• Until the cycle of abduction, forced conversion, and forced marriage is broken, minority communities will continue to live in fear, their rights repeatedly trampled upon in silence.

By Nasir Aijaz

The recent abduction and forced conversion of three daughters and a son of a Hindu family in Shahdadpur, a city of southern Sindh province of Pakistan, has once again brought the alarming issue of religious forced conversions into the spotlight.

According to the allegations made by the mother, a member of the Hindu community, the minors – Diya Bai, Jia Bai, Disha Bai and their brother Honey Kumar, were abducted and converted under duress, with their minor son publicly claiming he was converted at gunpoint. Despite legislative efforts, such incidents highlight the ongoing failure of authorities to protect minority communities against heinous crimes, raising urgent calls for accountability and stricter enforcement.

Although, the police have arrested the accused, a teacher, who used to take tuition classes, the abducted children were not handed back to their parents, and instead sent to a government Shelter Home, as reported on the social media. The girls and their brother were recovered by the police from Karachi, the provincial capital. And according to latest reports, they were produced in a local court on Friday, but strangely the court allowed the minor boy Honey Kumar and Disha Bai to go with their parents while two elder girls Dia Bai and Jia Bai were refused to be handed over to the parents and were sent to Shelter home. Nobody knows their fate. The parents and the members of Hindu community staged protest demonstration but their protest remained unheeded. The girls were crying to go with their parents but the police took them away.

Meanwhile, another video of a young boy with beard went viral on social media on Friday evening, wherein the boy claimed that he is the husband of Diya Bai, who embraced Islam three years back. According to him, the girl was kept at a shelter home of Jamaat-e-Islami in Karachi. “She embraced Islam reciting the Holy Kalima in front of my sister,” he said.

Sindh, a province historically known for its religious diversity and pluralism, has seen a troubling rise in reports of forced conversions of minority women and children. Human rights organizations and minority advocacy groups repeatedly raise concerns that religious minorities, including Hindus, Christians, and others, are increasingly vulnerable to abductions, forced conversions, and marriages against their will.

The issue is multifaceted, rooted in socio-economic marginalization, social pressures, and sometimes entangled with political and criminal syndicates. The perpetrators often operate under the guise of religious or social norms, exploiting legal loopholes and societal indifference.

Many of these incidents follow eerily similar patterns. In some cases, families have reported their daughters disappearing without trace, only to find them later converted and married, sometimes after police or local officials dismiss claims of coercion. Such cases often evoke protests, legal battles, and media coverage, but despite the efforts, justice remains elusive for many victims. One prominent example was in 2019 when Rinkle Kumari, a young Hindu girl, was abducted and reportedly converted. Her case garnered national and international attention, sparking protests and demands for action, but critics argued that the existing legal framework was inadequate to protect minors from abduction and forced conversion in a timely manner.

Read: Forced Conversion in Sindh: Would there be an end to woes of Hindu Community?

Many cases involve minors as young as 12 or 13, highlighting how vulnerable this segment of society is to exploitation. Reports from Tharparkar, Kandhkot, and other districts have consistently painted a grim picture of women and children being abducted, their right to choose forcibly denied, often under societal pressures or threats. Despite the repeated exposure of these incidents, many argue that the authorities’ response remains weak. Laws such as the Sindh Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Bill, which criminalizes abduction and forced conversion, have been enacted, but their enforcement is often criticized as being ineffective. Some officials are accused of turning a blind eye or even colluding with perpetrators, further marginalizing already vulnerable communities.

Many families have openly accused local authorities and police officials of either turning a blind eye or actively participating in such crimes, citing a lack of accountability. A 2022 report by the Human Rights Watch indicated that courts have sometimes validated marriages forcibly entered into by minors, citing notions of “consent” that are often coerced or manipulated. This disconnect between law and practice perpetuates a cycle of impunity which leaves vulnerable minorities in helpless situations.

Statistics provided by the All Pakistan Minority Alliance reveal that approximately 80% of reported abduction and forced conversion cases go unresolved or are dismissed due to lack of evidence or miscarriage of justice. The NGOs also highlight that actual figures could be much higher, as many families fear retaliation and choose not to report incidents. For example, in the year 2021 alone, over 100 cases of Hindu girls being abducted and forcibly converted were officially reported in Sindh, but local sources estimate that the real number could be double or triple that. Such statistics underscore the severity of the crisis and reflect a systemic failure to stem the tide of violence against religious minorities.

