Pakistan's Fast Growing Hindu Population 5th Largest in the World

[Riaz Haq]

Contrary to the sensational media headlines about declining Hindu population in Pakistan, the fact is that Hindu birth rate is significantly higher than the country's national average. Although Hindus make up only 1.9% of Pakistan's population, it is among the worlds fastest growing Hindu communities today, growing faster than the Hindu populations in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Hindu Population in West Pakistan Source: Census Data `Pakistan Census data. For 1931 and 1941, the figures are for West Pakistan in undivided India. For 1951 and 1961, the figures are for West Pakistan in undivided Pakistan. Data for 1971 could not be accessed.   Hindu population of the areas that now constitute Pakistan was 15% in 1931 India Census. It declined to 14% in 1941 India Census. Then first Pakistan Census in 1951 showed it was 1.3% after the massive cross-border migration of both Hindus and Muslims in 1947. During the partition, 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs migrated to India from what became Pakistan, while 6.5 million Muslims migrated from India to Pakistan. Since 1951, the Hindu population of what is now Pakistan has grown from 1.3% to 1.9% now.

Top Countries With Hindu Populations Source: Pew Research Center

Fastest Growing Religions By Countries

Sindhi Hindu Woman

Hindu fertility rate (TFR) of 3.2 children per woman in Pakistan is much higher than national fertility rate of 2.86.  With 3.33 million Hindus, Pakistan is currently home to the world's 5th largest Hindu population. By 2050, Pakistan will rank 4th with 5.6 million Hindus, surpassing Indonesia which is currently ranked 4th largest Hindu country, according to Pew Research.

While it is true that some Pakistani Hindus have been targets of religious bigotry and intolerance by some in the majority Muslim community, there are also many many examples of mutual tolerance and respect between Hindus and Muslims in the country.  In the city of Mithi in Sindh's Tharparkar district, for example,  Muslims do not slaughter cows out of respect for their fellow citizens of Hindu faith, and Hindus, out of respect for Muslim rites do not  have marriage celebrations during the month of Muharram. Hassan Raza, a student journalist, quoted a resident of a village near Mithi as saying:

"In our village, Hindus and Muslims have been living together for decades and there has not been a single day, when I have seen a religious conflict. No loud speaker is used for Azaan at the time when Hindus are worshiping in their temple, and no bells are rung when it is time for namaz. Nobody eats in public when it is Ramazan and Holi is played by every member of the village."

Diwali Celebration in Mithi, Pakistan

Another example is Rohiri in Sindh where a visiting Canadian-Indian Hindu diplomat saw a thriving Hindu community. Here's an except of how he describes his visit to Rohiri:

"One of the most interesting elements of the trip was visiting my father’s town, Rohiri, his birthplace. I found there was still a sizeable Hindu community there. That totally took me by surprise. We still think there was a massive religious cleansing in Pakistan and there were no Hindus left. Then I came across this family of shopkeepers who said, “Don’t worry about anything. Stay with us.” They gave me lunch and dinner and put me on the night train to Lahore. Talking to this family in the neighbourhood where my father grew up and was married was fascinating. The question that came to mind was why did my father’s family leave Pakistan and why are these people still here? Official figures suggest 14 million people were displaced after partition and that half a million to a million people were killed. And yet 60 years later these Hindu people in Rohiri are still there. They felt connected to the place where they were born. In the three towns I passed through I kept meeting Hindus — traders, professionals. Their numbers were small, 300 or 400 families in each of these towns. They have their own places of worship. I dared to ask: “Are you happy here?” and they said, “Yes, this is the land where we were born.”"

 

Pakistani Fashion Designer Deepak Perwani in Karachi

A successful Karachi-based Hindu Pakistani fashion designer Deepak Perwani said the following while talking to Indian media in 2012:

"People keep asking me, 'Oh you guys didn't migrate?', 'How are you treated there?' and so on. The questions show a lack of awareness." Perwani is part of Karachi's flourishing Hindu community, which is small but visible and influential even today. One lakh of Karachi's 1.3 crore population is Hindu.

As Perwani puts it, a lot of what people say about Pakistani Hindus shows "a lack of awareness".

Related Links:

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Rising Tide of Intolerance Threatens Pakistan

Akhand Bharat Part of Indian Textbooks

Hindutva Distortions in Indian Textbooks

Fighting Agents of Intolerance in Pakistan

Muslim Scholars Must Fight Hate in Pakistan

South Asian Christians Celebrate Christmas in Fear

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Vision

Pakistan Must Defeat Agents of Intolerance 

Celebrating Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah's Birthday

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpt of Pew Research report on Hindus:

Hindu fertility rates during the 2010-2015 period are 3.2 in Pakistan, 2.6 in Nepal and 2.5 in India. In many countries, Hindu fertility is below the 2.1 replacement level, including Australia (1.7), Indonesia (1.6), the United Kingdom (1.5) and South Africa (1.5).

