this demand, governors imposed unbearable taxes on everything - on shawl weavers, farmers, fruit growers, and even on boatmen. Zamindars who could not pay the fruit tax cut down their own orchards, destroying the famous Mughal gardens around Dal Lake to sell the wood. Merchants and nobles were fined arbitrarily, their wealth confiscated, and many were forced to migrate. The oppression was not just economic but deeply brutal. Historical accounts record public torture, executions for minor reasons, and humiliation of the common people. Afghan soldiers carried a hatchet as a symbol of authority and, as foreign travelers like George Forster who visited in 1783 noted, rarely issued an order without a blow of it. People became so fearful that they hid any sign of prosperity, lived in rags, and lived under constant dread.

The people grew desperate and began appealing for outside help. Finally, in 1819, Pandit Birbal Dhar visited Lahore and invited Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab to liberate them from cruel Afghans . Maharaja Ranjit Singh sent a strong force under Misr Dewan Chand and Hari Singh Nalwa. At the decisive Battle of Shopian, the last Afghan governor, Jabbar Khan, was defeated. This ended 66 years of Afghan tyranny and marked the beginning of Sikh rule in Kashmir. Only three instances shall mentioned at pages 238, 239 and 240  in the book: "Kashmir Through The Ages" (Chapter XIX.) gives an idea about the extent of Afghan cruelty in Kashmir.

(1)

"Abdulla Khan invaded and occupied Kashmir in 1747 A.D. He introduced a queer and irksome administration. There arose a great hue and cry among the people against his illegal exactions his high-handed measures and the deceit and pillage which were practised under his rule. Treasure and secreted wealth of gold and silver, stores of carpets and silver and golden articles, which the Moghuls had maintained in the country, were taken possession by him for his personal use. He exacted heavy fines and indemnities from the big merchants and respectable gentry of the country. Once some of his minions branded a leading person of the country with red-hot sword. Unable to bear the torture, this man succumbed to his injuries. Abdulla Khan richly rewarded the perpetrators of this cruelty. Quazi Khan, another respectable citizen, was forced to pay a fine of one lakh of rupees and yet his son was subjected to inhuman harassment. Unable to stand this brutality, the young man sought escape in suicide and jumping from the Zainakadal bridge, drowned himself in the River Jhelum."

(2)

"After Amir Khan, Haji Karimdad Khan Bamzai came at the head of the Government of Kashmir in 1776. He appointed Mir Fazil Kant in charge of revenue and administrative work. After a few months he accused Kant of neglecting the collection of revenue and ordered his execution. Along with this all the members of the Kant tribe were destroyed. Karimdad Khan also got displeased with Tarkuli Khan and got him executed too. A rope was tied to his feet and he was kept suspended by the feet under the Habakadal bridge till he died.

Throughout the reign of Karimdad Khan the entire county remained plunged in absolute misery and fear. During this period everybody, high or low, rich or poor, was fleeced of all he possessed. He ruined the chastity of a thousand girls of both Hindu and Muslim communities and thus ruined their lives for ever. He exacted such heavy taxes and duties from Mansabdars and Jagirdars, as exceed by far the value of their possessions. All these people were reduced to utter penury. Many of them chose to dispose of their possessions and migrate from the country. He appointed the most heartless people to collect taxes from the people. Heavy fruit tax was imposed on zamindars. Since they could not meet this heavy demand, they cut down their fruit trees and sold the wood to meet the demand of the Government. In this way all the beautiful gardens in the city and rural areas, and particularly those which had been planted by the Moghuls around the Dal Lake, were denuded of all fruit trees. The lambardars and nobility were reduced to dust by the heavy exactions made from them by the Subedar. It is said that one of the tax collectors named, Aslam Harkara, was blind in both eyes, and so he sued to go in a Palki from place to place to collect taxes. He treated the people most cruelly. People were reduced to such destitution that, robbed of their hearths and homes, they had to lie on the bare ground under the open sky."

