[Reader-list] Sindh's Stolen Brides

[Pawan Durani]

Sindh's Stolen Brides

On the other side of the Thar, Hindus, especially girls, are forced into
Islam

by Mariana Baabar

http://www.outlookindia.com/
16 January, 2006



Hindus In Pakistan


Hindus constitute about 2.5 per cent, or 26 lakh, of Pakistan's population.


Though sprinkled all over Pakistan, 95 per cent of Hindus are in Sindh.


Only Tharparkar district in Sindh has Hindus in majority: 51 per cent.


Other districts with sizeable population: Mirpur Khas (41 per cent), Sanghar
(35 per cent), Umerkot (43 per cent)


Nearly 82 per cent of Pakistani Hindus are lower caste, most of them farm
labourers


Cities with some Hindu population: Karachi, Hyderabad, Jacobabad, Lahore,
Peshawar and Quetta.


In Tharparkar, Hindus own land. Krishen Bheel, Gyan Chand and Ramesh Lal are
the Hindus in the Pakistan National Assembly. ***

Let me confess at the outset: I'm travelling in interior Sindh to verify
specifically the reported widespread menace of abduction of Hindu girls,
their forcible conversion to Islam and betrothal to Muslim men. My first
port of call is the district court of Mirpur Khas. I promptly mingle among
the crowd waiting for the court's decision on a kidnap-and-conversion case.
Different voices narrate contradictory stories. I am befuddled for the
moment.

Soon, a frisson of excitement sweeps through the throng, as a police van
drives through the gate. Inside it is Mariam. She's 13 years old-and
married! Mariam was Mashu, and Hindu, till the night of December 22, 2005. I
pick my way through the jostling crowd. Mariam is in a red burqa, her gold
nose ring sparkles. She tells me, "I'm happy. I don't want to return to my
parents or brother." What's the fuss about, I wonder.

It's quite another story under the pipal tree of the court compound. Huddled
under it are the villagers of Jhaluree, 20 km from Mirpur Khas. Among them
is Mashu's father, Malo Sanafravo. He says that at 11 pm, December 22, four
armed men barged into their room. One of them was Malo's neighbour, Akbar.
They picked up Mashu, bundled her into the waiting car. "She was taken to
Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi's village in Somarho tehsil." There Mashu became
Mariam and was married to Akbar.

Not true, insists husband Akbar. "Mariam has been always in my heart," he
gushes, saying, at 11 pm, December 22, it was she who had come over to his
house. But it's true that the Pir converted her and married them-it was his
idea that they issue statements in the court. "Mariam was sent to Darul Aman
in Hyderabad, in judicial custody," Akbar declares.


A 13-year-old choosing to convert and marry? A 13-year-old testifying in the
court, without her family by her side? Suspicious, I walk over to the SHO,
caught in the middle of a heated exchange between two groups. Someone
suggests he should allow the girl to meet her relatives. Before the
conversion yes, not now. She has now become Muslim, says the SHO. He argues,
"There's a huge crowd here. If Mariam breaks down after seeing her father,
there will be a communal riot here in the compound."

A little later, there are celebrations as the word spreads: the court has
allowed the couple to live together. Standing next to me is Kanjee Rano
Bheel. He works for an NGO in the education sector; volunteers for the Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) as well. "In just two hours Mashu was
converted and married," Kanjee says incredulously. Disappointment and
helpless rage fleet across his face. "In Darul Aman the girls are kept away
from parents and pressured into issuing statements favourable to the
abductors. They tame stubborn girls through death threats."

So, was Mashu abducted and forcibly converted?

In Mirpur Khas, truth resembles the mirage of the surrounding Thar desert,
teasing and tormenting me as I drive from Karachi into interior Sindh.


It tests your credulity, it challenges your journalistic skills. Wherever I
go, and whoever I meet, in disconsolate voices the Hindus talk about
'missing girls'; their stories resemble Mashu's-the theme of abduction,
conversion, often followed by marriage, is common to most narrations. The
girls then appear in courts to issue statements declaring their conversion
was voluntary. All links to the natal family and the community are severed;
they are lost to the family forever. On January 4, 2005, Marvi, 18, and
Hemi, 16, were kidnapped from Kunri village in Umerkot district; three
months later, on March 3, 14-year-old Raji was abducted from Aslam Town
Jhuddo, Mirpur Khas.


So, was Mashu abducted and converted? In Mirpur Khas, the truth is like the
mirage of the Thar desert.


The script in their cases was similar to Mashu's. "Only 10 per cent of all
conversions involving girls are voluntary; because of romance," says Kanjee.


