JODHPUR: For decades, Jogdas dreamed of moving to India to escape the persecution he suffered as a Hindu in Pakistan. But the reality of life over the border is a far cry from those dreams.
Seventy years after the partition unleashed the largest mass migration in human history, Hindus are still moving from Pakistan to India, where tens of thousands languish in makeshift camps near the border with no legal right to work.
Many have no choice but to toil illegally in the stone quarries near where they live because their movements are strictly controlled by the authorities, suspicious of anyone from across the border. It is not the welcome most of them expected in Hindu-majority India.
“No job, no house, no money, no food. There, we were working in the fields, we were farmers. But here people like us are forced to break rocks to earn a living,” said 81-year-old Jogdas, who goes by just one name.
“For us the partition is still not over. Hindus are still trying to come back to their country. And when they come here, they have nothing,” he told AFP from the camp on the outskirts of the western city of Jodhpur where he lives.
More than 15 million people were uprooted following India’s independence from Britain in 1947, which triggered months of violence in which at least a million people were killed for their faith.
Amid the bloody chaos, Hindus and Sikhs fled the newly formed Pakistan, as Muslims moved in the opposite direction.
Despite the exodus, Hindus remain one of Pakistan’s largest religious minorities. Estimates vary, but they are believed to account for around 1.6 percent of the population of roughly 200 million.
Many say they face discrimination and even risk abduction, rape and forced marriage.
“Soon after partition, the harassment started,” said Jogdas, whose family had only moved to what is now Pakistan a few months before partition to escape a devastating drought.
Most of the migrants to India come from Pakistan’s Sindh province, taking a four-hour train journey through the Thar desert to Jodhpur in the arid western state of Rajasthan.
That they share the culture, food and language of Rajasthan should make it easy for them to assimilate in their adopted homeland.
In reality, they live in isolated camps, far from local communities and are treated with suspicion by authorities.
Published in Daily Times, August 1st , 2017.
