Religious, Social and Political Institutions
The Indus river is a holy river to many Hindus, and the Pakistan government periodically allows small groups of Hindus from Pakistan and India to make pilgrimage, though most Hindus are forced to do this along the banks of the river that flows through a small part of Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The communal violence of the 1940s and the subsequent persecutions have resulted in the destruction of thousands of Hindu temples in Pakistan, although the Hindu community and the Pakistani government have preserved and protected many prominent ones. The Hindu Gymkhana in Karachi has tried to promote social development for Hindus in the city. One of the few temples remaining in Karachi today is the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Karachi.
Hindus are allotted separate electorates to vote by, but their political importance is virtually nil. The Pakistan Hindu Panchayat and the Pakistani Hindu Welfare Association are the primary civic organizations that represent and organise Hindu communities on social, economic, religious and political issues in most of the country, with the exception of the Shiv Temple Society Hazara, which especially represents community interests in the Hazara region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in addition to being the special guardians of the Shiva temple, at Chitti Gatti village, near Mansehra. There are minority commissions and for a while, a Ministry of Minority Affairs in the Government of Pakistan looked after specific issues concerning Pakistani religious minorities.
Read more about this topic: Hinduism In Pakistan
Famous quotes containing the words social, political and/or institutions:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)
“Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Unless we maintain correctional institutions of such character that they create respect for law and government instead of breeding resentment and a desire for revenge, we are meeting lawlessness with stupidity and making a travesty of justice.”
—Mary B. Harris (1874–1957)