Monday,March22,2010
Among the 640 Hindu families including Bheel, Manghwal, Balmeeki, Aaria around, 527 families complained that they had to use separate pots in hotels in their vicinities and around 328 families said that they even could not visit the temple for worship, according to a survey conducted by ‘Scheduled Caste Rights Movement’ (SCRM) Pakistan.
The survey was conducted in different parts of the country - Lahore, Rawalpindi, Rahimyar Khan, Bahawalnager, Multan, Norowal and Bahawalpur - where scheduled caste Hindus are living in large numbers. The Survey was conducted among the members of the upper caste including Thakar and others who simply do not allow the lower caste Hindus to visit and worship in the Hindu temples,” said Chairman of Scheduled Caste Movement Ramesh Jaipal, while talking to TheNation.
Senator Khatu Mal Jeewan, however, said that the discriminatory trend was fast decreasing. “Though still it is somewhere in the rural areas yet the discrimination has very much decreased in the urban areas,” he said.
It is relevant to note here that the term “scheduled castes” emerged in political and constitutional history of Pakistan on November 12, 1957, when the Ministry of Law issued a presidential ordinance to declare certain non-Muslim castes as “scheduled castes.” While the Survey conducted by SCRM showed that children of “scheduled caste” Hindus ‘living in different vicinities are facing discrimination as out of 640 surveyed families 395 families complained of discriminatory attitude while children of around 124 “are not going to school due to different reasons including poverty, less trend of education.”
Among 640 surveyed families, 440 families complained that they had no right of culling from barber’s shop in their cities while 200 families said that they had no problem of culling in their vicinities.
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