11: Lessons Learned Using Participatory Methodologies in Exploring Intersectional Marginalization of Religious and Sectarian Minorities in Pakistan

Publication Date:
27 Jul 2023
Pages:
173–189
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529229295.ch011
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This chapter presents the key lessons learned during participatory action research (PAR) carried out by the Al-Khoei Foundation and HIVE Pakistan conducted between January 2020 to March 2020 in the Christian minority communities in Lahore and Islamabad. The research enabled us to explore nuanced community perspectives related to intersectional marginalization faced by minority communities, especially minority women. A key finding was the interplay of poverty and religious identity that manifests in diverse forms of discrimination and social exclusion in the everyday lives of the minority communities.

Peer researchers from within the communities collected narrative-based stories of social exclusion and marginalization and conducted matrix ranking – where communities ranked the level of stigma as well as deprivation they faced while accessing public goods. These findings informed the implementation phase of the project that aimed to address the underlying inequalities by fostering community-based solutions to the most pressing issues at hand.

Introduction

This chapter examines the impact of participatory research methodology in effectively documenting the daily experiences of the religious and sectarian minority groups in terms of intersectional marginalization due to the intersection of faith, poverty and gender identities and how the intersection of these factors leads these communities down the economic and social ladder. Participatory methods were employed by the researchers to co-create knowledge with the targeted groups, placing them at the centre of knowledge creation to evaluate their vulnerabilities and instances of exclusion.1 The participatory research was used to gather key information from the perspective of the local communities, whereas the interactive storytelling sessions were used to create a sense of belonging for the religious and sectarian minority groups for generating key information on social exclusion and intersectional marginalization.

The research was conducted in the semi-urban and urban locales of Lahore and Islamabad where Christian and Shia minority groups lived, to explore the context of structural and systemic marginalization faced by these minority groups in Pakistan. Pakistan is on the list of ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ on religious freedom (USCIRF, 2022). The idea of the independent Muslim country of Pakistan was conceptualized on account of intrinsic discriminatory politics of the Indian subcontinent, where Muslims were, despite their large population, considered a minority. Yet post-independence politics in Pakistan kept pushing the minority communities to the margins, and so the ideals of inclusive politics and egalitarian society remained largely unachieved. Pakistan is a diverse society comprising numerous religious and ethnolinguistic groups. The diversity, however, has shrunk lately with demographic changes. The population of religious minorities has constantly changed in Pakistan amid anti-minority structural and attitudinal biases (MRG, 2019). At the time of partition in 1947, almost 23 per cent of Pakistan’s population was comprised of ‘non-Muslim’ citizens. Today the proportion of religious minorities has declined to less than 4 per cent.

Anti-Ahmadiyya riots, structural violence against Christian minority members while exploiting the legislative apparatus, forced conversion of Hindu and Christian girls, destruction of churches and temples and mob vigilantism and systematic bloodshed of Shias are some of the most explicit forms of violence that often make headlines.2 However, some other forms of marginalization are embedded in Pakistani society that shape the minority identity in the country. Such forms of marginalization stem from the intersection of language, culture, economic inequality, religion and so on.

There has been a series of structured anti-minority politics that have shaped the conscience of the society. Anti-minority campaigns by organized groups can be publicly witnessed in the form of literature, messaging and/or religious polemics.3 Thousands of minority community members have fled the country in the wake of persecution, yet hundreds of thousands are still living in constant fear of persecution and threats. Some of the most highlighted cases have made international headlines, yet hundreds of them go unnoticed on a daily basis. Minority persecution comes in various shapes and forms and often manifests itself in most unnoticeable ways. It is highly important to learn about the hidden forms of persecution and marginalization because the minority communities have, over the years of persistent episodes of marginalization, internalized the very notions of persecution and marginalization. Therefore, this research on religious equality and intersectional marginalization is crucial to understand and explore the nature of marginalization of religious minorities in Pakistan, even in its most obscure and overlooked forms. The locales for this research are selected on the basis of a history of violence, poverty and their religious minority status.