The emotional toll is devastating. Victims often find themselves entirely powerless in courts that are slow to act or sympathetic to the accused. The abduction, coercion, and conversion of minors are often cloaked in societal acceptance or silence, making it difficult to combat this phenomenon effectively. High-profile cases have brought international attention, but concrete change remains elusive.

This ongoing crisis underscores the urgent need for coordinated action. The government must do more than pass laws; it must ensure these laws are vigorously enforced, with independent oversight and swift judicial proceedings. Community awareness programs are equally crucial for empowering families to recognize early warning signs and report crimes without fear. Religious leaders and civil society must collaborate to promote tolerance and protect minority rights. Only a collective, persistent effort can break the cycle of abduction and forced conversion that has beleaguered Sindh for far too long.

The failure to effectively implement laws and provide safeguarding mechanisms underscores a complex nexus of legal loopholes, societal acceptance, and political will. Minority communities continue to demand stronger protections, independent investigations, and stricter punishments for perpetrators, but the cycle persists. The recent incident in Shahdadpur highlights how the problem remains urgent and unresolved. The viral video of the young boy claiming he was converted at gunpoint has moved many to question whether laws are enough or if systemic societal changes are necessary to tackle these deep-rooted issues.

The challenge lies not just in criminal justice but also in addressing the underlying social prejudices and vulnerabilities. Many minority families live in fear of abduction and conversion, sometimes feeling abandoned by the very state institutions meant to protect them. There is a growing call from activists, human rights organizations, and community leaders for more proactive measures, including watchdog organizations monitoring law enforcement’s role, awareness campaigns to educate families about their rights, and stricter legal action against those involved in such crimes.

Despite the national and international condemnation, the problem of forced conversions in Sindh remains a stark reminder of the ongoing struggles faced by religious minorities. It exposes the gaps between legislation and enforcement, highlighting the need for a collective effort that transcends mere laws to create a societal shift against such violations. Until the cycle of abduction, forced conversion, and forced marriage is broken, minority communities will continue to live in fear, their rights repeatedly trampled upon in silence.

Read: Constitution of Commission suggested to deal with Forced Conversion issue in Pakistan

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The writer is a senior journalist based in Karachi. He can be accessed at nasir.akhund1954@gmail.com

Courtesy: The AsiaN, Seoul, South Korea (English and Korea)

The post Sindh Govt. Fails to Protect Minorities first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Partition Stories from the Province of Sindh

Pushpa Vashi Ubrani was born Nevhenanda Hardasani on 8th October 1938 in Shahdadpur, Sindh.

Because of her father’s status as a wealthy landlord, Pushpa knows that her family’s Partition journey was smoother than most. Yet, life was not a bed of roses – there were ups and downs but Pushpa remained resilient.

Today, Pushpa lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and this is her story.

The youngest in a family of four girls and one boy, Pushpa was fondly known during her childhood as Jasotha. Her father, “Mukhi” Ranghanmal Hardasani was a prominent and well-to-do landlord with vast lands. He was also a leader in the Sindhi community – hence the title Mukhi.

​Such was their wealth that the family owned several horses – as well as a horse carriage! Pushpa fondly remembers how the carriage was adorned with bells and recalls with a childlike glee the ‘clip clop’ sound of the horses’ shoes. The family lived in a large house and led a happy, comfortable and peaceful life – until the year 1947.

At the time of Partition, Pushpa was only eight years old. When the riots started abruptly, Pushpa’s father knew it was no longer safe for the family to remain in Shahdadpur, so the family started making arrangements to pack up.

The family was also very fortunate to be able to bring a lot of their belongings such as carpets, beds and other personal effects as a special train carriage had been allocated to them.

Pushpa recalls how her mother wore her jewelry over layers of ganji (an inner garment). The family was also very fortunate to be able to bring a lot of their belongings such as carpets, beds and other personal effects as a special train carriage had been allocated to them. Pushpa, her mother and two of her sisters made the journey via train across the desert of Thar to Ajmer, Rajasthan. They were joined by about 20 members of their extended family and even their cook – who Pushpa fondly remembers being called Farso. Meanwhile, her brother was sent to Karachi to be with Pushpa’s married eldest sister, where he then boarded a ship bound for Bombay (Mumbai). Her father stayed back in Sindh to try and see what could be done with their remaining assets.

