Sindh has witnessed a series of incidents targeting the Hindu community, like the one on the eve of Holi, the religious and cultural festival of Hindus. A gang of goons assaulted a temple, vandalised deities and torched the community centre in Larkana, following a rumour that a member of the Hindu community had desecrated the Quran.

It was a tormenting night for hundreds of peaceful Hindu families living in Larkana -- a city believed to be the ruling seat of the PPP and the Bhuttos.

While local administration’s usual slackness allowed a lunatic mob to unleash the horror, enlightened citizens including a few saner clerics, political workers and civil society activists intervened to contain the damage. Fabricated charges used as a pretext to target the Hindus are not yet established and local administration has not yet taken the criminals to task.

The titular leader of the party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, was able to quell the unrest through the local administration and local clerics. But the mania did not subside. It surfaced at other locations. Within a few days, temples were targeted near Hyderabad and Mithi town -- Kolhi community was tormented in Dumbalo town of Badin district and Ahmadis in Tando Allahyar. These incidents clearly indicate a well-meditated plan and not just spontaneous and isolated acts.

In some cases, no local community or individual was found involved and religious sentiments were incited to settle personal scores. A slouchy provincial government responded with taking notices, seeking reports and ritualistically condemning conspiracy to jeopardise democracy and peace. It failed to assuage the plight of the Hindu community and did not offer any succor to the traumatised victims.

Sindh had always been a safe bastion for religious and sectarian minorities where unprecedented cultural harmony remained impregnable even during the worst religious and sectarian violence in other parts of Pakistan. A major shift has occurred due to migration from other provinces and illegal immigration from other countries. The native communities of Sindh did not resort to any religious acrimony even at the time of partition when the subcontinent experienced an abominable human catastrophe.

Political and literary stalwarts like G.M. Syed, Rasool Bakhsh Palejo, Ibrahim Joyo, Shaikh Ayaz, Sobho Gyanchandani, Ibrahim Joyo, Muhammad Usman Deeplai, Amar Jalil, Rasheed Bhatti and countless other leaders, activists and writers nurtured a progressive and secular Sindhi nationalism that kept Sindhi society insulated from religious and sectarian schism. Political and cultural movements of Sindh derived strength from the plurality of Sindhi society and cemented a bond to strive for the political rights of Sindh.

A secular nationalist movement dominated the political scene for several decades and kept people from all backgrounds glued as one entity and did not ostracise anyone for their faith and identity. However, extremist elements have veered their energies towards Sindh during the recent years. Roadside religious seminaries have started surfacing with alarming frequency; clerics’ visits from Punjab and other areas have become more frequent to rural areas of Sindh; and flood disasters have come as a heaven-sent opportunity for their penetration.

When the magnitude of disasters demanded immediate response, the government and humanitarian agencies were entangled in procedural traps.

Religious outfits with their loaded coffers and fully facilitated network were agile enough to swing into action promptly. Consecutive floods of three years followed by recent drought in Thar provided new inroads for religious outfits to infiltrate in the hitherto inaccessible communities of rural Sindh.

Poor governance, chronic corruption, unremitting lawlessness and a faltered service delivery apparatus has mounted frustration in the rural areas. Unemployment, poverty and food insecurity are key drivers that constrain poor people to send their children to seminaries to relieve them from food and clothing obligations. An amalgam of these reasons created apertures of opportunities for religious outfits.

Northern districts of Sindh are the worst poverty-stricken areas, where seminaries are sprawling rapidly. Last year, a survey of the provincial Home Department revealed that there were 12,545 seminaries in the province. Almost three-quarters of these seminaries were located in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur and most of them were being run by non-local people. The report identified 600 of these seminaries as dangerous.

Madarassa-related violence has gained a new peak in Karachi where religious and sectarian killings have outshined ethnic rivalries. Karachi has turned into a volcano of violence and large parts of the city are virtually controlled by a variety of mafias including extremist elements.

The government’s writ was exposed during the general elections of 2013 when leading political parties were unable to undertake electoral campaigns. Election rallies and candidates were targeted and local administration was virtually crippled.

Currently, the ongoing operation has also failed to fetter violent and extremist elements. Likewise, rural areas, particularly the districts of northern Sindh, are gradually falling to such elements. In 2010, Taliban claimed responsibility for torching 27 Nato tankers in Shikarpur. Shrine of Hajan Shah was also attacked that claimed two innocent lives and injured more than a dozen. A more disturbing trend of refusing polio vaccination has recently surfaced.

In 2013, officials of the provincial Health Department reported an alarming 23,723 refusals during polio vaccination campaign. Apart from Pakhtun/Afghan enclaves of Karachi and Jamshoro district, a sizeable number of refusals were reported from the districts of upper Sindh, mainly Shikarpur and Kashmore. Coincidently, a sizeable Hindu community resides in these districts and can easily become a prey to any wave of frenzy.

The Hindu community has been a lynchpin of socio-economic fabric of Sindh. Before the partition, Hindus constituted a robust mercantile class in Sindh. The partition resulted in their mass exodus that deprived Sindh of its vibrant middle class. Urban areas of Sindh went through a socio-cultural and demographic shift that induced a deeper sense of alienation in Sindh. Hindus were 51 per cent of 0.45 million residents of Karachi at the time of the partition. Within a short span of four years, the population of Karachi in 1951 swelled to 1.13 million but the Hindu population shrunk to mere two per cent.

The sudden cut in an educated and entrepreneur middle-class created a social vacuum in Sindh. The residual Sindhi Muslims lacked education and market foothold hence they were virtually excluded from mainstream of the society. With the passage of time, influx of immigrants set the demographic configuration off balance which resulted in a deeper consternation among native population.

According to the census of 1998, Sindhi-speaking constituted 60 per cent of the population in Sindh. Native population fears it might turn into a minority if unchecked emigration is not stopped.

In 1998, Hindus constituted approx 6.5 per cent of population in Sindh. Hence the recent wave of migration of Hindus can potentially lead to an ominous demographic shift for native population. The knife-edge balance of population will reach a tipping point if Hindus continued to quit Sindh.

Against this backdrop, the political parties of Sindh consider targeting of Hindu community as a planned subterfuge. Relentless intimidation of Hindus has expedited their migration in recent years and these incidents will further accelerate its pace. Stalking and abduction of Hindu businessmen for ransom and extortion, forced conversion of young Hindu girls and desecrating their sacred places are aimed at creating an acute sense of insecurity among Hindus to force them to abandon their motherland.

The government has done much less than desired to preclude emigration of Hindus. In its previous tenure, the then president, Asif Zardari, formed a committee to look into the reports of mass migration of Hindus. However, stereotype state of denial prevailed and the committee reported that Hindus are not migrating but visiting India to offer religious rituals. The committee also made a few useful recommendations to stop forced marriages and conversions of Hindu girls but those did not receive any response by the government.