Pakistan is a casteless paradise:

Alice Albinia in her book, Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, described how the aftermath of anti-Hindu violence in early 1948 in Karachi, then the capital of Pakistan, underscored the problems created by these departing Hindus.

“Within a month of the riots, the government realised, to its alarm, that something entirely unexpected was happening: among the fleeing Hindus were the city’s sweepers and sewer cleaners.” She wrote that the “outraged residents of Karachi … regretted, cajoled and complained”

in letters they wrote to daily Dawn.The city “had become an unhygienic disgrace” where “streets were littered with stinking rubbish.”

According to Albinia, “there were enough jobs for two thousand cleaners, and not enough people to do them.”

The government thought Punjabi

Christians would be happy to do that kind of work. When offered those jobs, however, they were anything but happy. “I have heard that Christians are refusing to work as sweepers,” S P Singha said in his 1948 speech. “One deputy commissioner complained to me that

Christians do not want to do menial tasks and refuse to pick up cow dung and dead animals,” he added.

He then told a tragic tale. In Nathain Khalsa village near Bhai Pheru (a town about 60 kilometres to the south of Lahore), Muslim migrants from India demanded that local Christians remove dead animals. The Christians refused. The migrants then cordoned off Christian houses and

killed five of them, including a pregnant woman.

The story stresses the wrong stereotype that migrant Muslims had of local Christians — that by virtue of their dark skin and low social status, they should be doing the dirtiest jobs. Many, if not all, Punjabi Christians, however

only had the experience of working as farmhands and agricultural labourers. “We had never thought of picking up a broom and cleaning streets,” says Mehtab Masih, born in 1936 in a village in Sheikhupura district.

Yet, in 1952, he shifted to Mirpur Khas in Sindh along with his

family and worked there as a sweeper for almost four decades. Scores of others now living with him in an exclusively Christian colony in Mirpur Khas have the same story.

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The Punjabi christians here were people who’s ancestors were from the chuhra community and had converted in the previous century. Because chuhra was used as a performative they changed their surnsne to isai which also ended up being used as a caste slur so finally they

Chose Masih or Massey the Persian name for Jesus as their surname.

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Singha addressed the assembly on January 20, 1948 to highlight that change. “Kindly pay attention to the mess created by the Sikhs who, after living for centuries in this province, have at once left and have created a huge problem for [Christians]. The government may

have better information but our estimates show that about 60,000 families or 200,000 people of our community, who worked as saipis (landless service providers) or atharis (farmhands), have become homeless after the commotion of Partition,” he said.

The lands vacated by the Sikhs

were being allotted to Muslim refugees coming from eastern Punjab and these new owners of land either did not want Christian saipis and atharis due to religious reasons or they did not know them well enough to trust them with such jobs.

“They hired us for a while but then they engaged their coreligionists,” says Nazir Masih who was about 13 years old at the time of Partition and was living in Harichand village in Sheikhupura district.

In some cases, Christians were forcefully evicted even from places where they were tilling lands for the state institutions – such as in a few villages set up on the military farms. “Christians are being evicted from some of the villages reserved for them,” Singh said.

“They are being replaced with [Muslim] refugees.”

Singha argued that Christians in Pakistan deserved protection from the government because they “have taken refuge in this House of Islam”. When no one listened to him, he suggested to the government to either place the homeless

Christians in refugee camps or “bury them alive”.

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Of course Singha felt guilt he was one of three christian punjabis who was part of the assembly that voted to bifurcate Punjab and give christian dominated districts to Pakistan.

His logic was that Muslims practiced caste less than hindus he was even elected the speaker in newly formed Pakistan parliament hut was unceremoniously thrown out at some point cause you guessed it - he was a Punjabi Christian.

FYI two famous Punjabi christians I’ve heard of are Vikrant Massey and Ranveer Singh’s grandma Chand Burke(who acted in boot polish).

(All quotes are from the Dawn article on punjabi Christians rest is my comments)

Link: https://herald.dawn.com/news/1153539