Fear and persecution

On one of those occasional trips to Karachi a couple of years ago, my sister-in-law complained to me that my favourite niece, Misaal, was not doing well at school. She would barely pass her exams and spend time with her friends rather than concentrating on her studies.
Misaal and I sat down and, besides chatting about other things, I finally told her what my late father who is her grandfather had once told me as a child. Recounting some political events and social upheavals impacting the family over generations, he said that in order to escape persecution of any kind and to be able to live a dignified life wherever we happen to live, we do not have any choice but to work hard and excel in whatever we do. I always like to think that my spiel that evening worked on her.
The other night when among a group of friends discussing both opportunities and diversions available to middleclass children today, I also related this incident from a couple of years ago. The mention of the word ‘persecution’ made a friend look at me with hollow eyes and said curtly, “What do you know of persecution, Sir? What does a Muslim child going to a decent school in Pakistan know what persecution is like? Now you can actually boast about some of your ancestor’s suffering due to whatever – race, faith or political ideology. And you can surely empathise with us but you can never understand what it feels like.”
I stood corrected. My friend, who happens to be a Christian from Punjab, is absolutely right. In the land of the pure, you have to be a non-Muslim to understand what persecution is like. You have to be low caste and working class non-Muslim in Pakistan to appreciate what living in constant fear is like. Muslims living below the poverty line or struggling to make their ends meet outnumber Christians and Hindus living in similar conditions. But Muslims do not live under a constant fear of humiliation or even annihilation the way our non-Muslim citizens live.
Let

us not speak about the bigger incidents of violence, rampage, assaults, arson, immolation, loot and plunder, forced marriages and forced conversion that make news and receive condemnation even from those religio-political parties in Pakistan whose ideology has largely contributed to bringing us where we are. Let us just remind ourselves of some common occurrences and attitudes and behaviour which Pakistanis belonging to minority faiths observe, witness and experience on a daily basis or are fearful of.
I have shared this before but no harm in reiterating that a young Christian boy who was a close relation of a heroic Pakistan Air Force officer was asked in his school, not just by fellow students but a young teacher, if his family also celebrated August 14 as Independence Day and whether he would participate in the event organised by the school.
A friend of mine who comes from southern Punjab once said that, when travelling on a Daewoo bus from Islamabad to his native town, he tries to conceal his identity. When he is travelling over Christmas or Easter, he never tells people sitting next to him why is he going home. He says he is uncertain and scared of the reaction of the fellow passengers if he tells them he is Christian and going home to celebrate Christmas. “Even if someone wants to rob me or take away my possessions, he can ‘tell’ others that I have committed blasphemy. I will be lynched then and there.”
Another old colleague, while travelling on a bus from one secondary town in central Punjab to another some years ago, was refused tea at a café and asked to bring his own cup. They came to know he was not a Muslim because when someone came up to him and asked if he would be joining them for Friday prayers, he automatically said he was Christian. He comes from a highly educated family and those refusing him a cup of tea were vendors who may have never seen a school, leave alone a college. But they were told by the clerics and members of the sectarian and religious militias operating in their area that non-Muslims, and in some cases Shias, cannot be served in the same utensils.
A former Ahmadi acquaintance of mine who was a chemical engineer was once chatting with some of his neighbours on a municipal issue they all faced together in the street. Randomly, he mentioned his ‘going to the mosque’ on Friday. Not one but all he was speaking to said that he must be careful and must not refer to his place of worship that way. He told me that he had told children in the family to be extra careful. The family later migrated from Pakistan and now lives in Canada.
Dhurmat was a janitor at a school in Karachi where my mother taught for a good 30 years. Supporting a family was tough on a meagre salary and like everyone else in his profession he would also work on his own in the evenings and during weekends for extra money. Everyone called him Dhurmat, even though that was not his real name. His real name was Gurmukh (the face of the Guru) but it became Dhurmat. Why? Because when he was a sixteen-year-old boy and got this job in the school after an interview with the administrator, he was introduced to the principal. She misheard the name when the boy spoke in a meek voice.
She said, “Dhurmat, I hope you will work hard in this job.” He nodded without lifting his head. Then she introduced him to other staff and students in the morning assembly the next day and again called him Dhurmat. I asked him once why he did not correct the principal ever. He said that begum sahib could never be wrong and that he was young and had thought for many years that his illiterate father mispronounced his name and that it was, in fact, Dhurmat and not Gurmukh.
During recess at school, when he was tired after scrubbing floors in the morning and cleaning bathrooms all day, he was given something to eat by the teachers, a samosa or two or a patty with a cup of tea. A number of times, I saw him squatting on the floor in a corner and facing the wall while eating. I asked him why he did that. He laughed at me and said, “You are young Chotay Sahib. I am a Hindu who cleans toilets and mop floors. Not just that even the other support staff members wouldn’t like me to sit and eat with them, they do not want to see me eating in front of them either.
“I was ten years old when we lived near Ramaswami (an old neighbourhood in Karachi). A group of boys kicked me hard in my ribs when I drank water from the same hand pump they were using. I have to be careful Chotay Sahib.” Sometime after losing his eyesight due to consuming foul liquor, Dhurmat passed away. His son was employed in his place by the school.
We cannot do much about the profane westerners who continue to dominate us through their knowledge and technology but surely we can instil fear in the hearts of the most marginalised in our own society, break their will and take away their dignity. That is what we do.
Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
The writer is a poet and author basedin Islamabad.