Swaran Kishore Singh
The story of Hindu persecution in the Indian subcontinent is not a chapter of the past;it is a continuing saga of betrayal, bloodshed, and deliberate amnesia.From the systematic and recurring waves of targeted violence against Hindus in Pakistan and later in Bangladesh, to the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Kashmir since the 1990s and the targeted hostilities in Kerala since the 1980s, the pattern has endured, and, in many ways, become even more pronounced.For over eight centuries, the Hindu civilization, one of the oldest and most tolerant on this planet, has been assaulted, dismantled, and humiliated by waves of religious tyranny. Temples were razed, idols desecrated, scriptures burned, and millions enslaved, all in the name of religious supremacy. Yet the world, and tragically India’s own secular elite, chooses silence upon this civilizational wound, as acknowledging Hindu suffering isn’t good for liberal optics.
The partition of India was not a tragedy born of political accidents; it was the inevitable climax of a poisonous ideology, the Muslim League’s two-nation theory. The ideological seeds of the subcontinent’s eventual fracture were sown much earlier by influential Muslim thinkers such as Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University, and poetMuhammad Iqbal. Both contended that Hindus and Muslims represented distinct civilizational identities with divergent social and political interests, a belief that gradually eroded the possibility of a shared national framework.In 1946, when more than 90% of Muslims cast their vote for the Muslim League and consequently won 87% of the muslim seats, they did not vote for coexistence; they voted for separation, for religious exclusivism, for the birth of an Islamic state with no room for any other faith. The hollow argument that Muslims had no leadership within the Congress collapses under its own weight; the Congress was, at that point, led by Maulana Azad, a Muslim born in Saudi Arabia. In the same elections, the Hindu Mahasabha secured only 2 seats amid low overall support 2.73%. The truth is simpler: Muslims chose Pakistan because they did not want to live in a Hindu-majority India. Their voting patterns birthed Pakistan not as a land, but as Islam’s bastion.
When Pakistan was carved out, its soul was not geographic; it was ideological. It was founded as the fortress of Islam, and the moment of its creation was the moment when the extermination of the others became inevitable. The minorities who stayed behind were not citizens in anysense; they were hostages; Pakistan’s population was almost 15% Hindu in the West and nearly 28% in the East. Within a few decades, they were reduced to statistical dust, persecuted, converted, driven out, or eliminated. Together, the state and society waged a silent but effective war of erasure. The determination to form an Islamic state was so firmly founded that all the ethnicities were crushed by the state of Pakistan, be it Bengali, Pashtun, Baloch, etc., to ensure all amalgamate into one belief system with no space for cultural identifications, and this should not be a surprise for anyone, as Pakistan found its being only in religious exclusivism.
From 1947 onward, Pakistan’s treatment of Hindus has been a case study in apartheid dressed as fundamentalistnationalism. Temples demolished under mobs protected by police, teenage girls abducted and converted by force, faith reduced to a crime, this is the “Islamic Republic” in action. Till 2002, Hindus were confined to separate electorates there,like untouchables of democracy, and even today, legal apartheid continues under the guise of religious purity. The mechanism of humiliation is institutional: even to vote, an Ahmadi Muslim must publicly declare non-Muslim status or renounce theirprophet, a grotesqueritual exposing the country’s deep religious rot. As per Pakistani law, if someone objects to any voter being identified as non-Muslim, the election commission can summon the person to declare that he is not Ahmadi; otherwise, he is added to the non-Muslim list. Rather than deny their beliefs, most Ahmadis end up not voting at all. What one of the numerically inferior factions is facing can serve as a yardstick to measure what Hindus might be facing.
Bangladesh, a nation forged in defiance of Pakistani Islamic domination, now finds itself slipping into the same sectarian abyss it once resisted. The Hindu population, once nearly a third of the country, has dwindled to less than 8%. Pogroms, temple desecrations, lynchings, and forced displacements have become grimly routine. As the victims flee across the border, India, shackled by a misplaced sense of secular guilt, looks on in moral paralysis.
India, the surviving heart of an ancient civilization, cannot continue this passive complicity. It is the Hindus who have been losing their land, homes, and lives since 1947, not because they sought separation, but because they remained steadfast in their belief in oneness. The Nehru-Liaqat Pact was again not just a political arrangement; it was India’s solemn recognition of its duty to protect its abandoned children who fell for some shallow promises, but for Pakistan, Hindus are a hostage population in Pakistan that can be used as bargaining chips. Yet, India’s political establishment, obsessed with secular optics, has let that duty decay into dust. In their eagerness to appear secular, our political structure has turned its face away from those who bled to keep it united.
The logical and moral inversion is staggering. The partition was done at the behest of Muslims who voted overwhelmingly for Pakistan. Meanwhile, Hindus who were left behind in Pakistan and Bangladesh, those who never asked for separation, are treated as expendable in India’s political arithmetic. They are neither refugees to be welcomed nor citizens to be protected; merely pawns in a self-destructive game of manufactured secularism.
Let it be said without hesitation: India’s obligation toward the Hindus of the subcontinent is not an act of benevolence; it is justice, it is reparations for failure to protect them. The Indian Constitution doesn’t merely empower Parliament to determine citizenship; it entrusts it with a sacred responsibility to extend citizenship to those who are refugees not by choice, but by faith and persecution. These are not foreigners seeking charity; they are descendants of the same civilization that India represents.
The time has come to call things by their names. There was no “communal riot” in 1947; it was an organized campaign of ethnic cleansing. There is no “sectarian tension” in Pakistan or Bangladesh; it is the slow execution of a genocidal design. And there is no “neutral duty” for India toward all sides; there is a moral hierarchy of obligations, forged in truth and blood. The Hindu civilization survived despite conquest, colonialism, and division, but survival is not enough anymore. It must reclaim the moral courage to protect its own, not just as a policy of the state, but as the duty of a civilization to itself.
If India continues to hesitate, we have learned nothing from history but have instead surrendered to it. India must grant refuge to Hindus fleeing persecution from Pakistan and Bangladesh, as these communities have been persecuted solely for their faith; India’sreluctance or denial would be nothing short of deceit. If Hindus do not find refuge here, then where will they? We need to make amendments to the Citizenship Act, 1955,by inserting new provisions to confer Indian citizenship on Hindus residing anywhere in the world. Let the record be set straight; this act constitutes a civilizational duty of India; no charity.
(The author is an advocate and a political commentator)
