Persecution

Will rebranding Christians make their lives any easier in Pakistan?

By Azam Gill

Published in the Express Tribune, a New York Times affiliate

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“Pakistan’s Christians will now be respectably called ‘Masihi.’ Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has issued orders regarding use of Masihi for Christians instead of Esaayi, in the column for Religion.”

Pakistani Christians had been seeking rebranding for quite some time.

“The Urdu ‘Isai’ (derived from ‘Esa’, the Arabic word for ‘Jesus’ used in the Qur’an) now carries strong overtones (of) ‘unclean’ demeaning occupations. This use of language feeds the narrative which makes Christians feel like second-class citizens in today’s society.  On October 8, 2015 in Lahore, more than 500 Muslim students took an oath that they would not call Christians ‘Esaayi,’ but would use the word ‘Masihi’ themselves.”

These noble gestural efforts from all concerned are commendable in their own right. But just treating symptoms allows the disease to thrive.

And the disease here is the association of Christians with scavenging sanitary work which gained them the insulting designation of chuhras (C-word).

The real objection of Pakistani Christians to being called Isai is that the word has, over time, become synonymous with the degrading C-word. After all, Isai, referring to Hazrat Isa/Al-Masih, constantly evokes Muslim-Christian commonality which, in these troubled times, should help shield Christians against violence. At the end of the day, when Pakistani Christians are bombed, their Muslim neighbours’ goodwill is of inestimable value.

Yet, even though Pakistani Christians are well aware that Isai puts them in an advantageous position within communal hostility, they are strongly focused on burying the word (insultingly pronounced Ssa’ai in the Punjab), for having become a de facto replacement for the pejorative C-word. So, while the brand name is a variable, the content it projects is invariable and until that content changes, it will vitiate each new brand name.

When the number of Christians, fuelled by circumstances and blatant discriminatory practices, into employment as sanitary workers decreases the word Isai will become as respectable as Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jew or Parsee. Dedicated educational, vocational and affirmative action programs, spearheaded by Christians but patronised by powerful, wealthy and enlightened Muslims will go a long way in achieving the goal of decreasing the number of Christians employed as scavengers and sanitary workers.

Very few Muslims realise that Christian hymns and hymn singing to musical orchestras in churches and prayer meetings have resulted in generations of musicians and lyricists invisible to their Muslim neighbours, their talent drowned in the open drains outside the hovels of their bastis.

This is a gold mine hidden in plain sight for talent scouts of the entertainment industry under the aegis of Pakistan’s business-savvy Muslim elite.

The United States Civil Rights movement could never have succeeded without the support and participation of enlightened Whites. Christian community leaders should concentrate on lobbying the Muslim leadership to refine and ensure the implementation of educational, vocational and affirmative action.

History might be replete with examples of communal rebranding, but in recent times, renaming of communities resulted in the United States’ exportable semantic cesspit. As Red Indians evolved into American Indians, Original Americans and finally Native Americans, Blacks finally became African-Americans while the Jews stayed Jews and Indian Americans are quite pleased with themselves.

The rebranding succeeded since it offered a cop-out – white America and the successful middle class of the community concerned could mitigate their commitment to changing the situation and toss a crumb as a substitute for positive action.

Cute.

The Jews never bothered to reinvent themselves, realising that the cause of persecution is not the name but the situational components. The unchanged word Jew has come a long way from the Shakespearean Shylock to a signifier of wealth, power, status, culture and reliability.

Despite their complaints of Islamophobia, no Muslim has asked to be called anything other than a Muslim and would never be fooled by a semantic hand-out!

With minorities suffering direct persecution, it is irresponsible to let the majority community off the hook by asking for superficial concessions. The focus should be on fundamental changes.

Minority leaders should maintain moral pressure to change the situation and constantly remind the majority of how well they are treated when they find themselves in a minority in more enlightened spaces.

Rebranding a deteriorating product offers middle-class Christians and their supporters a cosy cop-out and good short-term press for the politicians involved in this undersized game.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose – By any other name would smell as sweet.” Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2).

“And that which we call a cesspool – By any other name would stink as much – As did the state of Denmark – When foul play spiked its rightful king.”

 

The Verbal Persecution of Pakistani Christians

Pakistani Christians may be Chief Justices, magistrates, sessions judges, police bosses, generals, surgeons, college principals or street sweepers, but they are all verbally persecuted by being referred to as Chuhra — the C-word. Legislation will not repair the damage since it cannot change hearts and, name-changing of persecuted communities across the world has also failed to redress their conditions. Something else is needed, but before that an explanation of the background of the C-word and how it stuck itself to the proud sons and daughters of the Punjabi soil — a tale of lost heritage, conversions and death by the kindness of bumblers.

