I CONGRATULATE Dawn for highlighting the plight of the country’s voiceless minorities. The newspaper of the Quaid does justice to its ethics by allowing divergent views at the disposal of its countrymen. Abdul Rashid’s views in his letter ‘Rohingyas and Pakistan’ (July 30) are partly acceptable.

It is truly human to be concerned about the sufferings meted out to a group of people. What will determine the group — country or religion or sect or anything else — is what appeals to one’s sense.

To borrow a strong point from history, the experiment with the Khilafat movement is recalled. It is altogether a different story that the whole world watched in disbelief that the caliph was humiliated and dethroned by their countrymen. And the Khilafat movement started far away in India — primarily to woo Muslim hearts —- found itself completely out of place.

This at least shows that Gandhi was clever to understand that the Muslims of this subcontinent can be exploited easily in the name of religion.

Today, Indian girls of poor families can be purchased easily by the millionaire Sheikhs of the Gulf countries, double or triple their ages. Small children can be playfully used in fatal camel races. When the rich coreligionists cheer, the unfortunates among the non-Arab converted Muslims of poor families pay the price for their parents’ blind faith.

Mr Rashid speaks of sibling theory in justifying the rather indifferent attitude of the majority of the people to the plight of the minorities. How would he then explain the division of India on the grounds of religion? Were the siblings not afraid of each other and rather depended on the British to espouse each one’s cause?

Mr Rashid seeks to take credit of the burden of the refugees from the neighbouring Afghanistan and far-away Bangladesh. The first one is the direct cause of the Zia-era policy. The second one is that the Bangladeshi refugees were never Bangaldeshi.

Their grandfathers were the staunch supporters of Pakistan. They are the Urdu-speaking Biharis. They were the citizens of the then undivided Pakistan and there is no charity in allowing them back. Rather a good many of them have crossed over to non-Muslim India. Once, it was promised to the Indian Muslims that future Pakistan would be their homeland. Even exchange of population was talked about. The Muslim League got a landslide victory.

If in exchange for less than two per cent Hindu/Sikhs living in Pakistan, India seeks to send the strong 18 per cent Muslims, how would it be even with the Kashmir valley gifted to Pakistan? Thus the saying goes, ‘Charity begins at home’.

SANDIPAN KHAN Calcutta