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/hindus/

[Riaz Haq]

#Karachi extortionist Vinod Kumar arrested in #Pakistan. Kumar has MBA and IT degrees.| Pakistan | Dunya News http://dunyanews.tv/index.php/en/Pakistan/285355-Man-who-used-Skype...

KARACHI (Dunya News) – Highly educated in London and employed at a prestigious company in Malaysia, the man who used Skype to carry out extortion activities in Pakistan’s largest metropolitan has been arrested by the Special Investigation Unit (SIU), Dunya News reported.

According to details, man identified as Vinod Kumar acquired the taste of gambling in casinos while studying in London and continued while working in Malaysia that resulted in him exhausting all his savings. Upon return to Pakistan, Kumar resorted to illegal means in order to continue his lavish spending.

Reportedly, the extortionist heavily used social media especially the communication tool Skype to deliver threats and carry out his activities. He reportedly received Rs 20 lakh from employees of an insurance company at one time, 10 lakh the second time and got arrested while receiving the 30 lakh installment the third time.

The Special Investigation Unit said that the suspect is being investigated and that the preliminary investigation has shown that the suspect’s friends provided him all the details about his targeted companies.

http://dunyanews.tv/index.php/en/Pakistan/285355-Man-who-used-Skype...

[Riaz Haq]

Lure of greener pastures? #Pakistani #Hindu doctor who fled to #India sells shoes in Ahmedabad http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Pakistan-trained-... … via @TOIAhmedabad

"In Pakistan, patients used to treat us like gods. Here we are forced to beg for jobs to stay alive," says Dr Jayram Lohana, 46, who used to earn Rs 1 lakh a month in Sindh before he came to India in 2012. In Ahmedabad, he works at his cousin's mobile store right next to the airport. "We escaped terrorists and found safety here, but nobody is willing to help us put our lives back on track," he says....As per the rules, Pakistanis can apply for Indian citizenship after staying here for seven years. The process takes another two to three years and then one encounters the red tape at MCI. Dr Girdharilal Sinchani, 42, knows it all too well. He did his MBBS from Karachi in 1997 and came to India in 2001. He got citizenship in February 2014 but has been waiting for MCI approval for the past 14 months. "We came here hoping for a better life, but while there is safety, we can't get jobs or buy property to live or do business."

[Riaz Haq]

31m: 

Happy #Indian's prayer answered by the visa gods!!!! Celebrating exit from #Modi's #India http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB119906283337358633 … pic.twitter.com/Zj6u3CzW37

[Riaz Haq]

Why do some Hindus flee Pakistan for India and then suffer loss of respect like the Hindu doctors do?

It's called irrational fear. 

THE official death toll from the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001 was 2,974. But in 2002 America's death toll on the roads grew by more than 1,500—casualties of the terrorism-inspired exodus from safe aeroplanes to dangerous motor cars. A swan washes up on a British shore, dead from bird flu, and the press panics, while the 3,000 people who die every year on the country's roads (13 times the number of people who have ever died from bird flu) go largely unremarked.

Human beings are notoriously bad at dealing with risk. Two new books explore why, and investigate the effects that misunderstanding risks can have on public policy. The first, an excellent work by a Canadian writer, Dan Gardner, is a broad meditation on the nature of risk, beginning with a psychological explanation for why people find it so difficult to cope. Mr Gardner analyses everything from the media's predilection for irrational scare stories to the cynical use of fear by politicians pushing a particular agenda.

His take on terrorism in the book's penultimate chapter is refreshing. He punctures ludicrous claims that “this conflict is a fight to save the civilised world” (George Bush) or that terrorism's threat is “existential” (Tony Blair), and expertly deflates the more self-serving statements made by the terrorism industry that has mushroomed since the September 11th attacks.

Mr Gardner never falls into the trap of becoming frustrated and embittered by the waste and needless worry that he is documenting. A personal anecdote about an unwise foray into a Nigerian slum in search of a stolen wallet disposes of the idea that the author is immune to the foibles he describes. What could easily have been a catalogue of misgovernance and stupidity instead becomes a cheery corrective to modern paranoia.

http://www.economist.com/node/10843051 

[Riaz Haq]

Gap with Hindu growth rate narrows.

India’s Muslim population is growing slower than it had in the previous decades, and its growth rate has slowed more sharply than that of the Hindu population, new Census data show.

The decadal Muslim rate of growth is the lowest it has ever been in India’s history, as it is for all religions.