(3)

"At this time no less than 20,00,000 rupees are extracted by the Afghan Governor who, if his tribute be not regularly remitted to Court, is allowed to execute with impunity every act of violence. This extreme rigour has sensibly affected the department and manners of the Kashmirians who shrink with dread from the Afghan oppression and are fearful of making any display of opulence........ During my stay in Kashmir, I often withnessed the harsh treatment which the common people received at the hands of their masters who rarely issued an order without a blow of the side of their hatchet, common weapon of the Afghans, and used by them in war as a battle-axe"......Report of Forster (1783 )

( Avtar Mota )

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

MY POEM, " LARGER THAN THE BOULDER "

                          

(Larger Than The Boulder )

In the dead darkness,

they put me under a huge boulder

along with my history books

and  sacred texts.

That is how they punished me

for teaching  them how to 

Tear apart the webs of ignorance 

And stand up .

And in that frightening darkness,

with the boulder's burden on my chest,

I opened my eyes.

I started looking around,

breathing,

digging the earth below,

Mother earth,

indifferent to my pain and sorrow

yet benign.

My exile is feeble.

A small man with a small bag,

carrying a whole valley inside a fading memory.

My feet left,

my shadow stayed back

in the courtyard.

For years I thought,

I am the body that was driven out.

Then I saw,

the body just moved from one street to another.

I thought,

I am the mind that mourns.

Then I saw,

the mind is also a tenant,

it comes and goes.

Today it mourns,

tomorrow it forgets.

So who am I?

I am not the one who was exiled.

I am the one who watched the exile happen.

That is the turn.

There is no reason to this boulder on my chest.

No cause,

no court,

no meaning that will make it fair.

And yet I lie under it and I do not curse.

I breathe.

I exist.

I witness.

That is my revolt,

to remain aware when the world wants me bitter.

In the house they took,

there was a lamp.

They broke the lamp.

But the light?

The light did not break.

I thought the light belonged to the lamp.

Now I know the lamp belonged to the light.

So it is with me.

This body is a lamp,

it can be moved,

it can be exiled,

it can be put under a boulder.

But I am the light,

a light that was never born in a particular place,

so how can it be exiled from a particular place?

The valley,

the mob,

the night of shouting,

the truck,

the tent,

these thirty six years of questioning,

these thirty six years of hearing replies,

unresolved,

complicated,

like waves of a turbulent lake,

rising,

falling,

rising again to fall,

restless this moment,

calm the other moment,

all of it rose and fell inside me.

However, the lake never leaves itself to become a wave.

They thought they buried me under a boulder 

They only buried a form.

I remain,

formless,

unburnt,

unexiled.

The rock is still on me.

And I am still larger than the boulder.

(Avtar Mota)

Hindi Translation 

*चट्टान से भी बड़ा*

घोर अंधेरे में,

उन्होंने मुझे एक विशाल चट्टान के नीचे दबा दिया,

मेरी इतिहास की किताबों के साथ

और मेरे पवित्र ग्रंथों के साथ।

यही सजा थी मेरी -

कि मैंने उन्हें सिखाया था

अज्ञान के जाल कैसे चीरते हैं

और कैसे खड़ा हुआ जाता है।

और उस डरावने अंधेरे में,

छाती पर चट्टान का बोझ लिए,

मैंने आँखें खोल दीं।

मैं देखने लगा,

साँस लेने लगा,

नीचे की मिट्टी को खोदने लगा -

धरती माँ को,

जो मेरे दुख से उदासीन है

फिर भी दयामयी है।

मेरा निर्वासन कितना छोटा है।

एक छोटा आदमी, एक छोटे थैले के साथ,

एक पूरी घाटी को धुंधली याद में लिए हुए।

मेरे पैर चले गए,

मेरी परछाई वहीं रह गई

आँगन में।

सालों तक सोचा,

मैं वह शरीर हूँ जिसे निकाला गया।

फिर देखा,

शरीर तो बस एक गली से दूसरी गली चला गया।

सोचा,

मैं वह मन हूँ जो शोक करता है।

फिर देखा,

मन भी तो किराएदार है,

आता है, जाता है।

आज रोता है,

कल भूल जाता है।

तो मैं कौन हूँ?