Ten per cent of what? No official figures are available. The DIG in Mirpur
Khas, Saleemullah, says,


"If there's need I'll collect these figures. Minorities are the safest in
Pakistan."

Members of the Hindu Bheel community show photos of girls who they say have
been kidnapped and converted

Saleemullah, perhaps, should tap the HRCP for statistics. Its director in
Lahore, I.A. Rehman, is an honourable man. Rehman told Outlook that the HRCP
has, between Jan 2000 to Dec 2005, documented 50 cases involving conversion
of Hindu girls to Islam. Its investigations too endorse what I had found in
interior Sindh.



In many cases where it was claimed the girls had eloped with their Muslim
partners, the HRCP found that most were, in fact, abducted, forcibly married
to Muslim men or sold to them. There have been cases of Hindu girls, usually
from economically better off families, eloping with their Muslim boyfriends.
Rehman says in most cases

"These Hindu women are mistreated, their husbands do nothing but see TV,"
says the Pir.


such marriages didn't last long. With links to their families cut off, the
girls were subsequently forced to marry another Muslim or sucked into
marriage rackets.

Nuzzhat Shirin, who works for the Lahore-based ngp Aurat Foundation,
understands why the girls don't reveal their plight at the time they are
presented in court. "When a Hindu is forced to become Muslim, such a ruckus
is made that if the young kidnapped girl appears in court, the fanatics
yell, scream, throw rose petals in the air and follow the youth into the
building so that she's intimidated and can't speak," Shirin explains. Social
stigma arising from the loss of virginity, and the consequent difficulty of
finding a groom, prompt these women to accept their misfortune-and hope for
the best.

Fifty incidents in five years represents just a percentage of the total
number of cases, says Kanjee, pointing out that a majority of such crimes go
unreported. "There have been 50 such incidents last year," insists Krishen
Bheel, who is a Hindu member of the National Assembly (MNA), the Pakistani
equivalent of the Lok Sabha. He begins to rattle out the cases he remembers:
two months back Sapna was kidnapped and converted in upper Sindh; seven
months earlier it was 17-year-old Lakshmi in Nawkot, and then.... "The trend
is increasing," he says. "If these conversions are voluntary, then how come
boys rarely ever convert?"


Hindu women in Somarho who have been converted to Islam by Pir Ayub Jan
Sirhandi

Only once did the popular resentment against abduction spill out in the
streets of Mirpur Khas. It was in the '80s: a girl named Sita had been
kidnapped. Some 70,000 Hindus turned up to protest the kidnapping. The
police opened fire, killing several. "Sita was never returned," Krishen
laments. "She had even told Justice Dhorab Patel, who later joined the HRCP,
that she had been forcibly converted.


We have now stopped agitating."

Instead, the Hindus take the support of civil rights groups and the media to
publicise abduction cases, hoping public scrutiny would goad the state into
action. On Dec 30, the day after the Mariam case was disposed, the Supreme
Court took cognisance of the complaint Qosheela's parents from Ghotki,
Sindh, had filed. They claimed their 13-year-old girl had been kidnapped,
converted, given the name of Hajra and married to a Muslim man. The girl, as
in most other cases, had said she had converted of her own free will. A
three-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftiqar Muhammad Chaudhry,
ordered the medical examination of the girl to determine whether she had
attained puberty (Islam permits marriage at that age).

"A majority of such abductions and conversions go unreported," says Kanjee
Bheel, of the HRCP.


Should it be proved otherwise, the husband could be tried for rape.

Even cities are not immune to the menace. Last year, Sammo Amra and Champa
in Karachi received a letter from their three missing daughters-Reena (21),
Reema (17) and Usha (19)-informing that they had converted to Islam and were
ordained

under the dictates of their new religion not to live with infidels,
including their Hindu parents. The letter bore the address of Madrassa
Taleemul Islam, Karachi. It prompted Supreme Court Bar Association president
Malik Mohammad Qayyum to petition the Supreme Court in the first week of
December. He accused the religious seminary's administrator of using
coercive methods to convert the three girls. On December 16, the court
ordered the police to shift the girls to the Edhi Welfare Centre and provide
protection to them until the time it was ascertained they had been indeed
compelled to convert to Islam.

Sensitive Muslim citizens feel the way to counter the menace is to
reinterpret and widen the scope of law.

