Hindus constitute an important minority in a number of countries around the world.
These communities, especially in South Asia, have experienced a tumultuous history,
often suffering severe human rights violations. Such human rights violations have
persisted for many generations, but have rarely attracted the sustained attention of human rights agencies. It is our intention to subject these human rights violations to regular scrutiny, which the fate of these communities surely deserves.
Followers of Hindu traditions, with a population estimated at nearly one billion people,
constitute the third largest religious group in the world, after Christians (about two billion
or 33% of the world’s population) and Muslims (1.2 billion or about 20%). The majority
of Hindus live in the Indian sub-continent and, numbering nearly 827 million, Hindus
constitute 80.5% of the population of India. However, the Hindu Diaspora reaches
beyond the Indian subcontinent to Europe, Africa, the Far East and North America where
they comprise substantial minorities. In the Fiji Islands and some Caribbean nations,
Hindus comprise near or outright majorities with representation at the highest levels of
government. As a “spiritual community” of related religious and cultural practices (the
major religious groups within Hinduism are Vaishnava, Smartha, Shaiva, and Shakta),
Hindus do not adhere to a single Scripture, or owe allegiance to a single religious
institution. Hindus regard Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs as a part of their own wider family
though they constitute distinct religious traditions themselves. This report excludes their
particular concerns though the fate of Buddhists in Tibet since 1950 is a matter of tragic
historical significance that has been the subject of investigation by various agencies.
While the issue of human rights is of global significance, this report focuses on ongoing
human rights violations in three regions where Hindus constitute a minority: Bangladesh,
Pakistan, and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir – a substantial portion of which is
claimed and occupied by Pakistan and China. The focus of this report is on these three
regions since colonial India, under the suzerainty of Great Britain, included these regions.
The departure of the British colonialists in 1947 left India divided into a Muslim majority
Pakistan (made up of two regions – West and East Pakistan) and a Hindu majority India.
India embraced secularism, proclaiming the State neutral between religions, but allowed
minorities to retain their own sectarian practices in areas like personal law. And India
established the largest and longest sustained democracy in the region. Pakistan
proclaimed itself as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with the adoption of a Constitution
based on Islamic jurisprudence, curtailing the political rights of the mainly Hindu
minority, who constituted approximately 23% of the population in West Pakistan and
29% in East Pakistan. The Hindu population has dwindled to less than 2% in the former,
and an estimated 9-10% in the latter. With Indian military intervention, East Pakistan
seceded in 1971 from West Pakistan following the genocide committed by the armed
forces of Pakistan against its own citizens, and it became Bangladesh. However, rapid
Islamization of the Bangladesh polity over the last decade has led to a substantial rise in
attacks against minority groups — the largest minority constituency being Hindu.
The Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir is the focus of territorial claims by Pakistan,
which has encouraged and abetted terrorism, successfully expelling the entire Hindu
population of several hundred thousand from the Kashmir valley through a campaign of
murder, rape and kidnap. Pakistani military posturing and an alleged threat of nuclear
warfare have diverted attention from the reality of atrocities against Hindus in Kashmir
since 1989. Successive Indian governments have paid scant attention to the fate of the
Hindu minority of Kashmir because they have concluded that attempting to address their
legitimate concerns might constitute an avoidable distraction for the political resolution
of the dispute over Kashmir. The media in India and abroad has taken the cue from this
fateful governmental silence over the human rights violations of Kashmiri Hindus by
largely ignoring them. World human rights organizations have also been muted in their
response to the tragedy that has overtaken Kashmir Hindus.
This first annual report on the status of Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India’s State
of Jammu and Kashmir will demonstrate that Hindu (and Buddhist) citizens of
Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Jammu and Kashmir, are suffering grievous violations of
universally recognized human rights. The absence of this issue from the global dialogue
on human rights, and the manifest absence of substantive documentation of human rights
abuse against Hindus by prominent media sources and non-governmental organizations
dedicated to human rights issues have prompted this report. This report also seeks to
provide a historical overview of the Indian subcontinent since 1947 and to create a
contextual framework to understand the genesis of the abuses documented herein.
Source : Hindu American Foundation 2005
