Pakistan inducts its first Hindu pilot into air force

Pakistan’s minorities, struggling under growing economic pressures amidst COVID-19 outbreak, got a rare good news this week when the country’s air force inducted Rahul Dev, who belongs to the Hindu community, as the General Duty (GD) pilot in the PAF squad.

 
Pakistani politicians and members of the minority community welcomed the news, which comes a time when coronavirus has affected life of the nation and piled up health and  financial concerns. The news is also significant in the regional perspective at a time when the entire South Asia is feeling the shocks of India’s anti-Muslim policies.

 
Dev is the first Hindu to get to that rank in Pakistan Air Force.

 
The pilot hails from a small village of district Tharparkar in southern Pakistan province of Sindh.

 
In recent years, Pakistan’s armed forces have also inducted members belonging to Christians and Sikhs, although extremists int the majority Muslim community have targeted them on accusations of blasphemy.

Pakistan army says it has a number of troops from Hindu community especially from Sindh. Lal Chand Rabri was the first ever Hindu soldier who laid down his life while fighting terrorists in North Waziristan in 2017. Another Hindu major in the Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence is Dr. Kelash Garvada.

 
Some of the biases against the Hindu and Sikh communities date back to the 1947 violence that brook out in the eastern Punjab – which is now Indian Punjab – at the time of Pakistan’s creation and India’s independence. While some religious extremists leaders have targeted members of Christian community on alleged instances of desecration of Islamic symbols.

Some mainstream politicians and human rights advocates have fought back against such instances and called for equal status for all citizens. In a well known case, when the Supreme Court gave freedom to Aasia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy and spent years in prison, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government provided her protection in 2018.

Last week, the US Commission on Religious Freedom acknowledged some of the steps Pakistan has taken to promote religious freedom including opening of the famous Kartarpur Corridor to Indian Sikh pilgrims.

The Commission, however, still called for keeping Pakistan in a group of countries of particular concern.
The Commission also noted Pakistan’s willingness to talk about the issues facing religious minorities.

On India, the US Commission asked the State Department to get the country back into the group of countries whom Washington views as countries of specific concern with regard to religious freedom.

It specifically criticized New Delhi – led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva following BJP – for using the parliamentary majority to follow discriminatory policies like the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Registrar, which deny path to citizenship to Muslims while granting citizenship to followers of all other major religions.

 
In Pakistan, a major example of a Hindu minister in the federal cabinet of early days of Pakistan was Jogendra Nath Mandal. He was among the founding leaders of modern state of Pakistan, and legislator serving as country’s first minister of law and labor.

 
It was 1980s when the process of assimilation of Sikhs and then Hindus into Pakistani society started with their participation in politics and business and other fields of life. Rana Chandra Singh from Tharparkar served as the federal minister in those days.

 
In 2018, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) awarded a ticket for the senate, the upper house of Pakistan’s parliament to Karishna Kumari Kohli. She is the first ever Hindu Dalit woman member of Pakistan’s Senate.

Despite all the grievances, mainly alleged discrimination on religious grounds, Pakistan’s Hindu and Christian communities have always contributed to the development of their homeland.

 
Recently, leaders of the Hind community even rejected New Delhi’s offer to Hindus to migrate to India under the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.

 
“Pakistan’s Hindu community unanimously rejects this bill, which is tantamount to dividing India on communal lines,” Raja Asar Manglani, patron of the Pakistan Hindu Council said.

 
“This is a unanimous message from Pakistan’s entire Hindu community to Indian Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi. A true Hindu will never support this legislation,” he said.

 
Still, many Pakistani politicians and human rights leaders believe Pakistan needs to do a lot of things to give due representation to minorities in the national life, and also do away discriminatory laws.