Minority protection

The spate of attacks we have seen on minority communities, the most recent one in Karachi when 45 members of the Ismaili community were killed in an attack on their bus, appears to have finally moved authorities into some kind of action. Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali has said that all provinces should carry out an audit of minority groups, to determine their number and places of residence, and devise a plan to protect them. It is somewhat ironic that the government should come up with this after so many non-Muslims have died. It is also sad that we need to think in these terms. Within the constitution of Pakistan, all citizens are listed as equals. There should be no reason why certain groups should require special means to keep their lives intact. But in the country we live in today, this is indeed the case. What is also alarming is that the number of groups who are in danger seems to be growing steadily.
Tied in to the question of protecting the lives of non-Muslims, who comprise less than three percent of our population, is the matter of keeping their places of worship safe. In the past, many have been deliberately damaged, some seized by land mafias or other groups and still others simply permitted to fall into decay. The Sindh government has ordered the chief of Sindh Police to begin a process of registering minority places of worship so that we can know their number and their location. Certainly, it would help protect places of worship if you could establish how many existed and where. While a meeting was held in April, chaired by Sindh Minorities Minister Gyan Chand Israni, to discuss the registration process, only two other representatives of minority groups were present at the session with others arguing they had been left out of the picture. All minority communities must be included in any process intended to better their current situation. The protective measures urged by the interior minister and the registration of holy places could help in

this. But the reality also is that far more will be needed, including a well-planned effort to change mindsets and persuade people everywhere that our country belongs to non-Muslims as much as it does to the majority religious group in the country.