The Muslim population still grows at a faster rate than the Hindu population, but the gap between the two growth rates is narrowing fast.

India in numbers

India now has 966.3 million Hindus, who make up 79.8 per cent of its population, and 172.2 million Muslims, who make up 14.23 per cent. Among the other minorities, Christians make up 2.3 per cent of the population and Sikhs 2.16 per cent.

The Registrar-General and Census Commissioner released the data on Population by Religious Communities of Census 2011 on Tuesday evening.

The distribution of data is of the total population by six major religious communities — Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Jain — besides “Other religions and persuasions” and “Religion not stated”.

The data are released by sex and residence up to the levels of sub-districts and towns.

As has been the case since Independence, the rate of increase of the Muslim population is higher than that of the Hindu population as a result of higher Muslim fertility, higher child mortality among Hindus and a greater life expectancy among Muslims, demographers say. However, Muslim fertility rates in India are falling faster than among Hindus, Pew Research’s Future of World Religions report showed recently, and the Muslim community is expected to reach replacement levels of fertility by 2050.

Muslim sex ratio improves further

The data on Population by Religious Communities of Census 2011 show that between 2001 and 2011, Hindu population grew by 16.76 per cent, while that of Muslims by 24.6 per cent. The population of both communities grew faster during the previous decade, at 19.92 per cent and 29.52 per cent, respectively. As a long-term trend, say demographers, the communities’ growth rates are converging.

“This is completely along expected lines, and has been an ongoing process,” P. Arokiasamy, demographer and Professor at the International Institute of Population Sciences, Mumbai, told The Hindu. “With rising education and changing family expectations, declining fertility is an expected demographic phenomenon. It begins among better educated groups with better access to health care — as in India’s southern States — and then other groups catch up and converge,” Dr. Arokiasamy explained. In Kerala, for instance, the Muslim fertility rate (while higher than among the Hindus) is extremely low, especially compared with all communities in the northern States, he said.

The numbers show that the sex ratio among Muslims, already better than among Hindus, has further improved.

The sex ratio among Muslims now stands at 951 females for every 1,000 males, substantially better than 936 in 2001, while among Hindus, it is 939 females for every 1,000 males, a slight improvement over the 2001 value of 931. Assam remains the State with the largest Muslim population as a proportion (34.22 per cent) and saw the largest increase in the Muslim proportion between 2001 and 2011, followed by Uttarakhand and Kerala.

Religion	Numbers (Per cent of the population)
Hindu	96.63 crore (79.8 %)
Muslim	17.22 crore (14.2%)
Christian	2.78 crore (2.3%)
Sikh	2.08 crore (1.7%)
Buddhist	0.84 crore (0.7%)
Jain	0.45 crore (0.4%)
Other Religions & Persuasions (ORP)	0.79 crore (0.7%)
Religion Not Stated	0.29 crore (0.2%)

Growth rate

The growth rate of population in the decade 2001-2011 was 17.7%. The growth rate of population of the different religious communities in the same period was:

Religion	Growth
Hindu	16.8%
Muslim	24.6%
Christian	15.5%
Sikh	8.4%
Buddhist	6.1%
Jain	5.4%

The Census data on religion comes after a significant delay; the 2001 Census data on religion was released in 2004 and the 2011 round results were expected in 2014. However, the numbers remained unreleased, even as a draft of the key data was selectively leaked earlier. The data comes in the backdrop of much fear-mongering over Muslims and their population, and RSS thinkers were quick to term the new data as proof of the end of Hindus, even while the numbers belie their claim.

Keywords: Census 2011 data on Population by Religious Communities

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/census-2011-data-on-populatio...

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan #HIndu student Rajnish Aneel Bhatia from #Sindh wins gold medal in international math competition http://tribune.com.pk/story/994424/pakistani-student-wins-gold-meda... …

An exceptionally bright student of PakTurk International School in Jamshoro has brought home a gold medal after competing in Math Challenge V hosted by the Pan-Asia International School in Bangkok.

Making Pakistan proud, Rajinish Aneel Bhatia of grade 7 bagged the gold medal in the international math competition.

Three other students from the same school also secured silver and bronze medals. Harun Yilmaz of grade 8 won a silver medal while Abdul Wasay Kandhir and Abdul Wasay Memon, of grade 7 and 8 respectively, bagged a bronze medal each.

Schools from all over Asia participated in the Math Challenge V held on November 17 and 18. The competition aims to encourage students to study and excel in math and critical thinking.

