Daily Times

It’s a small miracle that nobody from the Hindu community in the town of Bhong in Punjab was injured or killed given the way a bunch of fanatics desecrated their shrine in the town the other day. It turns out that the reason for all the fury was the fact that a nine-year old Hindu boy, who had been arrested after allegedly urinating in a local seminary, was granted bail by a local court ten days later. That apparently was all that was needed to light a fuse across the region, leading to the vandalism in the temple and hundreds of people blocking the Multan-Sukkur motorway in protest.

It’s a very good thing that the government has taken note of this shameful incident all the way up to the prime minister, who has ordered authorities to arrest the culprits at the earliest and also have the temple repaired. The Supreme Court also took suo motu notice after the patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council, Dr Ramesh Kumar, drew CJP Gulzar Ahmed’s attention to the incident on social media. The apex court came down hard on the Punjab IG police as well as chief secretary, asking them what the administration and the police force were doing when the temple was under attack.

It’s not strange at all that rumours of financial problems between different communities of the region are also doing the rounds in sections of the press because often such tactics are used to settle financial and even tribal differences once and for all. If that is indeed the case – and that can only be established once the incident is thoroughly investigated – then there is a very urgent need to make examples out of characters that give a religious touch to mundane matters because of the sensitivity of the whole thing. Everyone must be made to understand that there is no escaping the fact that all citizens, including minorities, have rights in this country and the reprehensible and dishounourable practice of playing the religion card, unfairly to subdue others, is not going to be tolerated here. *