http://odysseuslahori.blogspot.co.uk: If we did not know that the lives of minorities are under immense threat in Pakistan, Haroon Khalid’s A White Trail, gobsmacks, nay, sucker punches us with the reality. The language is unpretentious; there is no mincing of words, no melodrama, no harangue or pontification. There is page after page of cold, hard, cruel reality delivered with the palpable brutality of a sledge hammer blow. It is a work to make thinking Pakistanis hang their heads in shame and Jinnah turn in his grave.

Trail (from the white portion of the national flag represented the increasingly beleaguered minorities) is a travelogue that takes one on a whirlwind tour of minorities’ festivals andworship places in Pakistan. Comprising of articles originally written for a newspaper and apparently enlarged to become a book, the journalistic language is understandable. That having been said, the work is not dry and impersonal. It has the rich and round fullness of a travel book with plenty of anecdotal content.

The clear strain that runs through the book is the total lack of security to life, propertyand the pursuit of religious obligations that minorities live under in the ideological state of Pakistan. Consider the injustice of denying Hindus to put temples in Multan, derelict since Partition, back into use not by the mob, but by the government itself. Or ordinary people labelling minorities, especially Hindus, as enemies of Pakistan in times of conflict with India.

In this latter case, there have been instances of peace-abiding patriotic Hindus being targeted during the two major wars with India. The fallout of the destruction in December 1992 of the Babri Masjid was equally venomous for Hindus in Pakistan who had nothing to do with that vile act. The result, hardly surprising, is a survival strategy adopted by minorities to appease their Muslim ‘friends’ in a most abject and servile manner. The shame for which rests upon the majority.

Indeed, this prejudice is so strong that Valmiki Hindus in Lahore and Multan are constrained to pass themselves off as Christians who seem to be a little better on the hate scale. In no uncertain terms Khalid tells the reader how the state permits these prejudices to fester and grow: ‘Government school text books are filled with references labelling the Hindus as mischievous and conniving and they are blamed for the bloodshed during the partition.’ He writes and goes on to say that being a Hindu has become taboo in the puritanical society of Pakistan. However, if Hindus take the brunt of anti-minority wrath of a misguided Muslim population, other minorities fare no better.