The prizes for gold, silver and bronze medalists are 3,000 THB, 2,100 THB, 1,500 THB respectively.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan #Hindu visting #India says he's happy and safe in #Pakistan http://www.scoopwhoop.com/world/life-as-a-hindu-in-pakistan/ … via @ScoopWhoop

Ever wondered what it would be like to be part of the minority community in a supposedly religious nation, more specifically for a Hindu in Pakistan? Well, turns out it is a pretty regular affair, no Bollywood melodrama there. social entrepreneur with the PEAD foundation in Islamabad - paints a colourful picture of his home town in Umerkot, Sindh.


"We are a happy family with different identities. As a nation, we share the same food, clothes, buildings, laws, and events. All these elements are what bring us together under the same umbrella, then why do we look for reasons to hate each other?" Raj wrote in his blog post.

Raj visited India last month for a conference in Chandigarh. He says he was "bombarded with questions regarding the status of Hindus in Pakistan."

To which he replied: "I have always felt like a star of my country and I feel safe, which is why I am as loyal as any Muslim in the country. Pakistan doesn’t just belong to Muslims; it belongs to all the residents of its soil."


Raj argues with the common widespread notion that minorities in Pakistan are treated differently or pitied. He claims to be as much a part of the soil as the friends and families he has grown up with, and considers it a blessing to have been born to his homeland.


At least, all the ladies here reminded him that his name was easy to remember. "I believe I have Shahrukh Khan to thank for that," he says.

https://aaghazedosti.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/my-journey-as-a-pakis... 

[Riaz Haq]

Disillusioned #Hindus returning back to #Pakistan from #India http://toi.in/hTLGEZ via @timesofindia
en as Pakistani-origin singer Adnan Sami was granted Indian citizenship, many disillusioned families are going back to the neighbouring country after spending many years in Gujarat.
In the past one year, at least 100 families — most of them Sindhis and Kutchi Gujaratis — have returned to Pakistan after spending many years in Gujarat waiting for the elusive Indian citizenship. Many more are packing their bags saying their 'Ghar Wapsi' to India had proved an illusion.
Motiram Khatri, 37, who fled Pakistan in 2009 to settle in Ahmedabad, has applied to go back to Sindh. Khatri, a grocer in Pakistan, had started a mobile shop in Dehgam on the city outskirts to sustain his family of five. However, a police case was filed against him allegedly for violating visa rules which prohibit him from stepping out of the city.
"I could not get any job or place on rent in Ahmedabad. What crime did I commit if I went just 15 km from the city for my family's survival?" asked Khatri, who said he will revive his grocery business in Sindh once he returns to Pakistan.
Rambhai Bhimani, president of the Ahmedabad-Thara Lohana Samaj, confirmed that in the past one year, nearly 100 Hindu families, who had fled Pakistan and come to Gujarat for security and a better life, had gone back.
"It is ironical, Hindu organizations have launched 'Ghar Wapsi' campaign to bring Hindus who had converted to Islam back into their fold but they do little to embrace those who are their own," said Bhimani.

Dr Ramesh Lohana, 38, left his successful practice in Karachi in December 2012 for a secure life in Ahmedabad. Now, a disillusioned man, he is waiting for his children's exams to be over so that he can go back to Pakistan.
"My practice earned me Rs 2.5 lakh a month. Here, no hospital was willing to give me a job. I was forced to take up a supervisory job in a garments shop for Rs 25,000. Authorities and ordinary people look at us with suspicion. We feel like second-class citizens," said Dr Lohana who is preparing to leave in April.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan's #Sikh Ranger Amarjeet Singh's debut at #Wagah border ceremony near #Lahore http://www.indiatvnews.com/buzz/life/pakistan-sikh-ranger-beating-r... … #IndiaTV via @indiatvnews

Making for a historic moment, a Sikh ranger from Pakistan participated in the traditional Beating the Retreat Ceremony at Wagah Border, for the first time ever.

People from both the sides of the border welcomed the Sikh ranger with a huge round of applause when he came for the ceremony on Thursday evening. The surrounding filled with the sound of claps when he shook hands with the Indian ranger.

Named Amarjeet Singh, the ranger is the residence of Nankana Sahib, the holy city of Sikhs situated in Pakistan. He is said to be the first person ever from Sikh community to join the Pakistani army.

Media reports say that he has joined the Pakistan army in 2005 and completed training this year, after which he was included in the defences forces on the Wagah border.

Talking about his duty for Pakistan, Amarjeet said that he is proud of being a part of the Pakistani army and would happy to lay down his life for the nation.

Like Amarjeet, Gyan Chand was the first Hindu to join the Pakistani army in 2009. On the other hand, a Hindu ranger named Ashok Kumar lost his life while fighting for the Islamic nation in Waziristan. Though, Pakistan didn’t give him the status of a martyr which led to a serious controversy later.

Now, with Sikh ranger’s entry into Pakistan army, we hope the history doesn’t repeat itself.