मैं वह नहीं हूँ जिसे निर्वासित किया गया।

मैं वह हूँ जिसने निर्वासन को होते देखा।

यही मोड़ है।

मेरी छाती पर इस चट्टान का कोई कारण नहीं।

कोई वजह नहीं,

कोई अदालत नहीं,

कोई अर्थ नहीं जो इसे सही ठहरा सके।

और फिर भी मैं पड़ा हूँ और कोसता नहीं।

मैं साँस लेता हूँ।

मैं हूँ।

मैं साक्षी हूँ।

यही मेरा विद्रोह है -

जब दुनिया चाहती है मैं कड़वा हो जाऊँ,

तब भी होश में बने रहना।

जिस घर को उन्होंने छीन लिया,

वहाँ एक दीया था।

उन्होंने दीया तोड़ दिया।

पर रोशनी?

रोशनी नहीं टूटी।

मैं सोचता था रोशनी दीये की है।

अब जानता हूँ दीया रोशनी का था।

वैसा ही मैं हूँ।

यह शरीर एक दीया है,

इसे हटाया जा सकता है,

निर्वासित किया जा सकता है,

चट्टान के नीचे दबाया जा सकता है।

पर मैं रोशनी हूँ,

एक ऐसी रोशनी जो कभी किसी एक जगह पैदा ही नहीं हुई,

तो उसे किसी एक जगह से निकाला कैसे जा सकता है?

वो घाटी,

वो भीड़,

वो चीखती रात,

वो ट्रक,

वो तंबू,

सवालों के ये छत्तीस साल,

जवाबों के ये छत्तीस साल,

अनसुलझे,

उलझे हुए,

जैसे अशांत झील की लहरें,

उठती, गिरती,

फिर उठती, फिर गिरती,

इस पल बेचैन,

अगले पल शांत,

सब मेरे भीतर उठा और गिरा।

पर झील कभी खुद को छोड़ कर लहर नहीं बनती।

उन्होंने सोचा उन्होंने मुझे चट्टान के नीचे दफना दिया,

उन्होंने तो सिर्फ एक आकार को दफनाया।

मैं बचा हूँ,

निराकार,

अदाह्य,

अनिर्वासित।

चट्टान अब भी मुझ पर है।

और मैं अब भी चट्टान से बड़ा हूँ।

( अवतार मोटा)

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.

HINDUS IN PAKISTAN; A COMMUNITY UNDER SUSTAINED PRESSURE

                                                                       

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

1. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. 7th Population and Housing Census 2023: National Census Report. 2024( Internet Archives ) 
2. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Population by Religion, Census 2023 and  2024. ( Internet Archive) 
3. Book : Historic Temples in Pakistan: A Call To Conscience by Reema Abbasi.
4. United States Department of State. 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Pakistan. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, 2024. ( Internet Archive)
5. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Exodus: Is the Hindu Community Leaving Sindh? Fact-Finding Study, 2025. ( Internet Archives ) 
6. National Commission for Human Rights, Pakistan. Forced Conversions and Marriages of Religious Minority Women and Girls in Pakistan. ( Internet Archives )
7. Ercelawn, Aly, and Muhammad Nauman. Bonded Labour in Pakistan. International Labour Organisation, 2001. ( Internet Archive)
8. Book: Religious Minorities In Pakistan by Iftikhar H Malik 
9. Child, forced marriages of minority girls in Pakistan flagged at UN event ( A report published in Times of India )
10. Dawn Newspaper: various issues.

 

 

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