Fatherhood is a blessing. It is an honor of the highest degree a man can be bestowed with, a responsibility of immeasurable consequence. The sight of a little pile of flesh packed in the form of a human baby and the realization that its arrival into the world was heralded by the father is frightening as well as soothing at the same time. The first sight of the baby unconsciously wells up the eyes of the father. No doubt.

Father of a Hindu daughter cries twice maybe, once at the birth of his girl child out of joy and second time when he is marrying off his little princess. It is a typical of a Hindu father across all strata of the society, from the richest to the poorest.

But what is one to make of a father who is helplessly sitting on a protest at a police station, badgering his face with his own hands in frustrated helplessness and repeatedly begging for someone to show mercy and put a bullet through his body, since he has run out of patience, and perhaps the will to stay alive.

For the uninitiated, this scene of an old, grey haired, poor man with his torn shirt screaming deliriously would be intriguing. What would lead to such an act of defiance, by a person of a persecuted minority (Hindu) in a notoriously Islamist sectarian country like Pakistan?

Raveena and Reena, two minor aged Hindu girl children, were missing since the eve of Holi in Sindh, Pakistan. This prompted furious protest from the Hindu community in Sindh province, and later when the videos of the girls surfaced, they were married women and more importantly had converted to Islam. This unsurprisingly is not the first time such fate has befallen Hindu or Christian girls in Pakistan.

The venue of all these “conversions” and “marriages-post-conversion” happen with alarming regularity at a place called “Dargah Bharchundi Sharif”. The Dargah purportedly offers its services to people from other communities who want to embrace Islam and offers protection to them in case they are scared to go back to their families.

But closer scrutiny by Pakistani journalists like Kamal Siddiqui (who wrote a piece headlined “What a Shame!”) brought out some surprising truths about the Dargah. The Dargah is the venue of a criminal enterprise which runs the criminal syndicate of converting hapless Hindu girls. The reported number is about 150 girls in the three years preceding 2017.

Going through the news reports which do manage to come out, one actually wonders what is it about Islam in Sindh or Pakistan that only Hindu girls convert to Islam and not a single case of forced conversion of men comes to the fore.

Perhaps, the answer lies in the expansion of faith through women’s womb might hold some water. One womb converted, one womb more for the faith and one womb less for the un-converted. Another explanation may be the level of security provided to Hindus and Hindu women in particular in Pakistan today, is at par or worse than the Mughal era, when a desirable Hindu woman could be carried away and put into a harem without any consequence. Or both.

One of the Pir of this criminal conversion syndicate is one Abdul Haq aka Mian Mithu, who was courted by the current PM of Pakistan, Mr. Imran Khan. The same Imran Khan who had righteously thundered to the Indian PM Mr.Narendra Modi, “I will teach you how to treat minorities”.

Mian Mitthu was earlier accused in the forced abduction, conversion to Islam and marriage of another minor Hindu girl, Rinkle Kumari in Sindh province of Pakistan. Mian Mitthu was denied a ticket by the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP) after his name surfaced in the aforementioned case.

This was the man courted by Mr.Imran Khan to join his political party. It is sick to even imagine, with such invitees into his political party, what kind of lessons in treating minorities would Imran Khan teach Indians? It may be safe to guess, perhaps in how to humiliate minorities even more, something Indians have known far too well about Pakistanis.

The fate of the Reena and Raveena have already been sealed. They are gone. To Yar Rahim Khan as per the latest reports in Pakistani newspaper Dawn. In spite of the statements by Fawad Chaudry and other ministers taking notice about the case of abduction, Pakistani journalists hyperventilating sanctimoniously with righteous anger, the truth is that nothing will change.

Expecting justice from a society which till very recently was not ready to accept the idea, that Hindu marriages should be registered and held legally valid is too farfetched. The reasons for such refusal to register marriages are far too obvious to even mention.

Hindus on this side of the border have to understand, and perhaps as some of the Hindus who live in areas where the Muslim population has already reached critical mass (like Kashmiri Pandits or the Hindus of Kerala, WB and Assam) are coming to terms that Demography is Destiny.

To Reena and Raveena, may you have a better one in your next life and to your broken, distraught father, I am sorry, I cry silently with you, even though I am thousands of miles away from you. Our pain, our tears have always been invisible and I am afraid that, it will be so in this case as well.