It is a moment of deep introspection as minorities are on the receiving end. The submission from Dr Shoaib Suddle, Chairman One-Man Commission on Minority Rights, is startling as he had publicly expressed his helplessness in upholding the rights of religious minorities, and went on to squarely blame the bureaucracy for creating impediments in implementing the 2014 Supreme Court’s landmark decision regarding the rights of minorities. If that is so then it is no surprise that society sits at the cuff of many more Jaranwala incidents in times to come. The crocodile’s tears shed by successive administrations and their false flag appraisals that culprits shall be brought to book, after every such disgusting tragedies, is nothing but a cover-up. The testimony is that district administrations and police have never acted in real time to quell the fissures of crossing swords with the minorities. They only spring into action as a damage-control exercise, and till then the worst had gone through.
The sense of pessimism that is prevalent among the minorities should be a cause for concern for the State of Pakistan. They are in need of being protected, and assured of their due rights, not as a consolation but as a constitutional writ. That is what the Father of the Nation, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, meant as he decreed that religion will have no role in the affairs of the state, and the minorities are free to practise their belief without any fear and obstruction. That resolve is in need of being implemented in letter and spirit, and the window-dressing measures after fiasco must come to an end. This can only be done when the authorities exhibit their non-partisanship in civil and law-enforcement affairs, and are apt at the call of law. The tendency of appeasing majority sections of society by virtue of their power clout and belief-centric hegemon is acting as an anti-thesis for our co-existence. We have been here: community elders and religious scholars have an indispensable role to play in educating the masses, and they must stand up and get counted.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 21st, 2023.
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