Of her train journey across the border to India, Pushpa says she felt excited. Being a young child, she did not understand what was happening and thought that were going away on holiday – but this was going to be a journey of no return.

Upon reaching Ajmer, the family squeezed themselves in a rented property. It was a whole new world to them – a world where Sindhi wasn’t spoken but dialects of Hindi and Kachi were predominantly spoken. Later, her father made arrangements for a bigger residence in Jaipur, Rajasthan, allotted to them in exchange of the house and lands they had left behind in Sindh. Having taken care of their assets in Sindh, her father now made the journey to Rajasthan and settled the family in the new house, but he continued to travel back and forth on a couple of occasions before settling with his family for good in Jaipur.

In due course, Pushpa continued her education in Jaipur, where she studied five grades in Hindi and one grade in English. Previously, in Sindh, she completed three grades that were only taught in Sindhi, of which the scripture, based on the Arabic script was very different from the Devanagari script for Hindi.

After five years in Jaipur, Pushpa and her family moved to Borivali in Bombay. While on a local train in Bombay, Pushpa first bumped into her future husband, who would eventually send a proposal for her through a common relative. In 1958, at the age of 20, Pushpa married Vashdev Ubrani. Five years later, Pushpa came to live in Segamat, Johor, Malaysia to be with her husband, who was working in a textile store.

Blessed with five children, Pushpa was not only busy taking care of the household but was also the driving force behind her husband starting his own business in 1982 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Called Maya’s Fashion, it eventually became a household name as they were the first to specialize in Bombay fashion wear.

Today, Pushpa continues to reside in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Courtesy: Stories of Sindh (Posted on 8/8/2021)  

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By Laura Tanna

We all might learn from the discipline, almost deprivation, which a youthful Gordon Tewani displayed in his quest to better his family, leaving school a year before graduation to seek work in a foreign land. When jewelry store owner and real estate tycoon Tewani got his first job offer to leave India in 1959 to work in Jamaica, he says: “I asked my uncle: ‘Where is Jamaica?’ He told me: ‘It’s America.’ So you wouldn’t believe it, when I arrived at Palisadoes Airport I see palm trees. I’d seen pictures in a magazine and thought: ‘America? America don’t look like this! The people, they look African origin.’ I was wondering if I’m in the wrong place. Honestly, that’s what I thought in my ignorance. In those days, coming from a Commonwealth country an immigration officer would just stamp on your passport: ‘Landed’. There was no work permit required because Jamaica was still under the British. My boss’ son looked at me, said: ‘Are you Gordon? I’m Pokar.’ He drove me to his house on Waterloo Road, opposite Devon House. Today that is [the] Salvation Army. That was Mr. Chandiram’s house. We three employees lived in an annex. I’ll never forget it, because they never had hot water in the bathroom and the bathroom was downstairs. We had to come on the steps, tie a towel around us, run into the bathroom, take cold shower, and run up again. The steps were on the outside of the house!”

“The name of the business was India House, 60 King Street. They told me this was the main street. I remember observing electrical lines overhead. In Bombay, they are underground so we don’t see them. I said to myself: ‘This is really a small place.’ But a beautiful place. My impression was of really beautiful vegetation and very clean. Mrs. Chandiram, the manager, said: ‘Your job is to go behind the counter. When they make sales, they will give to you to wrap.’ I was a person very keen on learning. If I don’t have anything to wrap, if they are selling something, I would go, stand beside them, see what they’re saying and try to learn. I learned so fast she told me: ‘You can sell now.’ She gave us a little book to write the sales; almost every day I used to be number one in sales. At that time tourists were coming to Kingston because Kingston was a very, very safe place. You could walk on King Street, nobody would trouble you. Everybody was very mannerly. They said: ‘Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, how are you?’ I found Jamaicans among the friendliest people in the world.”

“Mr. Chandiram opened In-Bond because he saw a lot of potential in selling to tourists, mainly perfume and items like cameras. There was quite a thick book of perfume list, the sizes, prices, and different brands. I’m not kidding you. I knew every size, every brand by heart. The other staff, if some customer asked them: ‘Do you have Chanel Number Five, one ounce?’ they would ask me: ‘Mr. Gordon, what is the price for it?’ And I would tell them. My memory was really good. Everything I see someone is doing, I would say: ‘I can do it too.’

