- The Citizenship (Amendment) Act expedites citizenship for religious minorities including Christians, facing persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
- Christians in undivided Punjab supported the creation of Pakistan, believing Muslim society to be more secular and protective of religious minorities.
- Despite their role in Pakistan’s creation, Pakistani Christians faced hardships post-Partition, including expulsion from their villages and discrimination.
On March 12, 2024, India implemented the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which expedites citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and other religious minorities facing persecution in three Muslim-majority countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. When the bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2019, it was surprising that Christians were among the beneficiaries. That’s because the Christians of undivided India were more enthusiastic about Balkanizing India and creating Pakistan than the Muslims.
While Hindu-majority India is generously offering them refugee status and the opportunity to establish a new life in India, the truth is that Indian Christians played an adversarial role against Hindus.
While Hindu-majority India is generously offering them refugee status and the opportunity to establish a new life in India, the truth is that Indian Christians played an adversarial role against Hindus. And if recent Christian voices from Pakistan are representative, they haven’t changed much.
In a paper titled ‘The Role of Christians in the Freedom Movement of Pakistan,’ Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq write that the followers of Christ supported Muhammed Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League in their quest to create Pakistan.[1] It is a measure of their animus towards India that the Christians supported the idea of Pakistan when there was substantial opposition to Partition within the Muslim community.
For instance, Sayyad Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, a Muslim Hanafi scholar and religious and political leader, said, “Those who vote for the Muslim League are swine and swine-eaters.” Another prominent leader, Maulvi Habeebur Rahman of Ludhiana, president of the Ahrar organization, declared: “Ten thousand Jinnahs…. could safely be sacrificed at the point of the shoe of Jawaharlal Nehru.”[2]
However, the Christians paid no heed to these remarks and continued supporting Jinnah. The key Christian leaders who played a significant role in the Pakistan Movement were Dewan Bahadur S.P. Singha (speaker of the United Punjab Assembly and later speaker of the Western Punjab Assembly), Chaudhry Chandu Lal (advocate), Fazal Elahi (the deputy speaker of the Punjab Assembly), F.E. Chaudhry (photographer journalist) and B.L. Rallia Ram (founding secretary of the All India Conference of Indian Christians).
Pakistan got Punjab because of Christians
In accordance with Britain’s Cabinet Mission plan for the Partition of India after the 1946 general elections, Muslims voted for the Muslim League in support of the creation of Pakistan. During the elections, the Christians were seen and heard chanting slogans “Long Live Pakistan.” As an acknowledgment and appreciation of these gestures, the Christians were promised by the Muslim League that they would be offered more privileges as compared to other minorities in Pakistan.[3]
In 1947, the provincial assemblies across India were to decide the issue of Partition. A meeting of the Punjab Legislative Assembly was held on June 23, 1947, to consider whether the province, still undivided at the time, should be part of Pakistan or India. R.A. Gomes, Fazal Elahi, and F.E. Chaudhry, the three Christian members of the assembly, had met the night before at the home of the speaker, S.P. Singha, and had decided to vote for the inclusion of the whole of Punjab in Pakistan.
On the morning of the meeting, the leader of the Akali Dal Party, Master Tara Singh, stood on the flight of steps in front of the assembly with a bared kirpan, threatening to use it on any member who would vote in favor of union with Pakistan. Coming up the steps, Singha confronted the armed Sikh leader, announcing that he indeed intended to vote for Pakistan, and challenged him to do his worst. Singha raised the slogan “Seene Pe Goli Khayenge, Pakistan Banaenge.” (Translation: We will face bullets, we will create Pakistan). A scuffle broke out, but other members prevented violence.[4]
As the voting began, it proved to be a stressful situation even for Jinnah when the supporters of India and Pakistan were on the same number of 88 votes. At that critical moment, Singha, who had the casting vote as the assembly’s speaker, stood up to change the game and cast his vote in favor of Pakistan. The other three Christian members of the assembly followed him. Pakistan won by three votes. Thus, Christian votes led to the breaking away of Punjab from India.
…the support of Christians for the cause of Pakistan was based on their belief that Muslim society, in its nature, was more secular than the caste-ridden Hindu society and hence more permissive for the rights and safeguards of the religious minorities
According to Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq, the support of Christians for the cause of Pakistan was based on their belief that Muslim society, in its nature, was more secular than the caste-ridden Hindu society and hence more permissive for the rights and safeguards of the religious minorities.
