Hindu culture fights the odds in Pakistan
Pakistan’s Sindh province has a rich Hindu history and tradition – an outlier in the Muslim-majority country. Discrimination, however, is on the rise though the landscape of Pakistan, and Sindh in particular, retains a Hindu imprint.
People from Pakistani Hindu community attend a religious ceremony at the Sadhu Bela temple, located in an island on the Indus River, in Sukkur, Pakistan, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. On the banks of the Indus River, which flows through Pakistan and into its southern Sindh province, Hindus wait for brightly colored boats to ferry them to an island that has housed Sadhu Bela temple for almost 200 years.
Zahida Rehman Jatt, a lecturer in anthropology and social sciences at Sindh University, said that due to increasing extremism and fundamentalism in the country, discrimination against Hindus has increased.
Due to this intolerance, Pakistan is at risk of weakening its affiliation with the Hindu heritage, he said.
There is no ban on Hindu worship in Pakistan, but Hindus say openly practicing the faith is not a matter of routine. Decades of political hostility between majority-Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan present a challenge for the minority community, as many in Pakistan equate Hindus with India. The reverse exists in India where Muslims complain of discrimination.
On the first night of Diwali, one of the most important festivals in Hinduism, clay lamps subtly illuminated doorways and windowsills in Shikarpur. But there were no elaborate light displays or street festivities, and traditional Diwali firecracker fun took place away from the public gaze.
The city of about 200,000 people has a rich Hindu history and traditions, now gradually fading.
One of the keepers of that history can be found in a vast courtyard off a side road. On a recent day in late October, sweet shop owner Dewan Narain Das, 67, enjoyed the cool air. Vats of food bubbled away, children ran and played outdoors, and people gathered to exchange Diwali gifts and good wishes on the holy occasion.
His family has owned a business in Shikarpur since the late 19th century. It started as a soft drink store and, after partition, became a sweet shop. It is famous in the city for falooda, an ice-cream-based dessert with noodles. Das is so well-known in the city that it is easy to find him just by asking for “Dewan Sahib, who owns the falooda shop.”
“People who have lived here for a long time say that the taste they enjoyed 20 years ago is still there in our products,” said Das.
He said Shikarpur once had a sizable Hindu community and scores of temples, a number that has since dwindled. “Rich people used to organize picnics at the Indus River,” he said. “They used to live here, but their businesses spread to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Mumbai.”
Many Hindus left after partition, and their properties were taken over by a government trust. Today, Pakistan has a population of some 225 million people.
Jatt, the scholar, said that the properties were allotted to refugees coming into newly created Pakistan from India. Most of the tenants paid minimal rent and were often unable to take care of the properties. “They (the residents) are very poor and these properties are grand, previously owned by wealthy Hindus,” Jatt said.
After partition, politicians trying to forge a Pakistani narrative emphasized the Muslim heritage, downplaying the contributions of other communities, Jatt said.
“I don’t think we will see this kind of legacy or contribution again from Hindus, the opportunities are on the decline,” she said. “There may be individual cases of philanthropy, but the scale of building and philanthropy will decrease.”
