Attack on Hindu temple in Pakistan worrisome
The attack on a Hindu temple in Pakistan during Holi is only the latest in a series of such incidents and underscores the continued persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic. This trend is equally the product of an increasingly radicalised Pakistani society, as much as it is the fatal consequence of an infirm state mechanism incapable of ensuring law and order. Facts are few at this point, but from what has been reported in the Pakistani Press, it seems like anti-social elements leveraged both factors to wreak havoc. Saturday's events have been portrayed as the work of a reactionary mob driven to violence, following reports of a Hindu man allegedly desecrating the Quran. That the allegation was widely publicised via mobile phone messages and broadcast on local television, points to a pre-planned conspiracy. The theory gains heft when one takes into consideration an FIR reportedly filed by the Hindu accused only days before, regarding a robbery in his home. Moreover, even if one were to presume that the accused wilfully resorted to what can only be described as suicidal behaviour — the desecration of the Quran — it still does not justify the savage attack on the temple complex. It also raises serious questions about local law enforcement authorities who withered away when they faced the frenzied mob. That they, nevertheless, managed to save the accused from the blood-thirsty crowd is perhaps the only saving grace in this situation. Unsurprisingly, Saturday's incident in larkana, Sindh, also fuelled communal tensions in other parts of the Province and in neighbouring Balochistan: Protesters clashed with the police, Hindu shops were gutted and curfews imposed. Together, both Provinces are home to most of Pakistan's Hindu minority community, which numbers about two million people. Tragically, reports of minority persecution — from land grab and extortion to targeted killings and forced conversions — there are routine.
Of course, the Hindus in Pakistan are not the only minorities who live in the shadow of perpetual fear; that country's Christians and Jews receive an equally raw deal. In fact, the attack on the larkana temple complex is reminiscent of the two suicide blasts at a church in Peshawar that killed more than 78 people in September 2013. later in November that year, a police officer guarding another church in the same city was killed, while in January this year a security personnel on duty outside a temple in Peshawar was shot dead. As is inevitable, the scourge of intolerance has now also victimised Pakistan's Muslim minorities, with the country's hardline Sunni groups gunning for Shias and Ahmediyyas for not conforming to the former’s puritanical version of Islam. Perhaps, the only glimmer of hope lies in the fact that in recent times, attacks on minorities have been condemned by large sections of the Pakistani intelligentsia, political class and even some Muslim clerics.