Hindus constitute an important minority in a number of countries around the world. These communities, especially in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan have experienced a tumultuous history, and their human rights have been violated with impunity by the majority communities, with or without the connivance of the ruling governments. Such human rights violations have persisted for many generations, but have rarely attracted the sustained attention of human rights agencies. It is our intention to subject these human rights violations to regular scrutiny, which the fate of these communities surely deserves. This report includes human rights conditions in Afghanistan and Fiji, in addition to Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, as highlighted in last year’s report.
Followers of Hindu traditions, with a population estimated at nearly one billion people, constitute the third largest religious group in the world, after Christians (about two billion or 33% of the world’s population) and Muslims (1.2 billion or about 20%). The majority of Hindus live in the Indian sub-continent and, numbering nearly 827 million, Hindus constitute 80.5% of the population of India. However, the Hindu Diaspora reaches beyond the Indian subcontinent to Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and North America where they comprise substantial minorities. In Fiji and some Caribbean nations, Hindus comprise of a significant portion of the population, with representation at the highest levels of government. As a “spiritual community” of related religious and cultural practices (the major religious groups within Hinduism are Vaishnava, Smartha, Shaiva, and Shakta), Hindus do not adhere to a single Scripture, or owe allegiance to a single religious institution. Hindus regard Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs as a part of their own wider family though they constitute distinct religious traditions themselves. This report excludes their particular concerns, though the fate of Buddhists in Tibet since 1950 is a matter of tragic historical significance that has been the subject of investigation by various international agencies.
While the issue of human rights is of global significance, this report focuses on ongoing human rights violations in the following countries/regions where Hindus constitute a minority: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Pakistan, and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The focus of this annual report, the second by HAF, is slightly larger than that of the first report. Included in this report is the condition of Hindus in the troubled nation of Afghanistan, recently liberated from the Islamic fundamentalist tentacles of the Taliban, and in the Republic of Fiji Islands, where Hindus, who constitute a substantial minority, have been discriminated against both through official edict and daily harassment, intimidation and violence. This report does not cover the important human rights issues that Hindus face within other parts of India including caste discrimination, women's issues, terrorism, and discriminatory laws.
In our first report, published in 2005, we provided a brief summary of the history of the South Asian region. The departure of the British colonialists in 1947 left India divided into a Muslim majority Pakistan (made up of two regions – West and East Pakistan) and a Hindu majority India. India embraced secularism, proclaiming the State neutral between religions, but allowed minorities to retain their own sectarian practices in areas like personal law. India established the largest and longest sustained democracy in the region. Pakistan labeled itself the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with the adoption of a Constitution based on Islamic jurisprudence. It curtailed the political rights of minorities, and Hindus, who constituted approximately 23% of the population in West Pakistan and 29% in East Pakistan, were the major victims under the Islamic dispensation. The Hindu population has dwindled to less than 2% in Pakistan (former West Pakistan), and to about 9% in Bangladesh (former East Pakistan). With Indian military intervention, East Pakistan seceded in 1971 from West Pakistan following the genocide committed by the armed forces of Pakistan against its own citizens. The new country was named Bangladesh. Rapid Islamization of the Bangladesh polity over the last decade has led to a substantial rise in attacks against minority groups -- the largest minority constituency being Hindu.
The Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir is the focus of territorial claims by Pakistan, which has encouraged and abetted terrorism, successfully expelling the entire Hindu population of several hundred thousand from the Kashmir Valley through a campaign of murder, rape and kidnappings. Pakistani military posturing and an alleged threat of nuclear warfare have diverted attention from the reality of atrocities against Hindus in Kashmir since 1989. Successive Indian governments have paid scant attention to the fate of the Hindu minority of Kashmir because they have concluded that attempting to address their legitimate concerns might constitute an avoidable distraction for the political resolution of the dispute over Kashmir. The media in India and abroad have taken the cue from this fateful governmental silence over the human rights violations of Kashmiri Hindus by largely ignoring them. World human rights organizations have also been muted in their response to the tragedy that has overtaken Kashmiri Hindus.
This second annual report, larger
in scope, will once again demonstrate that Hindu citizens of Afghanistan,
Bangladesh, Fiji, Pakistan, and the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir are
suffering grievous violations of universally recognized human rights. The absence of this issue from the global
dialogue on human rights, and the manifest absence of substantive documentation
of human rights abuse against Hindus by prominent media sources and
non-governmental organizations dedicated to human rights issues continue to
prompt our investigations and reports.
In addition, this year’s report addresses the underlying legal
frameworks by scrutinizing the violations of basic human rights that are
guaranteed by the constitutions of these countries. Furthermore, we will examine United Nations’
covenants and conventions to which many of these countries have agreed, but
have not upheld.