BY IRFAN HUSAIN

SANNO Amra and his wife Champa are a middle-aged Hindu couple, and live in a small, simple but spotlessly clean home in Karachi’s Punjab colony. They lived fairly content lives with their fiv children until six weeks ago.


Sanno worked as a chauffeur, and his wife cooked for a family. Suddenly, on 18 October, their lives fell apart: Champa returned home from work to discover that her three oldest daughters were missing. Reena (21), Usha (19) and Rima (17) had disappeared without a word. This is any parent’s worst nightmare, but the couple’s woes had only begun.

Following a fruitless and frantic search, the couple went to the local police station where the officer in charge put them off without registering a case. Two days later, they met the Deputy Superintendent of Police for Clifton. To his abiding credit, DSP Raza Shah went out of his way to help. He forced his subordinates to file an FIR, and his intervention was crucial in ensuring the safety of the parents.

A police FIR for kidnapping was duly prepared on 22 October, naming three young men from the neighbourhood as the principal suspects. Immediately, Sanno and his wife started getting threats from their neighbours. Earlier they had never had any problems, although they were the only Hindu family in a predominantly Muslim locality. But now, their neigbours were pressuring them to remove the names of the local boys from the FIR.

A few days later, they received an envelope containing three identical affidavits signed by their daughters, stating that they had converted to Islam of their own free will. The declaration concluded: “That since my parents are Hindu and after conversion of my religion, it is not possible for me to live and pass my life in Hindu system/society [sic] and therefore, I have decided to live separately…”

According to these statements, the girls (now calling themselves Afshan, Anam and Nida) were living in a hostel of a madrassa, and were being instructed by a local maulvi. On November 10, a court order directed the police and the administrators of the seminary to arrange a private meeting between the girls and their parents. When Sanno and Champa finally met their daughters, they were shocked to see that they were in burqas that concealed them from head to toe, leaving only their eyes uncovered. At this meeting, a woman was present throughout as were a maulvi and a couple of cops. In subdued voices muffled by heavy fabric, the girls said they wanted to stay where they were.

Sanno and Champa are convinced that their daughters were under pressure. In fact, they simply cannot accept the notion that their children have not only abandoned them, but also the religion they grew up in. They are positive that their daughters have been brainwashed. Interestingly, the girls have cited “religious channels on TV” as the reason for their conversion.

Ever since their daughters left, Sanno and Champa have not returned to their jobs. They stay at home with Suraj and Arti, their young son and daughter, and wait for news. Apart from their neighbours, they have also been isolated by their own community. According to Sanno, other Hindus look down on them because of their daughters’ apparent conversion. Their face, that most pernicious of Asian values, has been lost.

When I spoke to DSP Raza Shah, I asked him if in his opinion, any pressure had been brought to bear on the girls. He was sure it had been a voluntary conversion, adding that it was very possible that neighbours might have influenced them. The parents are clear that their daughters never watched TV in their presence, and nor did they ever discuss the possibility of a conversion. According to Vijay, a relative, twenty Hindu girls had converted to Islam in the last five years.

Talking to Sanno and Champa in their simple home, I could feel their pain and their distress. “We just sit and stare at each other”, Sanno said. “For us, life is over.” Above all, they need the certainty that their daughters did not abandon them voluntarily. The desperate parents returned to the madrassa recently where they were refused access to their daughters. “Even if they have become Muslims, we are still their parents,” Champa said tearfully.

The stricken parents are looking for closure: once they are satisfied that their daughters will never come home again, they will learn to live with their grief. But for this to happen, they want the girls to be moved to neutral ground like the Edhi orphanage where they can meet them without the coercive presence of maulvis and cops. But this request has been turned down by a judge.

Vijay has shared the family’s sorrow, and is understandably bitter. “Jinnah had promised the minorities equal rights and protection. But it seems his promises were buried with him,” he maintains. Given the spate of conversions, the insecurity among the minorities, and especially among Sindhi Hindus, is understandable.

Although many of these conversions are not at gunpoint, they still take place in an overpowering environment of religiosity. The desire to conform at school and college where religion casts a constant shadow, must exert a strong influence on non-Muslim students. And in a society based on faith, the minorities are tempted to convert simply to get ahead in life.

But Sammo and Champa are not concerned with the larger issues regarding the place and fate of the minorities in Pakistan. All they want is justice, and for them this involves being able to spend time alone with their beloved daughters, free from pressure and coercion, and to satisfy themselves that they took this drastic step on their own. Surely in a state that aspires to General Musharraf’s ideal of ‘enlightened moderation’, this should not be too much to ask for.

Irfan Husain is an eminent Pakistani commentator based in London. He can be reached at  irfan.husain@gmail.com