This Holi will hopefully be a reason for joy for the Pakistan’s Hindu community as the Sindh government has declared a holiday for the Hindu community. Diwali is another holiday that the Hindu community wants a Holiday on. Here is the official declaration below:
Earlier, Pakistan people’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that he looks forward to celebrating Holi with the Hindus in the Sindh province in which his party the Pakistan People’s Party in power and from where maximum atrocities against non-Muslims have been reported. Here is what he wrote:
Despite no holiday given to Hindus in Pakistan for more than past 6 decades, the Hindu community has never allowed it to dent the celebration of Holi in Sindh. However, on eve of Holi last year, some extremists in Pakistan tried to burn down a Hindu temple at Tando Muhammad Khan.
These extremists had entered the Shiv Bhola Hanuman temple standing at the Soomar Street and even desecrated Hindu scriptures and defaced the pictures of Hindu deities.
Not just this, in the year 2014 during Holi, the draconian Blasphemy laws were applied on 3 Hindu youngsters at Nao Dambalo as they used colors to celebrate this festival.
In March 2015, Pakistani police even arrested young boys at the Sindh University as they said that a Hindu festival like Holi cannot be celebrated.
This has always been the case in Pakistan and the very fact that it took more than 6 decades to even accept this demand of the Hindu community shows the status of minorities in Pakistan. Sindh, which has terrible minority rights violation record will have to do a lot more to ensure that the festivities go on without any troubles from the radicalized majority.
Sindh, which has terrible minority rights violation record will have to do a lot more to ensure that the festivities go on without any troubles from the radicalized majority.
Earlier, the National Assembly (NA) had adopted a resolution to declare Holi, Diwali, and Easter as holidays. This resolution was moved independently by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz MNA Ramesh Kumar Vankwani which kind of confused the State minister for religious affairs, Pir Aminul Hasnat Shah, who had said that the interior ministry has already given permission to heads of government institutions to give leave to minorities on their religious festivals. In short, he did not understand that ‘leave’ and ‘holiday’ are entirely different things.
Thi proposal drew the ire of Information Minister of Pakistan, Pervaiz Rashid, who mentioned that Pakistan had more public holidays than any country in the world, hence the number of holidays must not be increased.