“There was no private life allowed. Every morning the driver would drive us to the shop. Every evening we would drive back to the house. He had a strict instruction not to stop anywhere. We’d come from work, have our dinner. They gave us reasonably good food to eat and after that, back to work again, like checking what we sold for the day and goods to price at home, sometimes until ten or 11 o’clock. The only place our boss allowed us to go was to movie on Sunday. He would give us five shillings. The ticket was four shillings. We walked from Waterloo Road to Half-Way Tree and take a JOS bus for three pence. At intermission we’d buy a coke, which cost seven pence. All we were left was two pence. We couldn’t take a bus again, so we walked back from the Regal, Carib or State.

“I got £60 every three months. Two-thirds of my salary I sent to my mother and £20 I’m to keep because boss used to give us everything like soap, hair oil, and shaving. I might have to buy a shirt or a shoe. I had a contract for four years. He is to provide me transport from Mumbai [formerly Bombay] to Kingston and from Kingston to Bombay. I saved £100 over the four years and my boss gave me a bonus of £100. I told him to return to India, we want to go to Canada. He got a ticket that we could go from Miami to New York to Toronto, then from there to Bombay. There was another guy, Rochie, who still lives in Ocho Rios and he was working same time. I remember going to Miami, finding the cheapest hotel there, US$4.50 per night. A Cuban restaurant on the ground floor used to sell a quarter of chicken with French fries and a coke for US 39 cents. I would eat that. When he came we both stayed in the same room, because we had two beds and that way we shared the cost of the room. It cost US$2.25 then. From there we left to New York and to Toronto. We changed the ticket and came back to Kingston. I remember going to Mr. Chandiram’s office, just a courtesy. Mr. Chandiram was away in India but Pokar was there. He was shocked to see me. He says: ‘What are you doing here?’

“You see, I missed my family very much. When I first came to Jamaica, after three months my father passed away in India. I couldn’t go back because if I went back, I lost my job and jobs were very hard to get. I really missed [him] very much, but I had to establish myself and the opportunity was better in Jamaica than in India. I only saw my mother again after nine years. I was here for five years more before I could make enough money to return to see her.”

Now at age 70, a successful businessman with a happy family, he muses on what life might be like if he arrived in Jamaica today. He says: “To be honest I love politics but I’m very neutral. Either party, I just want the right person. We need good governance, a good leader to govern this country. The people, especially at the lower level, their life should be improved. It’s very important. Government should spend much more money to educate the population. If today our population was more literate, we would have less problems, not crime alone, but all around. It would be easier for people to get jobs. When you have a large section of illiterate population, how many people you can employ as household help? Or gardener? Or something like that? Those jobs are not satisfactory because they are not well-paying jobs. With education and a skill, you can get a better job. Once you don’t have that – because I didn’t have a good education myself. I didn’t have a skill either. I just happened to be street-smart and lucky. Maybe I shouldn’t say lucky, but hard-working, and I succeeded in life. But today, suppose I didn’t have this business? I don’t know what kind of job I could get! Maybe selling behind the counter. How much money that can pay me?” (Continues)

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Courtesy: The Gleaner, Jamaica (Published on February 12, 2012)

Click here for Part-I

The post Gordon Tewani in Jamaica (Part II) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Laura Tanna

After Gordon Tewani was the first to make a contribution to the building fund for The Museums of History and Ethnography, The Gleaner asked me to interview him, especially because he came to Jamaica after being a refugee in the partition of India.

Indeed, the Museums received two more donations from overseas, precisely because an immigrant had made the first donation. This series demonstrates that even if English is your second language, even if you don’t have a high-school diploma, even if you have next to nothing, if you are prepared to work extraordinarily hard, be disciplined in your savings and have the good fortune to have loving parents, and a bit of luck, you can still succeed.

Few people realize that one of the people with substantial commercial real estate holdings in Jamaica is actually a refugee from India. Gordhandas Tewani was born in 1939 in Shahdadpur, Sindh where his grandfather, father and uncles were landowners, leasing property to small farmers from whom they collected monthly rent. The youngest of four children, Tewani remembers that their family lived very, very well until 1947 when the partition of India into two countries was decided by Britain. The Tewani family didn’t own a radio, “forget about TV”, he said. “Just by word of mouth, we had to leave almost overnight because what was happening was if they find any Hindus in that part of India, the Muslims were killing them. Mob violence completely. They were burning houses. You just have to hide. When we left it was so terrifying. We couldn’t get any railway to travel because they were all full. There were no airplane, no railway, no buses. We had to resort to oxen-driven cart. If you have seen the movie Gandhi, it was the same scenario. Crossing the border, the Muslims are going to Pakistan. The Hindus are coming to India. We had to camp. We had to stop because it was quite a long journey. I remember the ladies and children would try to sleep. The men would take guard for they had a feeling they might have a raid, from Muslims who would kill the family. Then in the morning we’d start the journey again.

