{"id":13495,"date":"2014-05-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/05\/05\/pakistan-s-hindus-enter-endless-limbo-in-india\/"},"modified":"2014-05-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T12:00:00","slug":"pakistan-s-hindus-enter-endless-limbo-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/05\/05\/pakistan-s-hindus-enter-endless-limbo-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan&#8217;s Hindus Enter Endless Limbo in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucanews.com\/news\/pakistans-hindus-enter-endless-limbo-in-india\/70827\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>INDIA, April 30, 2014 (UCANews): Hindus from Pakistan often travel to India on one-month pilgrim visas, purportedly to visit the innumerable Hindu holy places and shrines around the country. But since 2011, the number of Pakistani Hindus refusing to leave at the end of their stay has increased dramatically in response to the easing of visa regulations by the Indian government, which has announced that Hindus from Pakistan can get long term visas if they follow certain rules.<\/p>\n<p>Most hail from Pakistan&#8217;s Hyderabad province, home to the majority of the country&#8217;s 2.5 million Hindus. Once in India, they can apply for refugee or asylum seeker status. But if their applications are denied, they can simply go on extending their visas. Those who stay usually end up living in tents on land offered on a temporary basis by religious groups or temples. But lack of identification documents means no real jobs, limited income and no means to benefit from state welfare schemes.<\/p>\n<p>Refugees, who may arrive in groups as large as 100 or more, claim they deserve asylum or refugee status or Indian citizenship because their families are not safe in Pakistan. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the country saw a 22 percent rise in religious violence last year, with 687 people killed in more than 200 attacks. But religious freedom is meaningless unless Pakistani Hindus are given legal status and allowed to hold legitimate jobs so that they can provide adequately for their families, said Ram Das, a college graduate who came to India in 2011. Like most other asylum seekers from Pakistan, despite his education, Das now makes his living as a lowly street vendor.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, Pakistani Hindus have not benefited as much as other migrants from Tibet, Myanmar and Afghanistan, who have been assisted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). India shelters some 100,000 Tibetans, more than 110,000 Chin refugees, and some 250 who have fled Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source INDIA, April 30, 2014 (UCANews): Hindus from Pakistan often travel to India on one-month pilgrim visas, purportedly to visit,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}