“Christians strongly supported Quaid-e-Azam and the Muslim League at that critical time when there was a lot of opposition to the formation of a new Muslim state. The All India Christian Association assured unconditional full cooperation to the founder of Pakistan. This crucial role of the Christian population of the region was recognized by the founder of Pakistan and the All India Muslim League at all levels. These Christians played a very strong role in the creation of Pakistan…. The Christian vote before the Boundary Commission was the only decisive vote for the true foundation of Pakistan. Christian leaders voted for Pakistan because they believed that Quaid-e-Azam would be the real protector of their rights and interests.”[5]
Due to the sympathetic role Christians played during the Pakistan movement, Jinnah appointed a Kerala Christian, Pothan Joseph, as the first editor of Dawn, Delhi, the only main English language daily to promote Pakistan.[6]
More loyal than Muslims
In the early 1930s when Cambridge undergraduate Chaudhry Rehmat Ali came up with the idea and name of Pakistan, it was an Indian Christian who first backed the idea with his own spin. “Well-known Christian leader Joshua Fazal-ul-Din wrote in the daily ‘Inqilab’ that Pakistan, having a relationship with Central Asia, was a separate country and had no connection with the rest of India and that he was in harmony with Chaudhry Rehmat Ali regarding the separation of this territory from India as it was in accordance with the voice of god.”[7]
Either Joshua Fazal-ul-Din was a complete fool, or he was possessed by some kind of Abrahamic zeal to split India so that it would not be led by Hindus in a democratic form of government. Perhaps in his Christian worldview… if India splits up into hundreds of small units, it will be easy for Christians to conquer it for Christ. A strong and united India is of no use to either Christians or Muslims.
Either Joshua Fazal-ul-Din was a complete fool, or he was possessed by some kind of Abrahamic zeal to split India so that it would not be led by Hindus in a democratic form of government. Perhaps in his Christian worldview – which is shared by the likes of demagogue Kancha Illiah and many radicalized Indian Christians – if India splits up into hundreds of small units, it will be easy for Christians to conquer it for Christ. A strong and united India is of no use to either Christians or Muslims.
In 1928, an all-parties conference was held in Kolkata to deliberate on a future constitutional arrangement in India that would be acceptable to all concerned. This conference appointed a committee headed by Congress leader Motilal Nehru to propose a constitutional formula that would achieve the agreement of all the communities. The committee presented its report, known as the Nehru Report, but Jinnah rejected it, saying that Hindus could dominate all other communities by virtue of their overwhelming majority.
The All India Christian Conference, along with other minorities, also rejected the report, expressing their lack of confidence in the Hindu leadership. In their (unwitting) stinging indictment of Indian Christians, Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq write: “Well before the presentation of the Nehru Report when Iqbal was claiming that ‘Hindustan is the best in the whole world; we are its nightingales and it is our home,’ and Jinnah was portrayed as the ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ by Sarojini Naidu, “at that the moment a Christian leader Joshua Fazal-ud-Din was very much clear and said that those believing in Hindu-Muslim unity were living in a fool’s paradise as any such attempt would make India a war place.”[8]
Among Jinnah’s most fawning sycophants was Mrs K.L. Rallia Ram, the sister of B.L. Rallia Ram, founding secretary of the All India Conference of Indian Christians. She was also the general secretary of the Indian Social Congress and the mother-in-law of Mohammad Younus, secretary of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, also known as the Frontier Gandhi. She wrote to Jinnah on May 29, 1946, that he should not give up the demand for an equal sovereign state. “The oppressed and disgraced of the Hindus must have a place to run to and take shelter. Pakistan will be a refuge for such people.“[9]
Despite her name, she was full of venom towards Hindus. On September 22, 1946 she wrote to Jinnah from Lahore: “I wish you can also win over Sikhs. But the difficulty is that the Hindus are trying their level best to keep the Sikhs to themselves to fight their battles with Muslims. Hindus are morally and physically a coward (sic) race and so they want Sikhs to act as their militia. Do you know that 4,000 Hindus left Murree two days before when somebody gave out that Muslims would create trouble.”[10]
Gurdaspur must go to Pakistan
After the Christian vote decided Punjab’s fate, the spotlight fell on the division of Punjab itself. Not content with breaking India, the Christians denounced and condemned the “unfair” distribution of Punjab province more forcefully than the Muslims and tried their best to get the districts of Pathankot and Gurdaspur – both currently in India – included in Pakistan.
