HASAN MANSOOR: “Every year, around 1,000 to 1,200 Dalits girls — approximately 100 every month —are kidnapped and forcibly converted. The numbers could be more but there is no any mechanism to calculate the actual figure,” says renowned Dalit activist Surendar Valasai, who is also the advisor on minority affairs to Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari of the PPP.
[…] In Tharparkar district, around 700,000 or almost half the total 1.6m population are Hindus; around 80% of those Hindus are Dalit communities, such as Meghwars, Kohlis and Bheels. Whenever there is drought, which has now become frequent, Dalits travel to nearby districts which are irrigated by the River Indus, in search of food for themselves and fodder for their livestock. In these districts, they work as temporary farm workers on the lands of powerful Muslim landlords. Despite working day and night, on most occasions these Dalits are not given their due share in the crop.
“After a drought hits Thar Desert, these Dalits become internally displaced people. They walk hundreds of miles with their livestock, to find some employment as agricultural workers with a powerful Muslim landlord. But in many cases, work is forcibly extracted out of them; they are often not paid, and eventually, are pushed into bonded labour,” says rights activist Veerji Kohli.
Although a majority of Pakistani Hindus are Dalits, almost all Hindu parliamentarians are upper caste, which creates a set of dichotomies: who becomes the voice of the Dalits in Sindh? More here.