Poor and Desperate, Pakistani Hindus Accept Islam to Get By

The Hindus performed the prayer rituals awkwardly in supplication to their new, single god, as they prepared to leave their many deities behind them. Their lips stumbled over Arabic phrases that, once recited, would seal their conversion to Islam. The last words uttered, the men and boys were then circumcised.

Dozens of Hindu families converted in June in the Badin district of Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Video clips of the ceremony went viral across the country, delighting hard-line Muslims and weighing on Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority.

The mass ceremony was the latest in what is a growing number of such conversions to Pakistan’s majority Muslim faith in recent years — although precise data is scarce. Some of these conversions are voluntary, some not.

...Treated as second-class citizens, the Hindus of Pakistan are often systemically discriminated against in every walk of life — housing, jobs, access to government welfare. While minorities have long been drawn to convert in order to join the majority and escape discrimination and sectarian violence, Hindu community leaders say that the recent uptick in conversions has also been motivated by newfound economic pressures.

“What we are seeking is social status, nothing else,” said Muhammad Aslam Sheikh, whose name was Sawan Bheel until June, when he converted in Badin with his family. The ceremony in Badin was notable for its size, involving just over 100 people.

...At independence in 1947, Hindus composed 20.5 percent of the population of the areas that now form Pakistan. In the following decades, the percentage shrank rapidly, and by 1998 — the last government census to classify people by religion — Hindus were just 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population. Most estimates say it has further dwindled in the past two decades.

Didn’t Pakistan become a country to be for Muslims? Why do Hindus live in Pakistan?

It did.
India was 100% Hindu.

1. St. Thomas, Apostle of Jesus, took his preaching to southern India. There have been Roman Catholics there for 2000 years. Many families still name their sons THOMAS.
Google Christians in southern India.
Of these, 132 are Roman Catholic Church, 31 Syro-Malabar Church, and 11 Malankara Syrian Catholic Church dioceses. Despite the small percentage, India has the second largest Catholic population in Asia after the Philippines, due to India's huge population.

2. With the spread of Islam from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, India also acquired MANY Muslims. They TENDED to be in the north of India.
When India split into THREE countries there was West Pakistan and East Pakistan. West Pakistan became PAKISTAN. "PAK" means PURE in Urdu. "Stan" means COUNTRY. So Pakistan became the "land of the pure."

East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

Google
3. The Partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India; the Dominion of Pakistan is today the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh.
Following the Pakistan Army's brutal Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared the Independence of Bangladesh and called for nationwide resistance on 26 March midnight, which led the Bangladesh Liberation War to officially start within hours.

The real question is why India doesn’t force its Muslim population to leave for Pakistan.

Most Muslims have left India. Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim countries on either side of India.

Oddly enough India USED to tie itself together with ENGLISH. Otherwise they would still be warring over which Indian dialect to use as the major language of the media.

The HORRORS of those years can only be imagined. I had friend whose father had been an Anglican cleric in Pakistan. The family was drummed out and he witnessed the horrors. The family carried CHRISTIAN BIBLES at all times so that the marauders would pass them by. And they DID pass them by. The rage was between Hindu and Muslim. There were so few Christians that they were, for the most part, left alone. But, they saw the handwriting on the wall and left that war-torn area.

His family emigrated to England then to the USA over the years.

The ties that bound non-Hindu people to India will melt away over the generations.

From what I've read the Sikhs are Indian and Hindu but are the country's military and police and follow a SIMILAR brand of Hinduism: Sikhism.
They wear the turbans and males never cut their hair--thus the turban to wrap up the tresses and keep them out of their eyes. :o)

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