Being indiscriminately associated with the C-word (below) has played such havoc with the psyche, identity, self-image and well-being of Pakistani Christians that being called Isai or Masihi is no longer relevant.

Chuhra Dalits are the lowest among the untouchables within South Asia’s shameful caste system. History reduced them to being scavengers and handling carrion. Actually, only the least fortunate among the approximately forty Chuhra clans are scavengers. Each clan has a designated vocation, such as executioners, assassins, basket-weavers, makers of winnowing sieves, bird-trappers, trackers, tanners, canine and equine groomers, machchi bakers and midwives, mirasi minstrels, doom singers, farm laborers and so on. The clans have names, traditions, genealogies, priests to perform their rituals and recount their kursinama genealogies at weddings.

They are also identified as the Balmiki faith community. Balmiki was the author of the Ramyana and is also known as Bala Shah and Lalbeg.

Converted to Islam, they are called mussalies. When they prosper, they may attach the prefix Sheikh to their name, as practiced by some of the higher caste converts. In South Asia, Islam was able to disassociate mussalies and Sheikhs from their erstwhile stigma of scavengers. Sikhism can claim even more credit for disentangling Mazhabis and Rangretas from their past — Maharajah Ranjit Singh’s elite Nihang units bristled with Mazhabis and Ranghretas as did many of the Sikh crack Light Infantry regiments of the British Indian army. The result is that a Sikh, irrespective of his caste or clan is addressed as Sirdar-jee. And they’re all levelled out with the Singh suffix.

Name-changing by Sikh and Muslim untouchable converts was helpful.

In the case of Christian converts it was tearfully comical.

The Christian ruling class didn’t mind them borrowing their names but that’s where the buck stopped. The Brits only socialized with the higher caste Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs —from a safe distance.

Socio-politically, Christian missionaries in South Asia failed to launder their converts’ past into a respected entity. It was asking too much from their British rulers to accept these converts within their ethnic and social hierarchy. And the missionaries also believed that a ‘Christian’ name was an English name. Converts with feeble antecedents were encouraged to attach the suffix Masih in the hope of instilling pride through a name-change. The approach failed but was continued since the collection of brilliant seminarians were unable to come up with a viable alternative actually staring them in the face.

Many caste names, especially those of the higher castes and in particular of the quarter million Jatt and Rajput converts to Christianity, were replaced by English first names. This quarter million potential buffer against the slur of the ‘C’ word disappeared into thin air, except for a few stubborn families who clung to their heritage.

Even among the forty untouchable clans only a small number were scavengers. It is a pity that proud clan names such as Luté, Jahé, Dhae, Sahi, Tengré, Goriyé, Kandara, Kotana, Kurtana, Pathan, Rawat, Machchi, Doom and others have been locked in cold storage.

Their founding myth is tragically illustrious.

In the time of the Mahabharta wars between the Kauravas and the Pandavas there were four sons of Kanwar Brahma, a Brahmin noble —  Bharata, Sadhara, Paratna and Purba. When their cow died they made Purba, the youngest, drag away the carcass, first promising to help him in his task, but eventually casting him out, disinheriting him and, dividing his inheritance among themselves. Purba found shelter with the scavengers and carrion-handlers who already existed as outcasts from other clans due to differing reasons. The descendants of Purba, the fallen Brahmin, are the Chuhras, themselves a collection of over forty clans.

Five consequences of the abortive Anglicization of Christian converts still challenge them.

They found themselves alienated from the macro-culture, they were bereft of a micro-culture, they became dependent on mission jobs and they are considered a residue of colonialism by Pakistani Muslims.

They are also  an embarrassing residue of colonialism for the former colonizers who have  smugly converted from Christianity to rationalism.

The consequences of God being considered an Englishman came home to roost after the creation of Pakistan.

The Muslim menial workers suddenly filled the gap of the departing Hindus and Sikhs in other vocations and new land-owners fired the Christian laborers on the former Hindu and Sikh farms. This happened on a scale yet to be measured and there was an influx of Christians in the cities seeking work. They were channeled into sanitary workers’ jobs eagerly vacated by Muslims who were retrieved by their newly empowered coreligionists for ‘cleaner’ jobs.

One has only to read Shauna Singh Baldwin, especially What the Body Remembers, to appreciate that before 1947, a regular household sweeper in Rawalpindi was a Muslim addressed as Sheikh.

 The Christians of Pakistan need to rehabilitate and reinstate their rightful clan names, whether they be low or high-caste. I always considered it a tragedy that the Director of the Lahore YMCA,  Sham Sunder Singh Sandhu, a land-owning, over six-foot tall Jatt had to become S.S.S. Albert at the Independence of Pakistan for fear of being taken for a Sikh and killed or harassed as being potentially seditious.

