soc.culture.pakistan

Outside a Hindu Temple in Pakistan

By Manu Joseph, TNN
THE TIMES OF INDIA
Sunday, February 24, 2008

Karachi bears the symptoms of Mumbai. It has the Arabian
Sea where the hordes go to breathe because the ceiling is
so high, hopeful youth walk briskly on the roads to seize
the day and of course fail, beautiful women travel in the
quiet isolation of the backseat with a man they know as
driver, eternal Parsis fear that they are all dying. And,
incredibly, Shiva, Lakshmi and Vishnu have encroached on
prime real estate.

Outside one such temple in the posh Clifton neighbourhood,
on a distant Monday four years ago, stood a man in pathan
suit. His name was Jayanti Ratna. He was wielding a stick
and surveying the large crowds that were trying to enter
the temple. "Jai Shiv Shankar," he kept screaming.
Occasionally, he stopped some people by placing his stick
horizontally around their chests. "Muslims are not
allowed," he said to them. He stopped me too. "Are you a
Hindu," he said, "Muslims are not allowed inside." That was
the first time during the two month tour of Pakistan that
my religion was asked. And it was outside a Hindu temple.
He was shown the passport. His eyes softened. "Christians,
too, are not allowed. But then you are an Indian."

It was inevitable that he would let me pass. Wasn't it
dangerous for a man to stand in the heart of Karachi,
outside a temple, and ask Muslims to get lost? "Not at
all," he said, "I was born here. I belong here. I'll
exercise my right to serve my faith."

The next day, outside the Lakshmi Narayan temple, a small
austere shrine that stood at the edge of a creek, four
Pakistani girls were stopped at the gate by an ageless
Gujarati woman called Bani. "Muslims aren't allowed," Bani
told them angrily.

"We just want to walk around and look," Rumi, one of the
girls said.

"Then go to the zoo," Bani told them.

The girls were not outraged at all. They pleaded in between
giggles. "We just want to pray," one of them said. From
inside the temple emerged, Hirakumari, a young woman who
was related in a complicated way to Bani. She shouted at
the girls, "Go pray to your god. You eat cows, make fun of
our gods, ask if our gods don't feel cold being naked..."
But Hirakumari would eventually tell me that deep down she
loved the Muslims. "They will feed us for the rest of our
lives, if it comes to that. Pakistan is the only place I
call home but how can we let them inside the temple?"

Pakistan's Hindus number somewhere between 2.5 million (an
official estimate which is suspect) and 5 million (the
figure granted by Hindu politician Kishinchand Parwani).
Over 95 percent of them live in the Sindh province, chiefly
impoverished farmers and labourers. Some of them are
visibly rich though, and they are allowed to be rich
without peril. Like fashion designer Deepak Perwani who had
a Ganesha tattooed on his right arm, and whose red dyed
hair often perplexed urchins. His analysis of the Indo-Pak
divide was, "Indians can't cut a salwar to save their lives
and Pakistanis can't cut a churidar."

Ten years ago, when he wanted to open a store in Karachi,
his friends asked him not to flaunt his name on the door.
He didn't listen. "There's been no trouble, not a single
incident outside my shop," he said. Since Partition, the
only time the Hindus of Karachi felt insecure was in the
aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition.

But Perwani, once Pakistan's cultural ambassador to China,
did have a problem. The Sindhi community was small and it
was not easy for him to find a suitable girl. "The girl has
to be imported," he said, "since I am doing too well here
to be exported." His mother Renu, an amicable and efficient
woman said, "People in India don't want their daughters to
live in Pakistan. It's a mindset." As she considered the
various options for her son, her eyes turned a bit severe.
"I will never accept a Muslim girl in my house."

The simple aggression of Pakistan's Hindus was just one of
the many things that confused the Indians who toured that
country in the merciless summer of 2004. The visible life
on the streets of a nation that was almost always governed
by the military and of another that glorified democracy,
was the same. The roads and the slums looked the same. Even
there, lazy cops stood in street corners without poise.
People drove like fools. Pedestrians ran across the road
and giggled at the end of the effort. This place was home.
Our plight was the same. Our hereditary memory was common.
True, pork was hard to find here and beef easily available.
Every hotel room, no matter how cheap, had a bidet. There
were no pubs, and emasculated newspapers said, "Pakistan
and India" instead of "India and Pakistan". But we had
expected much grander things to separate the two nations.

After an unscathed life in Pakistan, a Hindu in Karachi
becomes dust in a crematorium that lies beside a Muslim
graveyard. The crematorium has a room called the 'library'
where there are no books. Just bundles of ashes of men and
women who have become memories. These ashes will stay here,
sometimes for years, until the relatives are granted visas
to let them immerse the remains in Ganga.

More at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Review/Outside_a_Hindu_Temple_in_Pakistan/articleshow/2808661.cms

Jai Maharaj
http://tinyurl.com/24fq83
http://www.mantra.com/jai
http://www.mantra.com/jyotish
Om Shanti

Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust

Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org

The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

DISCLAIMER AND CONDITIONS

o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.