Pakistan's policies and practices towards the religious minorities

Abstract

The religious minorities of Pakistan suffer gross human rights abuses because the state has increasingly moved to the right in a bid to seek legitimacy and cohesiveness by using Islamic symbols and rhetoric in support of its rule. Thus, there are laws which discriminate against non-Muslim citizens exposing them to legal prosecution and extrajudicial persecution by their fellow citizens. As radical Islamic groups gain strength in the country, the non-Muslims find the society getting increasingly intolerant.

Keywords:

• minorities
• non-Muslims
• Muslims
• Pakistan
• human rights
• Islam

Notes

1. News, September 17, 2009.

2. The Constitution of 1973 was drafted by the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and adopted on April 10, 1973, following additions by opposition parties. It was adopted by consensus, unlike two earlier constitutions in 1962 and 1956.

3. Constitution of Pakistan.

4. Woolner, ‘Rigveda and the Punjab’, 549–54.

5. Itkonen, University History of Linguistics, 6.

6. Stall, Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, 11–17.

7. Census of Pakistan 1951, Chapter 5, Statement 5-B.

8. Census, 2004, v. The figures for the Bahais are from The World Christian Encyclopedia. The numbers for Sikhs are from the US State Department, Pakistan.

9. Census of Pakistan 1998.

10. Census, 2004, vi.

11. Malik, Religious Minorities in Pakistan.

12. Salim, Equal Citizens?

13. Salim, Reconstructing History, 147–88.

14. Salim, Thread Not Scissor.

15. Holand, Frontier Doctor; Johnson, Pakistan; Pfeffer, Pakistan—Modell eines Entwicklungslandes; Schmieder, Die Alter Welt; and Venkataramani, American Role in Pakistan, 1947–1958.

16. Scholz, ‘Tribal Structures and Religious Tolerance’, 218–19.

17. Hasan, Pakistan.

18. Ahmed, ‘Exodus’, 70–2.

19. Baloch, ‘Islam, the State, and Identity’, 247.

20. CAP, Constituent Assembly of Pakistan: Debates, 20.

21. Pakistan Penal Code.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Salim, Equal Citizens?, 58.

25. Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous.

26. HRCP, State of Human Rights in Pakistan, 1991, 123.

27. HRCP, State of Human Rights in 1997, 131.

28. HRCP, State of Human Rights in Pakistan, 1998, 154–5.

29. HRCP, State of Human Rights in Pakistan, 2000, 128.

30. HRCP, State of Human Rights in Pakistan, 2006, 143.

31. Appendix 1.

32. Haqqani, Pakistan.

33. Rana, ‘Financial Sources of Pakistani Militant and Religious Organization’, 8.

34. Ibid.

35. Siddiqa, ‘Terror's Training Ground’, 19–35.

36. Daily Times, 2009.

37. For a detailed analysis see Aziz, Murder of History in Pakistan; Hoodbhoy and Nayyar, ‘Rewriting the History of Pakistan’, 164–77; Saigol, Knowledge and Identity; and Rahman, Language, Ideology and Power, 515–24.

38. Nayyar and Salim, Subtle Subversion.

39. For example, see Rahman, Denizens of Alien Worlds, 29–30.

40. Salim et al., State Accountability and Educational Rights of Minorities in Pakistan, 15.

41. See www.pakistanhinducouncil.org.

42. Bheel, ‘Interview’.

43. Kumar, ‘Interview’.