When the Boundary Commission proceedings took place, Christian leaders Singha, Gibbon, and Fazal Elahi, in their recorded statement, demanded that the Christian population be treated as part of the Muslim population for the demarcation of the boundaries.
Chaudhary Chandu Lal served as a lawyer for the Christian community. He visited Pathankot and Gurdaspur and got a resolution passed by the Christian population in these districts, stating they wanted to be included in Pakistan. Gibbon appeared before the Boundary Commission to demand that Lahore be part of western Punjab and that all the Anglo-Indian Christians be transported to Pakistan as it was considered to be their final destiny. When the Radcliffe Award was announced in August 1947, it was taken by the Christians as a tailored decision aimed to create problems for the Pakistani economy while facilitating the Indian occupation of Kashmir.[11]
Singha raised his voice against the award, saying that as the principle of majority had been brutally crushed, it was one-sided and unfair to Pakistan. This was hypocritical because the Christians had earlier rejected Hindu majority rule.
Christians: Pakistan’s new untouchables
When the storm of Partition arrived, it totally shattered Punjab. While Sikhs and Hindus became the biggest victims of Islamic jehad unleashed by Muslim League goons, the Christians who had hoped to benefit from the exodus of Hindus and Sikhs were left holding the pan. Christian leaders had been practically salivating at the prospect of getting some of the farmlands abandoned by the Sikhs (who owned 60 percent of all agricultural land in undivided Punjab). But they got nothing. In hindsight, that was expected, as Muslims are clear to this day that because Pakistan was created for India’s Muslims, other communities should not expect anything.
Christian peasant households were expelled en masse from their villages by the new state of Pakistan. Some 60,000 Christian families who had been tenants of Sikh landlords were now homeless and without employment. “Muslim refugees were distributed much of the evacuee land, and six to eight acres were given to each family, but these Christians who were living under the Sikh landlords had been overlooked totally, and whatever small piece of land they tilled had been handed over to the refugees.”[12]
In January 1948, Singha condemned the practice of beating and killing Christians to force them to work as sweepers and toilet cleaners, roles which lower caste Hindus were no longer undertaking as they fled to India for safety. “The crux of their plight is humiliation and hunger. There are only two ways to deal with the issue of the Christians. Either we dig trenches and bury them alive, or we send them to refugee camps, as they have no food and shelter.”[13]
And yet Singha behaved in a churlish manner. Instead of holding to task the new rulers of his chosen country – which had effectively disenfranchised and pauperized the entire Christian community – he blamed the Sikhs for his plight. Speaking in the Punjab legislature on January 20, 1948, he deplored the Sikhs for leaving for India and “for leaving behind a legacy of misery and suffering for the Christians.“[14]
Seeing the ground slip away under the feet of the Christians as their chosen homeland showed its true Islamist face, Gibbon said in the Punjab legislature: “I beg to ask for leave to make a motion for the adjournment of the business of the House to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, the grave situation arising out of the policy of the Government in respect of the wholesale eviction of Christian tenants from their home holdings and lands without providing any alternative means of shelter and livelihood, thus rendering nearly 300,000 Christians homeless and on the verge of starvation, the consequences of which are too horrible to imagine.”[15]
Hell on earth
Nearly two million Pakistani Christians continue to pay the price for their leaders’ great betrayal of their motherland. In 1960, when Pakistan created a new capital, many more Christians settled in Islamabad, eager to take up work as road sweepers and sewage cleaners, as that was expected and was the only role available to them
Nearly two million Pakistani Christians continue to pay the price for their leaders’ great betrayal of their motherland. In 1960, when Pakistan created a new capital, many more Christians settled in Islamabad, eager to take up work as road sweepers and sewage cleaners, as that was expected and was the only role available to them.[16]
A Pakistani media report says the oppressed condition of the great mass of Christians has not improved a bit since 1947, and they suffer the same caste-based strictures and prohibitions at the hands of Muslims as of Hindus. “Violence against Christians has become the order of the day. Churches have been attacked, the homes of Christians have been torched, and innocents are being viciously targeted. Punjab is the province where Christians are targeted the most. The vast majority of attacks against Christians have taken place in the very province that S.P. Singha had struggled to make a part of Pakistan.”[17]
Given the growing Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistani society, things are likely to get much worse. The number of blasphemy cases against Christians has risen in direct proportion to the incremental stringency of the laws. “No one is safe from the charge in Islamic Pakistan,” says author Ayesha Jalal.[18]
Pakistani Christians are sentenced to death on trumped-up blasphemy cases. Even children are not spared. In February 1995, two Christians were sentenced to death on dubious charges of blasphemy; one of the accused, Salamat Masih, was 13 years old. In 2012, Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Christian girl who has Down Syndrome, was wrongly accused of burning the Koran. After months of hiding in Pakistan, she was relocated.[19]
End the bigotry
The Citizenship (Amendment) Act offers persecuted Pakistani Christians expedited citizenship in India. Yet, in 2023, when Pakistani Muslims burned down a church, a Pakistani Christian lamented her country was resembling India and compared the situation of Pakistani Christians to that of Christians in India.[20] When Hindu generosity is treated with such scorn, it is time to re-examine the ancient concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, or the World is One Family.