“When we crossed the border, we came to Jodhpur and I remember that we end up at the railway station sleeping on the platform, using the toilet meant for all the passengers.”

Accommodation

“When we crossed the border, we came to Jodhpur and I remember that we end up at the railway station sleeping on the platform, using the toilet meant for all the passengers. We would spread something on the platform and just sleep. In the night, when the train would come, it makes so much noise and shakes because it’s a huge steam engine. We would wake up and go back to sleep. Another train would come; we’d keep on waking up and sleeping. They were giving people free food, roti and a potato vegetable curry, in the morning, afternoon, evening, same. We were on the platform for a week, then my mother’s brother-in-law in Jodhpur had a little place, so he put us on the roof of his house. We used a tarpaulin to protect ourselves from the sun and rain. We had a carpet and a few belongings. My brother and myself would go right on the sidewalk, put the carpet and try to sell our few things to raise some funds. We were in Jodhpur a long time.

“My older sister’s husband was in Bombay (now Mumbai), manager of a big company there and he decided to help us. We moved to Mumbai in 1948, to an area called Worli. Our accommodation wasn’t that great. There was like three families living in a row and three families had to share one toilet. OK, so if you’re in a hurry to use it, tough luck. But that’s how it was. We had a pipe in the kitchen where my mother was cooking. We put a little curtain. You go behind there, put water in the bucket, take water from the bucket and put over your head, use soap and bathe. But at least we could call it our home. It was like a zinc roof but we were very happy. We thought: ‘This is good’. My brother and I started to go to school.

“My father still didn’t know how to make money because he didn’t have any skill and he wasn’t educated. So it was a lot of burden on my mother. She would say that she had already had her dinner, ‘This is all for you and your brother.’ But we knew that she didn’t have her dinner. Because we didn’t even have enough food to eat. So it was very difficult. You could see my mother sometimes arguing with my father, telling him: ‘Where is the money going to come from? We don’t have any rice left.’ It was a struggle to find the school fees. I could see my mother under very strenuous hardship. What happened, my mother was a street-smart person. She wasn’t educated but she knew that education is very, very important. She insist that I go to a Catholic school. That’s where my brother and I learned English. I used to walk and walk and walk to go to school. But it was good. The Father, every time he was to teach us arithmetic or algebra, he had a cane in his hand. You better have your answers ready. Otherwise, you get a whipping. Honestly. I still remember his name: Albert Pereira from Goa.

From India to Jamaica

“I couldn’t concentrate on my studies seeing my mother under pressure so I used to think: ‘I need a job to make money to help my mother.’ My uncle had a business called Cottage Industries. People came from all over the world to buy Indian handicrafts, mostly Sindhis, from Nigeria, Jordan, Jamaica, Europe too. Lot of times they would say they want one or two guys to work for them and he would find people for them. When I was 18 I remember sitting in his office begging him to get me a job. Mr. K. Chandiram, from Jamaica, was in Mumbai and told my uncle that he needed three young fellows to work. So my uncle recommended me. Mr. Chandiram says, “OK, but let me have a talk with him first.” The only question he asked me, if I could speak English. I said, ‘yes,’ so he said: ‘You’ve got the job. Your salary is going to be £20 a month with lodging and boarding.’ I can assure you that if he had said £10 a month I would still have said yes. I was so desperate to get a job.

“It took me three days from Bombay to Kingston on a propeller plane with overnight in London at airline’s expenses. India had a very strict exchange-control law. Mr. Chandiram advanced me 500 rupees, about £25. I kept £5 10 shillings for travel and for the first time I got a shoe. I used to wear an open sandal and walking in the sun – I couldn’t afford a bus or train – my feet used to get so hot, so dry. I remember running and taking shade under a tree so my feet can cool off and I can walk again. It was quite a difficult time in life but I was happy that I had my mother and father. They both were together. They loved us very well, the children and each other.” (Continues) 

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Courtesy: The Gleaner, Jamaica (Published on February 5, 2012)

The post Gordon Tewani: From refugee to real estate mogul (Part-I) first appeared on Sindh Courier.