The locale of the research was selected after robust consultative sessions with community members from Lahore and Islamabad, who identified social exclusion, violence against the minority groups and lack of access to public services, limited economic opportunities for the minority groups and endemic poverty. Early in the research process, Punjab province and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) were shortlisted for conducting the research. There were two important reasons to start with these two broad areas. First, both have a significant presence of a Christian community with a history of religious persecution. The second reason was based on operational viability and better resource mobilization. However, the selection of the research locales was the trickiest part of the current research project. The scoping research informed the selection process of the communities after visiting multiple communities through the conceptualization phase of the research. The relatively isolated minority communities were selected to minimize the risk of any potential conflict and to guarantee free mobility of the data collectors in the locale. The criterion for selecting a locale included three key factors significant for studying intersectional marginalization: poverty, history of conflict and a residential area of minority communities. All six shortlisted research sites satisfied all three conditions – that is, they are inhabited by the religious minority groups, have a history of conflict and can be considered as poor in terms of their livelihood practices and living conditions.

Participatory methodologies

Participatory action research (PAR) was employed to draw out insights about the intersection of religious identity and poverty in the experiences of marginalization of the religious minority groups. PAR combines two distinct research approaches: participatory research and action research. The adopted research approach engaged researchers and participants throughout the research process from the initial stage of the research leading up to the community development actions. The approach is considered unique for its applicability in issues concerning inequalities, oppression and social exclusion. It treats the participants as experts due to their lived experiences of the specific topic. By involving participants in the research process, PAR promotes the identification of actions desired by the participants to influence social change. For this project, the actions and changes proposed by the participants were used to inform the community uplifting projects facilitated by HIVE, a social innovation organization based in Islamabad.

This research combined more traditional qualitative research methods with participatory methods. Both qualitative and particularly participatory research methods allow the researchers to elicit rich and detailed accounts for conducting a robust qualitative analysis. Unlike quantitative methods such as survey research, the aim of the qualitative research is to analyse the in-depth meanings participants associate with the events, experiences and incidents that happen in their lives on a day-to-day basis. The employment of PAR helped to reduce the power asymmetries that traditionally occur between the researchers and the participants, enabling a process of mutual learning.

The first phase of the research involved qualitative but not participatory methods. A scoping study was carried out to explore the various intersections that caused marginalization in several minority communities. The scoping research was conducted to identify geographical areas for further in-depth research and project implementation of CREID.4 It included multiple visits, informal conversations and structured interviews with locals, community and religious leaders and political representatives from union councils. The data was collected using interviews as a research tool. The interviews were structured to extract the perceptions about religious inequality, inclusive development and opportunities of intervention to improve the well-being status of the communities, who are otherwise living in extreme poverty and experience social exclusion.

Through the scoping research exercise, 24 in-depth interviews were conducted in five cities across Pakistan with: (1) faith-based leaders; (2) religious minority members; (3) representatives of civil society organizations; and (4) political representatives such as mayors and Union council chairmen. In addition to this, focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with the minority community leaders to understand their positions on intersectional marginalization. The questions that were designed for the in-depth interviews and FGDs aimed to explore ways that could bring about inter-faith harmony and achieve inclusive development across the various locales. During the FGDs, facilitators explained to the participants the concept of ‘intersections’ and ‘intersectional marginalization’ while elaborating the goal of the current research exercise. The researchers used examples from within the Pakistani society to explain what intersection meant here and how it might apply to various exclusion- and marginalization-related contexts.

Each FGD spanned several hours, during which participants discussed diverse themes of social exclusion, marginalization and inclusive development to shortlist the communities most impacted by the intersection of their religious identity and poverty in marginalization. As a result, communities were identified for conducting PAR research. As explained above, three basic premises were positioned to identify the research locales for CREID research and community intervention: economic status, minority status and the history of violence.