Major (retd) Kamran Shafi, an absentee landlord from Sindh, cites the case
of 17-year-old Kochlia, who was kidnapped and gangraped in Jacobabad, Sindh,
in Sept 2005. Four men were arrested for the crime. They were subsequently
released because Kochlia stated in the court she had converted and was
married


 Rehana was earlier Nabee. She converted three years ago after her husband
died.

to one of them. Shafi asks, "Isn't something very, very wrong here? Suppose
the poor girl was forced into changing her religion and marrying one of the
assailants so that they get off the hook? Can't the state prosecute the four
on its own, for their original crime of rape?"

The three Hindu MNAs-Krishen Bheel, Gyan Chand and Ramesh Lal-raised the
Kochlia case in the National Assembly. They claimed Kochlia's statement was
not tenable as under the local Hindu custom and law a girl can't marry of
her own will until the age of 20. Since Kochlia is a minor, her abductors
should be tried for rape. Such an interpretation of existing laws could
provide ample relief to Hindus.

Till then, though, the fear of kidnap stalks the Hindus of Pakistan. Krishen
Bheel says Hindu girls are scared to go out; he has enrolled his own
children into a Christian school. He points to Mirpur Khas' strange
predicament: there's freedom to worship, there are 10 temples which bustle
through the day with devotees; and yet Hindu girls here are kidnapped and
converted-and the community humiliated.

Perhaps these abductions are part of the general scenario of crime against
women in rural Pakistan (see box). Perhaps they are converted and married to
criminals to enable the latter to escape the dragnet of the law. Yet, such
arguments don't comfort the Hindus. Sat Ram, of Shadi Bali village near
Mirpur Khas, says Hindu girls are deprived of education because their
parents are apprehensive of sending them to schools located at a distance.
"They receive education only till the primary level. It isn't safe to send
them to school after that."

But the plight of Hindu women can't be seen just through the prism of gender
discrimination rampant in rural Sindh.


Reena Gul, of Sattar Nagar village, Mirpur Khas, says the boys too are
converted but their numbers are very few. The community here feels it is the
Islamist's agenda to drive out non-Muslims from Pakistan. In fact, Krishen
told the National Assembly that even Hindu businessmen are being kidnapped
in Sindh for ransom. He said on the floor of the House, "Several religious
parties are reportedly behind the move to convince the people that it is
their responsibility to get rid of infidels from Pakistan, (that) taking
ransom from non-Muslims is not a sin."

I now set out to meet Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi, whose name surfaces repeatedly
in conversion stories.


  Ruksana was Chotee. Poverty and a drug abuser husband made her convert to
Islam.


The drive from Mirpur Khas to Sarhandi village, Somarho tehsil, is through a
picturesque landscape. Peacocks dance in the field and gypsies pitch their
tents for the night. Even the Pir appears tranquil, his white flowing beard
and winsome disposition camouflaging his mission.



Yet, when he begins to talk, he conceals nothing. Yes, the Pir declares, he
has been converting the Hindus for the last 30 years. Perhaps his claims of
converting a 1,000 families a year is a boast. "There's a surah in the Quran
which speaks specifically about conversion, especially about conversion of
women," he says to justify his mission. "Recently, three Hindu girls were
brought to me. I named them Benazir, Sanam and Nusrat," he reveals, with the
righteous air of someone who had bestowed a favour. "These Hindu women are
mistreated by their husbands who do nothing but watch TV."

The Pir rubbishes the allegation that he converts abducted Hindu girls. The
unwilling are sent back. Yet, he adds in the same breath, "In many cases
Hindu girls are kidnapped and kept as keeps. But these keeps are not
converted. But believe me, they are very happy."

I express the desire to meet the women whom he had converted and found
sanctuary with him. The Pir agrees, even allows us to photograph them,
contrary to the local tradition. Into the room, the women walk. Rehana, 50,
was earlier Nabee; she converted three years ago, after the death of her
husband. "I had no one to turn to. If we do not convert we would not be
helped by this family." It was the same reason for 35-year-old Mariam, who
came here seven years back. "Under the Pir's protection, I earn at least Rs
200 a month." Ruksana was earlier Chotee, and hails from Umerkot. Extreme
poverty and a drug-addict husband persuaded her to take the extreme step. "I
brought my four kids as well," she declares.

As I talk to these women, I realise most of them are widows or wallowing in
poverty. I mention this to the Pir. He says, "The government is responsible
for all Hindus and non-Hindus. When the government doesn't help them, they
come to us."

Forced or economically enticed, the Hindu converts do not symbolise Islam's
appeal. Rather they represent the state's failure to provide succour to the
poor and protect their religious rights. Perhaps it's also symptomatic of
the sickness afflicting the Pakistani state. As they say, the condition of
the minorities is an indicator of a nation's health.

By Mariana Baabar in interior Sindh with Amir Mir in Lahore