On Wednesday, May 25, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir took to Twitter to counter an open threat of Hindu genocide given by Pakistan minister Ali Muhammad Khan. In his efforts to do so, the Pakistani journalist boasted about how ‘secular Jinnah’, the founder of Pakistan, had inducted Jogendra Nath Mandal, a born Hindu, into the then Pakistan government. Here is how the Pakistani journalist is completely wrong.
The fact is that Mandal had to resign from the Pakistan government due to the systematic persecution of Hindus in Pakistan with the tactical support of the founding fathers of Pakistan, like Jinnah.
“First Law Minister of Pakistan Jogindra Nath Mandal was a Hindu and he was appointed by Jinnah. As for as a term used by @Ali_MuhammadPTI is concerned it doesn’t mean genocide of Hindus this term was used 1500 years ago in some history books. Pls read history again,” Tweeted Hamid Mir defending a statement made by Imran Khan’s minister Ali Muhammad Khan on his show.
The Pakistan minister had openly called for Hindu genocide by threatening Ghazwa e Hind, an Islamic fantasy that refers to the complete conquest of India by invading Islamic forces.
First Law Minister of Pakistan Jogindra Nath Mandal was a Hindu and he was appointed by Jinnah. As for as a term used by @Ali_MuhammadPTI is concerned it doesn’t mean genocide of Hindus this term was used 1500 years ago in some history books. Pls read history again. https://t.co/jq5kGL4EU0
— Hamid Mir (@HamidMirPAK) May 25, 2022
The fact is that Jogendra Nath Mandal had, in fact, resigned from the newly formed Pakistan government soon after the partition and decided to return to India, precisely because of the systematic persecution of Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan with the active support of the founding fathers of Pakistan to commit such crimes against the Hindus in their quest to transform Pakitan into an ‘Islamic’ republic.
Born in 1904 in British Bengal, Jogendra Nath Mandal went on to serve as a legislator and also Pakistan’s first minister of law and labour. Later, he was appointed as the second minister of commonwealth and Kashmir affairs. However, a series of incidents in Pakistan, especially the targeted persecution of minorities made him realise that the idea of Pakistan was bound to fail eventually.
As Jogendra Nath Mandal decided to quit the newly formed Pakistan government soon after the partition, he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan, which itself was explanatory as to why he chose to return to India.
His resignation letter revealed not only how Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan were persecuted systematically, but also how the founding fathers of Pakistan actively supported such atrocities against Hindus in their goal to transform Pakistan into an ‘Islamic’ country.
In his letter to Prime Minister Khan, JN Mandal cited a series of incidents where Hindus and other minorities were persecuted by the Islamists in several communal riots that took place after the partition.
As per Mandal, the military not only oppressed these people and took away stuff forcibly from Hindus’ houses, but also forced Hindus to send their women-folk at night to the camp to satisfy the carnal desire of the military. Mandal says despite appraising the matter to Prime Minister, no action was forthcoming.
He further spoke about how this persecution of Hindus by Pakistan authorities went on to become perhaps one of the principal reasons for the Dacca and East Bengal riots in February 1950, in which hundreds of innocent Hindus were killed in trains, on railway lines between Dacca and Narayanganj, and Dacca and Chittagong.
The letter spoke in length about how Pakistani officers helped the Muslim mob to loot Hindus. It threw light on how the continuous persecution had led to a large-scale exodus of Hindus from Bengal. Addressing the condition of Hindus in East Bengal, Mandal had talked about fifty lakh Hindus that had left since the partition of the country.
In his letter to the Prime Minister in 1950, Mandal strongly asserted that the present condition is not only unsatisfactory but absolutely hopeless and that the future is completely dark and dismal Confidence of Hindus in East Bengal.
He further referred to the atrocities of non-Muslims in West Pakistan, by writing how in Sindh, after partition, about a lakh of Scheduled Castes people were converted to Islam.
In terms of the Hindu community in Pakistan, Mandal stated that Hindus in Pakistan have been rendered “stateless” in their own homes for all intents and purposes. He had gone on to say that the only flaw of these Hindus was their religion.
While making these scathing observations, which rose out of the personal experience of Jogendra Nath Mandal, the latter had tendered his resignation from the Pakistan government and returned to India.