Pakistan has come a long way since then and the blunders of duffers can be tackled.

It is time for the Dalit Christians of Pakistan to stand up to the higher castes of their own community, get them to act on their behalf to change their situation through education and affirmative action and proudly claim their ancestral heritage of fallen Brahmins.

Further Reading. “Dalits Were Uppercasts”: BJP’s national spokesperson Bizay Sonkar Shastri, in “The Hindu”, October 29, 2015.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/dalits-were-upper-castes-bjp-leader/article7815509.ece

 

Pakistan Christian community living in fear after mob killings: BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-29956115

8 November 2014 Last updated at 00:53 GMT

Pakistan Christian community living in fear after mob killings

By Shahzeb JillaniBBC News, Kasur District, Pakistan

Shahzeb Jillani visits the village where the Christian couple were lynched

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The fertile landscape in Chak 59 of Kasur district in the Punjab province is dotted with hundreds of brick kilns.

The factories, owned by powerful landlords, are notorious for thriving on “bonded labour”. Hundreds of thousands of people have remained locked in a cycle of debt and poverty for decades.

Rights groups call it a form of modern-day slavery.

Until last week, Sajjad Mesih and his wife Shama, a married Christian couple in their 30s, worked at one such brick kiln.

For years, they got up at dawn, laboured in harsh conditions through the day and finished up at dusk. That was their routine – every day, seven days a week. It was a life of debt and poverty that they hated.

On Tuesday, they were lynched and burnt to death there by a mob on allegations of blasphemy.

Flowers at the site of the couple's lynching in Pakistan, November 2014Flowers are left at the site of the couple’s lynching

Blasphemy is an explosive issue in Pakistan. Reporting of violence in the name of blasphemy is often self-censored, twisted and confused by misreporting.

Piecing together the sequence of events and what led to vicious crimes on the pretext of blasphemy is not always straightforward.

But having visited the remote rural area and after speaking to up to a dozen or so people – including police, family, neighbours and eyewitnesses – here is an account of what the BBC has been able to put together.

Running for their lives

It all appears to have started about a week ago when the couple first heard about someone claiming to have discovered burnt pages of the Koran near their mud brick house.

Some extremist villagers were said to be furious and planning to take some kind of an action against the family.

Undated family handout photo showing a Christian couple who were killed by a Muslim mob in Pakistan in November 2014Shama (L) was pregnant with her fifth child when the couple were attacked and killed

Shama’s sister Yasmeen knew more about the whispering campaign. Having converted to Islam along with her husband and children four years ago, she had good links inside the Muslim community.

It was through Yasmeen that the couple was sent an ultimatum by angry villagers, says Shahbaz Masih, a close relative of the couple.

“Start Quote

It could happen to anybody. Everyone here feels fearful”

Suleman MasihA brick kiln worker

They were told to convert to Islam to repent against their alleged sin or face the consequences for committing blasphemy.

Shama and her husband Sajjad knew then that their lives were in serious danger.

They had no intention of converting under duress. The only thing to do was to run for their lives.

On Monday, the couple informed the factory bosses that they feared for their lives and desperately needed to leave.

“Not without settling the debt you owe us,” the couple was told by furious owners.

They were then locked up in a room, in case they tried to escape without clearing their dues.

There are suggestions that the amount of loan money they owed was $600 (£380); others say it was about $1,500 (£948).

Pakistan's Christian community protests over the killing of the couple in Islamabad on 5 November 2014Members of Pakistan’s Christian community have staged protests demanding justice for the couple’s murder

The next morning, before dawn, a group of extremist villagers went around the area to call on members of the public “to come out for the defence of their great religion”.

Clerics from local mosques used loud speakers to incite violence. Soon, hundreds of angry people converged on the brick kiln looking for the Christian couple.

“They had blood in their eyes,” says a young Christian man who watched the lynching from a safe distance. “I was scared. No one could do anything to stop them.”

A few policemen from the nearby check post soon arrived and tried to intervene. But they were outnumbered and beaten up by the mob and told to stay out of it.

The crowd then dragged the pair out of the room, where they were held by the factory owner. They were attacked with bricks and shovels and later laid on the brick oven to be burnt alive.

Three lives lost

At the time of the murder Shama was expecting her fifth child, says her family.

Three lives were lost in the gruesome murders.

The Christian community in the area is horrified by the public lynching.

In the nearby Christian-majority town of Clarkabad, there is anger at the state’s failure to protect its vulnerable and at risk communities.

