The Forgotten Minorities Day — Editorial

It has been five years since August 11 was marked as the Minori­ties Day in Pak­istan – thanks to the efforts of late She­hbaz Bhat­ti, the for­mer reli­gious affairs min­is­ter who was gunned down by the mil­i­tants. It seems that with every pass­ing year, suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments are los­ing their zeal and inter­est in reit­er­at­ing the promise to pro­tect the rights of minori­ties. This year again one could not see any­thing apart from a token state­ment by the Pres­i­dent. Per­haps the whole gov­ern­ment was too busy try­ing to save itself from the upcom­ing tsuna­mi of rev­o­lu­tion from Imran Khan and Tahir ul Qadri. It’s also worth not­ing that of all the issues that the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion has picked up to score points against the gov­ern­ment, the plight of minori­ties was deemed too unpop­u­lar to find a sig­nif­i­cant men­tion.

The ratio­nale behind declar­ing 11^th of August as Minori­ties Day indeed extends beyond the rights of minori­ties. It was the same date in 1947 when Muham­mad Ali Jin­nah, the founder of the nation, gave a his­toric address before the Con­stituent Assem­bly about the idea of Pak­istan. The address talks not just about the sta­tus of minori­ties in the future repub­lic of Pak­istan; it also high­lights in clear­est terms some of the basic prin­ci­ples which should have been the grund­norm of future struc­ture of the state. While say­ing “you may belong to any reli­gion or caste or creed that has noth­ing to do with the busi­ness of the State”, Jin­nah clear­ly stip­u­lat­ed the future role of reli­gion in the state build­ing. Had this point been under­stood and embraced in its orig­i­nal form, we could have avoid­ed a num­ber of suc­ceed­ing issues. Instead, start­ing from the intro­duc­tion of Objec­tive Res­o­lu­tion, we took a dif­fer­ent path going in the oppo­site direc­tion of the found­ing father’s vision.

The con­text of the August 11 speech also tells a lot about the intend­ed sta­tus and role of reli­gious minori­ties in Pak­istan. At that time, Pakistan’s first law min­is­ter was a Hin­du, for­eign min­is­ter an Ahma­di, while the Com­man­der in Chief of the Army was a Chris­t­ian. It is quite sym­bol­ic of what kind of role reli­gious minori­ties were to play in the future state of Pak­istan. This fact is also very sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence in anoth­er close­ly relat­ed issue; whether Pak­istan was sup­posed to be an Islam­ic state or not. In today’s Pak­istan, this is almost impos­si­ble to imag­ine, a ghast­ly reminder of the extent to which reli­gious minori­ties have been mar­gin­al­ized in the affairs of the state.

Being so deeply root­ed in the idea of Pak­istan, the sta­tus and role of minori­ties is not a mar­gin­al issue. Per­se­cu­tion of minori­ties and the preva­lent dis­crim­i­na­tion against them is noth­ing less than an attack on the ratio­nale and vision of Pak­istan as encap­su­lat­ed in Jinnah’s his­toric address. More­over if we are to mature as a nation and bring in the true ide­al of democ­ra­cy, we have to let go with the con­cep­tion of a per­ma­nent major­i­ty and minor­i­ty.

Point­ing out all the suf­fer­ings of minori­ties in Pak­istan, espe­cial­ly of the reli­gious ones, is a sub­ject of sep­a­rate dis­cus­sion. Suf­fi­cient to men­tion here that with every pass­ing year, it is wors­en­ing expo­nen­tial­ly, while the num­ber of groups who qual­i­fy as minor­i­ty is also increas­ing rapid­ly through prac­tices such as tak­firism.

Pre­sum­ing that gov­ern­ment is not all too igno­rant about the plight of minori­ties, it must take some con­crete mea­sures instead of just issu­ing token state­ments. A good start­ing point would be to take the Supreme Court’s recent judg­ment on the rights of minori­ties seri­ous­ly and start act­ing upon the direc­tions issued by the court.