ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, December 3, 2014 (Times of India): A Hindu temple was attacked by fanatics in Pakistan, the temple was torched, the stone Deity of Lord Hanuman blackened with soot, and some religious books burnt. This attack on November 21, in the Tando Mohammad Khan area in Sindh, and reported in the Dawn newspaper, is however, not a one-off incident in a country where such attacks are increasingly turning out to be the rule, rather than an exception. In a similar attack March 28 this year, a small Hindu temple was torched near Fateh Chowk in Hyderabad, Sindh, triggering widespread protests by the Hindu community. Only a couple of weeks before that, a dharamshala, or a pilgrims’ rest-house, was set ablaze and some statues of Hindu deities in an adjacent temple in Larkana were damaged
With a population of around seven million, Hindus form the largest religious minority group in Pakistan, which, at 195 million, is the second largest Muslim nation in the world after Indonesia. The arson attacks on Hindu temples and other incidents of religious intolerance have made the Hindu community in Pakistan nervous, according to media here. “As a last resort, we have decided to migrate to India,” a Dawn report in November quoted a Hindu man in Sindh as saying. “We are completely insecure here. We are looted, but our voice is not heard by the people in the saddle, our temples are attacked in broad daylight, but no one takes action, our girls are kidnapped and forcibly converted only to hear more empty promises of justice,” he said. “Nothing happened in the last 65 years and we don’t expect any improvement in future. Things will only become worse,” he added.
Following this attack, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved the setting up of a national commission on minorities to promote religious tolerance and harmony in the country, in accordance with the June 19 Supreme Court judgment on rights of minority communities.