Suleman Masih, a brick kiln worker in Pakistan, November 2014Suleman Masih also works at the brick kilns and is in fear of Tuesday’s killings being repeated

“It could happen to anybody. Everyone here feels fearful,” says Suleman Masih, a brick kiln worker.

For its part, the government has appeared to move swiftly to try to reassure the beleaguered community. Scores have been arrested under the country’s tough anti-terror laws and the hunt is on for the remaining suspects.

But given the culture of impunity around violence against minorities, many here are not convinced.

“We want justice and until the culprits are held to account, Christians in Pakistan will not feel safe,” says pastor Azmat Nadeem of the Church of Pakistan.

Pakistan is a long way from changing or repealing its notorious blasphemy laws.

At best, the only thing the country’s vulnerable and at risk communities can really hope for now is that the authorities will treat this case seriously and possibly deter similar gruesome crimes from happening again.

The American Dream and the Living Nightmare

According to the US State Department’s 2012 International Religious Freedom Report, “Christians were a leading target of societal discrimination, abuse, and violence in some parts of the world.” As an instrument of diplomacy, the State Department’s  choice of “some” over ‘many’ or ‘most’ is hardly surprising. And rightly so. Were it not for diplomacy, the world would be an even more violent demonic playground.

As such, from the downgraded semantics employed by professional diplomats and their staff, it is possible to gauge the real extent and intensity of persecution suffered by Christian minorities outside of Western democracies and some Latin American countries. The oppression of Christian minorities barely flits on the periphery of media interest.

Mainly, there is a general belief that all minority Christians are rice bowl converts — the residue of 19th century western colonialism. For the United States to use its power and influence for good on the behalf of an oppressed Christian minority at the risk of compromising its political agenda is not an option. Letting this minority survive as best as it can, is. Just as with the non-Christian Kurds in Iraq during the end days of Saddam Hussein. Thus, the thought that these residual remnants of colonialism are merely the consequence of an economic impulse flagellates western guilt for its redemption, with the hope that mercantile policies can be better pursued from this moral high ground.

Somewhere down the line, this argument has further suffered by being force-fed into the Iraqi and Syrian situations. After all, before the US went into Iraq, and the Arab Spring blossomed for the strategic benefit of militant Islamic fundamentalists, eventually leading to the Syrian civil war, Christians in Iraq and Syria were said to be happy with their lot. As happy as they could be by murky suffrance. Their survival depended on a policy reminiscent of a “don’t see don’t tell” approach: conversions to Christianity were illegal, and to the best of my knowledge, even a capital offence. At the same time, the Syrian Orthodox church colluded with the state to persecute Christian evangelists of other denominations. The US State Department, meanwhile, blithely pursued its diplomacy as the ranks of persecuting-country immigrants in the American Dream swelled, and in proportion to their prosperity, were able to dictate where and when — if at all — Christmas Trees would be lit.

The foreign policy of the United States also appears to have inspired its immigration policy of generously opening its doors to immigrants from countries where Christians undergo direct discrimination.  While these immigrants are enabled to hold stock options in the American Dream, their Christian fellow citizens in their homelands only hold shares in a Living Nightmare — of fear and insecurity during their lucky periods when their homes and churches aren’t torched. Such a policy can safely be criticized as being absurdly disproportionate.

The underlying positive discrimination in the United States’ immigration policy leaves Christian minorities to languish in their predicament, since there is not a single country that has passed positive discrimination laws for the protection and uplift of a depressed Christian minority. Their expatriate dual citizens in the United States, however, may prosper under these laws if they care to.

Except in some individual cases, the United States has no policy to accommodate Christian minority applicants to the United States as refugees from persecution. Yet, in furtherance of its policy during the Cold War, escapees from Communist countries received a treatment almost on par with that accorded to economic immigrants from countries where Christian minorities are actively persecuted.

It is regrettable that this policy shows no signs of being revised in order to redress the unfavorable situation of Christian minorities.

The implicit policy of ignoring the plight of Christian minorities and seeking to assuage western guilt for colonialism has reached an impasse. In any case, carrying this burden is an exercise in the absurd. United Fruit’s dubious approach to Latin America and Hearst’s ‘Hully Gee it’s War!’ notwithstanding, the US never was a colonial power, even though it received the ‘white man’s burden’ from Kipling. This policy begs to be revised — nay, excised. As Alexis de Tocqueville said in Democracy in America (1835), “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults … If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Recognizing the suffering of Christian minorities without taking active measures to redress it has been a mistake. It can be repaired by extending a policy of positive discrimination or most favored status to Christian immigrants from countries in which they are a minority.