Christians are safe in India only as long as Hindus are a majority. If Muslims ever take control of the country through demographic warfare, the first thing they will do is erase Christianity from India. If you have any doubts just look across the border. Remember, Pakistan is India without Hinduism.
Citations
[1] Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences Vol. 32, No. 2, page 441, https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA364069389&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=20742061&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E406f5233&aty=open-web-entry
[2] Mujeebur Rahman, The Life of Hadhrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad Khalifatul Masih II, page 160, https://archive.org/stream/FazlEUmar/Fazl-e-Umar_djvu.txt
[3] Jinnah’s Christians: From Pakistan Movement to the Formation of Pakistan | Pakistan Today; https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/15/jinnahs-christians-from-pakistan-movement-to-the-formation-of-pakistan/
[4] Kalsoom Hanif and Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, ‘State, Religion and Religious Minorities in Pakistan: Remembering the Participation of Christians in Punjab Legislative Assembly, 1947-55’ https://pssr.org.pk/issues/v4/2/state-religion-and-religious-minorities-in-pakistan-remembering-the-participation-of-christians-in-punjab-legislative-assembly-1947-55.pdf
[5] Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences Vol. 32, No. 2, page 437, https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA364069389&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=20742061&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E406f5233&aty=open-web-entry
[6] The Dawn of Pakistan – Dawn.Com; https://www.dawn.com/news/1338270
[7] Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences Vol. 32, No. 2, page 439; https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA364069389&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=20742061&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E406f5233&aty=open-web-entry
[8] Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences Vol. 32, No. 2, page 440; https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA364069389&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=20742061&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E406f5233&aty=open-web-entry
[9] Nazaria-i-Pakistan Trust (nazariapak.info); https://www.nazariapak.info/Pakistan-Movement/Jinnah-Punjab.php
[10] Pakistan: The Anti-India Identity – Indian Defence Review; https://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/pakistan-the-anti-india-identity/
[11] Munir-ul-Anjum and Shahnaz Tariq, Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences Vol. 32, No. 2, page 441; https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA364069389&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=20742061&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E406f5233&aty=open-web-entry
[12] Kalsoom Hanif and Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, ‘State, Religion and Religious Minorities in Pakistan: Remembering the Participation of Christians in Punjab Legislative Assembly, 1947-55’; https://pssr.org.pk/issues/v4/2/state-religion-and-religious-minorities-in-pakistan-remembering-the-participation-of-christians-in-punjab-legislative-assembly-1947-55.pdf
[13] Christian slums are being targeted by bigoted authorities intent on cleaning up Islamic capital – British Asian Christian Association (britishasianchristians.org); https://www.britishasianchristians.org/baca-news/20290/
[14] Kalsoom Hanif and Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, ‘State, Religion and Religious Minorities in Pakistan: Remembering the Participation of Christians in Punjab Legislative Assembly, 1947-55’
[15] ibid
[16] Christian slums are being targeted by bigoted authorities intent on cleaning up Islamic capital – British Asian Christian Association (britishasianchristians.org); https://www.britishasianchristians.org/baca-news/20290/
[17] How four Christian votes made Pakistan possible (thefridaytimes.com); https://thefridaytimes.com/01-Jun-2018/how-four-christian-votes-made-pakistan-possible
[18] Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan, page 215
[19] Pakistan blasphemy case: who’s Rimsha Masih? – News18; https://www.news18.com/news/india/pakistan-blasphemy-case-whos-rimsha-masih-505520.html
[20] https://x.com/haidersaeedpti/status/1691874501976277341?s=20