One can only imagine the extent of the desperation that must have driven over 300 Pakistani Hindus to escape the clutches of the Islamic State, to find protection in India. In the first week of May, the group which is comprised of over 311 Hindu men, women and children from Bahbalpur district in Pakistan fled the Islamic state under the pretext of taking a pilgrimage to the Ganga. They have been camped out in Sirsa railway station ever since.
All of them hold valid visitor’s visas for the period of a month. They came by way of the border through Amritsar , Ambala and Bhatinda and reached Sirsa on last Friday. The entire group vehemently refuses to go back to Pakistan at any cost. The suffering and atrocities that they have suffered at the hands of the Pakistani government and society has paralyzed these people with fear. They had been seeking methods of escape for the last two years. Finally it was the ploy of claiming visas for pilgrimage to India that got them the coveted Visitor’s Visas they needed. “We said we had to go to take a dip in the holy Ganga”, their leader Bhuria Lal commented. It was an incredibly tense and dangerous break for refugees who were ready to do anything to escape from the Pakistani authority’s clutches.
Their spokesperson is 29 year old Mechanical Engineer Bhuriya Lal. He said, he had to run from pillar to post in his bid to get a job in Pakistan but failed. This was a natural consequence of the fact that he was a Hindu in a Islamic State. These Hindu families from the one dozen villages of Mandi Yaiman tehsil in Bahavalpur district were constantly victimised by the Muslims and subjected to innumerable atrocities and injustices by the Islamic authorities. Bhuriya Lal almost broke in his description of the cruelties and crimes that were perpetrated by Muslims on the hapless Hindus. He said, more than five Hindus of his community alone had been murdered over the past year and the murderers still walked around their neighborhood with full sanction of the Pakistani authorities.
Bhuriya Lal also remarked that Nawaz Sharief’s regime has been the most brutal of all so far. The entire group is determined that if the Indian government doesn’t let them stay in India, they would prefer to lay down on the tracks rather than return to their hellish situations in Pakistan.
Every single day the Hindus were threatened with dire consequences if they did not read Namaaz. They were beaten up and threatened everyday with death for their refusal to convert to Islam. One has to laud the courage of these brave people, who still managed to hold their ground and maintain their faith in Hinduism. The families were reluctant to leave all their ancestral property behind in Pakistan, but their tolerance was shattered recently when the Pakistanis started making sexual advances towards the womenfolk. “It is primarily because our honor was in danger that we decided it was too much.. Everyday the threat of rape and torture was made to the women. We could not be certain when something evil might happen.” commented one of the men.
When asked why they had remained in Pakistan for so long in the first place, the first reaction of 60-year-old Khaira Ram Bavrian was that “Wrong decisions made by our elders forced us to face atrocities at the hands of Muslims in Pakistan for over 52 years”. He also stated that if only at the time of Partition in 1947, their elders had escaped to India from Pakistan, then they would never have had to face the level of victimization and atrocities which were inflicted on them in their native villages of Bahavalpur district in Pakistan.
Ravat Ram said that most of the Hindus were deliberately kept illiterate as they were never allowed to pursue their education. Instead they were forced to work as laborers in their ancestral fields which are now in the hands of Muslims. Their lands had been grabbed by Muslims at the time of Partition. Most of the time they were not even given their wages. In order to get a simple passport they had to wait for over three years. In the end the desperate families managed to round up Rs. 4000- Rs. 5000 to bribe the agents for a passport and visa.
Even the journey with the passports was fraught with danger and fear as they were all harassed at the Atari border at the time of checking of passports. The entire group had to wait for two days for getting clearance from the authorities and finally again had to produce bribes to escape from their clutches.
The citizens of Sirsa have been providing the refugees with adequate rations and other items of daily use since last week. Since the families have nowhere to go however, they have been camped out at the Sirsa Railway Station. Bhuria Ram also said that the conduct of Mr. B.S. Sandhu, Senior Superintendent of Police, Sirsa had made them they were hopeful that they would be granted asylum by the Union Government to settle in India .
“We would rather die than go back to that Islamic hell called Pakistan” was their collective comment.