52 THE CARAVAN
bearing the cross · reportage
nity has mounted a spirited struggle for its rights.
From the early 1980s to the late 2000s, leaders
such as the late Bishop John Joseph and the slain
politician Shahbaz Bhatti have led the fight for so-
cial justice, even losing their lives in that pursuit.
But more recently, amid increasing poverty and
oppression, the movement seems to be losing its
bearings. While the community’s religious leader-
ship remains reluctant to engage politically, its
political leadership seems to have been subsumed
by the two biggest political parties, both of whom
have an Islamist orientation. As the state deprives
non-Muslims of even the most basic rights, the
possibilities of resistance appear dim.several important voices of christian resistance
in Pakistan came from Khushpur, a small village
in the vicinity of Faisalabad district. A potholed
mud track snakes for over a mile through tiny
villages and sprawling fields before ending at a
muddy hillock that marks the entrance to the
village. Alongside donkey carts, mud troughs for
animals to drink from and houses thatched with
mud and straw stand red-brick structures with
towering spires and crosses.
These impressive structures are emblematic of
the reputation of the village. Referred to as both
the Vatican and the Rome of Pakistan, Khushpur
is home to about 8,000 Catholics. The village falls
under the Diocese of Faisalabad, and boasts of
having produced two bishops, about 40 priests and
hundreds of nuns and theologians. It comes as no
surprise, then, that there is active participation in
matters of the Church, and a strong emphasis on
Catholic values, among the people of Khushpur.
Yet, more so than the Catholic presence, Khushpur
is most known for once being the nerve centre of
the minority-rights movement in Pakistan.
Khushpur has a long history of assistance from
international missionary organisations. This,
along with the efforts of some local politicians,
has ensured that it is more prosperous than its
neighbouring villages. Unlike them, it boasts of a
telephone network, a football field, public schools,
gas supply, and two tube-wells that pump fresh
water. Most of these amenities were obtained in
the early 2000s, through political connections and
using funds available to Christian lawmakers from
the village. The most prominent of these lawmak-ers was arguably Shahbaz Bhatti, who was also the
leading figure in the minority-rights movement.
In June last year, I met Shahbaz’s family at their
home in Khushpur. Sitting around a coffee table
laden with tea and cookies, Shahbaz’s cousins
Nadeem Akhtar Gill and Akmal Bhatti, with their
uncle Akbar Bhatti, recounted the early days of
the movement. Shahbaz founded an organisation
called the Christian Liberation Front, or CLF, in
the mid 1980s.
Nadeem recalled how their cousin, as a teen-
ager in the late 1970s, would lock horns with his
father, the headmaster of the village school and
a devout Catholic, over the question of political
activism. His father wanted him to shun activism,
study hard and become a white-collar professional
like his brothers. “The tension between them
reached a point where his father forbade him to
even go out to play with us,” Nadeem told me. “He
wanted Shahbaz sahib to study and become a bada
aadmi”—a big man. “He had no patience for the
idealistic plans of an angry teenager.”
Shahbaz’s father stopped giving him pocket
money in an attempt to chastise him for not giv-
ing up his dangerous ideas. But his older brothers
would quietly slip him spending money to sustain
the Christian Liberation Front, or CLF, an organi-
sation Shahbaz founded in the mid 1980s.
Nadeem recalled that Baba Jalal, a wizened,
well-read shopkeeper, would inform Shahbaz, who
had not yet travelled outside of Khushpur, about
the rampant prejudice against religious minorities
in the country. However, because of his strict fa-
ther, there was not much Shahbaz could do while
he was in the village. It was when he went to col-
lege in Faisalabad that he finally announced that
he would enter politics.
In those days, the young activists believed that a
struggle for equal citizen rights for minorities was
not only necessary but could bring about genu-
ine change in the social and political attitudes of
the Muslim majority towards the Christians of
Pakistan. One of the reasons for this belief, the
elderly Akbar chimed in, was Khushpur’s prox-
imity to Faisalabad, a city he described as one of
the most prejudiced places in Punjab. “The fact
that we couldn’t use the same kitchen utensils as
Muslims because we were considered impure, and
that Christian students from our village would be
denied admission to institutes of higher education
greatly angered Shahbaz shaheed,” Akmal said.
In the 1980s, General Zia-ul-Haq intensified
the Islamisation of Pakistan, declaring that Islam
was the chief unifying factor in the divided coun-
try. Whatever burgeoning hope the young CLF
activists had for uplifting the status of religious
minorities quickly turned into despair, as the state
pursued a regressive Salafist Islamic agenda that,Despite the extent of this
persecution, or perhaps because
of it, Pakistan’s Christian
community has mounted a
spirited struggle for its rights.