Pakistan’s bigotry has once again shown its fangs. Last month, Pakistan witnessed another violent mob attack on Christians. Hundreds of Islamic militants killed Nazir Masih Gill, an elderly Christian shoemaker who clerics falsely accused of desecrating the Quran. The mob filmed themselves kicking and punching Gill and looting his shoe factory, posting the footage to social media. A mob of 400 took part in an attack on a Mujahid Christian settlement in the Punjab city of Sargodha, destroying a church and burning Christian homes.
Pakistan has become a tyrannical state against its religious minorities. Pakistani mullahs, generals and politicians have been trying to gradually homogenize the country since the very beginning of its existence. Ultimately, this process threatens not only the survival of religious minorities but also of the Pakistani state itself. Pakistan’s Christian community is the biggest victim of this Islamization project by the country’s mullahs and generals.
Pakistan’s Debt to Christians
Christian leaders and intellectuals played a prominent role in the creation of Pakistan. In 1941, when Mohammed Ali Jinnah decided to establish a daily newspaper, dawn To promote the Pakistan movement, he chose Potan Joseph, a Christian from Kerala, as its first editor-in-chief. Another prominent Christian leader, Dewan Bahadur S.P. Sinha, played a key role in the Pakistan movement, facing severe threats from radical Sikhs. A native of Sialkot, Sinha was elected to the Punjab Assembly in 1937 and emerged as an ardent supporter of the Pakistan movement. Moreover, he actively used his position as Speaker of the Punjab Assembly to promote the cause of Pakistan.
Other Christian leaders who supported the Pakistan movement included Chaudhry Chandu Lal, journalist Elmer Chaudhry (father of Pakistan’s famous war hero, Lt. Col. Cecil Chaudhry), and BL Lalia Ram. In 1942, the All India Christian Association pledged its unconditional and full support to the founders of Pakistan, and church leaders in Punjab strongly supported the idea of Pakistan and encouraged their brethren to emigrate to Pakistan once it was created. Chaudhry Chandu Lal toured Pathankot and Gurdaspur districts and obtained resolutions from Christians there that they wanted to join Pakistan. Cecil Gibbon appeared before the Radcliffe Commission and demanded that the city of Lahore be handed over to Pakistan. Jinnah expressed his gratitude to the Christian community for their support in the Pakistan movement, saying, “We will never forget the favour you have given us.”
In August 1947, SP Sinha became the first Speaker of the newly formed West Punjab Assembly of Pakistan. However, after the passing of the Objectives Resolution, it was decided that a non-Muslim should not lead an Islamic Assembly and Sinha was forced to resign. (The Objectives Resolution adopted by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on March 12, 1949 declared that Pakistan’s future constitution would be based on Islamic principles and not on the secular democracy that Jinnah had promised.) This marked the start of Pakistan’s great betrayal of the Christian community and their winding path of hardship in the “Land of Purity”.
The invisible holocaust
At the time of Pakistan’s creation, non-Muslims made up 23% of the population. Today, that percentage has fallen to just 3.5%. Christians make up just 1.27% of the total population. Farahnaz Ispahani, in her book Cleansing the Land of Purity: A History of Religious Minorities in Pakistan (2018), writes that the process of creating an Islamic Pakistan began soon after independence, when the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq began promoting an intolerant version of Sunni Islam at the expense of other sects. Hindus, Christians and Ahmadis were hit hard by this aggressive Islamization campaign.
On March 27, 2016, a Christian family celebrating Easter in Lahore was targeted by a suicide bomber from Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the Pakistani Taliban. The bombing killed 73 people, including 29 innocent children. The terrorists chose Christians as their preferred target to demand an end to Pakistani military operations against the Taliban in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. A year before the Easter attack, two suicide bombings occurred at churches in Lahore’s Youhanabad area, killing about 15 people. Pakistani Christians have been forced to seek refuge in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In Pakistani popular culture, Christians are portrayed as a fifth column of Western imperialism that has invaded Pakistan.
On August 16, 2023, a Muslim mob set fire to four churches and several houses in Jaranwala, eastern Punjab, after rumors of two Christians desecrating the Quran made the news. The mob was led by Muslim clerics and also included members of the radical Islamic party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. The notorious blasphemy law is systematically used to persecute minorities, mainly Christians and Ahmadiyya.
In 2009, the international community took note of a high-profile case involving these laws: A Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was arrested on blasphemy charges. She was later sentenced to death in 2010, but acquitted of blasphemy charges and released by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2018. During the hearing of Asia’s case, two senior government officials who were defending Asia Bibi, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer and Federal Minister Clement Shahbaz Bhatti, were also killed. “Unless laws are passed that criminalize the fabrication of blasphemy allegations, Christians and other embattled minorities will never feel safe in their own country,” Bishop Samson Shukaruddin, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan, said recently.
The misfortune of Pakistan’s Christians is similar to that of the African-American community. During the American War of Independence, a black slave named James Armistead played a key role in the victory of the revolutionary forces. As a double agent, he leaked false information to the British while providing very accurate and detailed information to the Americans. However, after the war, the American elite treated him and his fellow African-Americans terribly wronged. Similarly, despite the immense contributions that Christian leaders made to the Pakistan cause, they were brutally humiliated in the Islamic Republic. This episode will be remembered as one of the most ignoble betrayals in history.
(Faisal CK Additional Advocate General, Government of Kerala. Views expressed are personal.
