The hierarchical and discriminatory caste system, legitimised by Hinduism, is so deeply entrenched in Southasian societies that it has even affected the adherents of theoretically egalitarian religions like Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and Buddhism. With the highest Hindu concentration in India and Nepal, the exploitation of Dalits is often believed to be limited to these countries. As this remarkable book explains, however, caste discrimination against Dalits is a social reality in Pakistan as well, where over 95 percent of the population is Muslim.
Pirbhu Lal Satyani knows of what he speaks: a Pakistani Hindu social activist based in Sindh, Satyani works with his country's Dalits. In this slim volume, he claims that of Pakistan's roughly 3 million Hindus, over 75 percent are Dalits of various castes, including . Meghwals, Odhs, Valmikis, Kohlis and Bhils. They reside mainly in southern Punjab and Sindh and seem to suffer the same dismal plight as their counterparts in India.
In a 1944 speech, Mohammad Ali Jinnah declared that the Muslim League would protect the rights of the Dalits, assuring them of full security. Soon after, Jogendra Nath Mondal, a Dalit from East Bengal, was appointed as the leader of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and the country's first law minister. With increasing intolerance towards minorities in post-Jinnah Pakistan, however, Mondal resigned from the cabinet and migrated to India in 1953. Today, Satyani argues, the religious minorities are at the bottom of the heap in Pakistan's social hierarchy, and among them, the worst sufferers are the country's Dalits.
In the aftermath of Partition, the majority of Hindus who stayed back were Dalits. The migration of Hindus to India continued, especially after the India-Pakistan wars of 1965 and 1971, when they felt an enhanced sense of insecurity. Those fears reappeared when Muslim minorities in India were attacked by Hindu extremists, in the wake of the destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in 1992. Hindus worried that such activities would be used as a pretext by Islamic extremists in Pakistan to target them.