Storytelling

For the ongoing research, the lead researcher, and the HIVE core team had initially decided to collect data on intersectional marginalization and religious inequalities using structured survey and a focus group discussions (FGDs) guide.5 However, the strategy was later changed after a thorough discussion with Shandana Khan.6 After thorough deliberation and brainstorming, stories were specified as data collection tools. Humans are storytelling beings, and so this model of collecting data was followed to capture the extended and intricate experiential accounts of the participants. A new conversation-based data collection technique was strategized to exhibit more openness towards indigenous narrative rather than bombarding respondents with questions, anticipating that this technique could potentially prove to be counter-productive. Some of the researchers also felt that, since qualitative data collection is necessarily inductive, any prior structuring of the data collection methods can lead to an inflexibility in terms of responding to the emerging insights. This can therefore lead to a methodological ‘tunnel vision’ while making sense of the collected data. To address this potential issue, the research team devised a strategy to keep the storytelling sessions more participant-oriented, where participants took the lead while the researchers captured their responses using certain prompts and gentle guiding rather than floating definite questions. The researchers were the active listeners while the participants led the conversations about their own experiences. This method helped in capturing the lived experience of the participants in their own unique ways without influencing their versions by throwing at them the preconceived notions and questions.

The idea of storytelling was conceptualized to bring forth the extensive details around religious discrimination and inequalities embedded in the society. Researchers were directed to use vignettes and paralinguistic expressions to encourage the participants to continue and pour their hearts out without shying away from significant details. This, however, does not mean that the conversations we had with the respondents were completely open-ended and are not comparable. Rather, it specifies that the data collection technique was relatively open, and that it was more ‘respondent-driven’ than ‘researcher-driven’. The prompts were used to kickstart the discussion and at times referred to an event or incident about inequality that may have happened to another participant, community in the same or different locale.

The data collectors were provided with a conversation guide to ensure they did not stray away from the main themes and can seek help from guides while engaging in conversations. However, the conversation guides were different from the semi-structured interviews in several ways. For instance, a conversation guide was based on prompts that included a similar response from another locale or participant, or another incident induced by intersectional marginalization. It did not necessarily have a particular sequence or a phrase that could influence a participant’s version of truth related to intersectional marginalization. For instance, we asked them to share if they were ever subjected to police brutality or social exclusion based on their religious identity, poverty or both.

Largely, this approach helped to capture insights that were much more nuanced and diverse. A preference was given to the storytelling sessions over interviews under the premise that storytelling sessions would lead to the surfacing of individual experiences rather than the opinions of the participants. It is, therefore, established that experiences can be validated correctly whereas opinions are hard to be validated through cross-checking.

The conversation guide consisted of questions that steered the conversations through the storytelling sessions. The guide included themes pertaining to religious inequality and various intersections of marginalization. Broader themes emerged from the theory of intersectionality, and from literature on the marginalization of religious minorities in Pakistan. However, instead of policing the parameters of the questions, researchers were directed to use referential clues from within the responses that emerged from the stories. The broad conversation guide, however, included the prompters that aimed to probe the individual meanings participants associated with the intersections of marginalization. For instance, they were asked to share what living in this locality as a minority felt like, or how their identity as a minority shaped their everyday life, or simply how their religious identity had led to their marginalization. The prompts included probing about the following aspects of their experience:

  • religious identity and marginalization based on religious identity

  • economic status;

  • gender;

  • health;

  • access to state institutions;

  • access to employability;

  • access to mobility;

  • power or powerlessness;

  • community association;

  • political participation; and

  • fear of participating in social life and persecution.

Instead of asking the participants direct questions, the researchers used the prompts to elaborate on what they meant by certain ideas such as exclusion and marginalization, inclusive development and political participation, just to give an impression of what they were looking for: the understanding of community practices through the community lens. Researchers were prohibited from creating meanings from the responses based on their own understanding and/or experiences. Instead, they were directed to listen to stories and probe each response to extract the meanings participants associated with these intersections. Each characteristic was further investigated in comparison with others. For instance, a response that claimed that marginalization was because of their religious identity was cross-checked against whether what the participant thought about marginalization, had their economic status been different from what it was then. The investigation of this kind helped the researchers to capture the data with clarity about the various intersections.

A key consideration was given to the positionality of the researchers to ensure that their bias and preconceptions did not impact the research findings. Although most of the researchers involved in this participatory research process belonged to the same communities, it was ensured that the researchers did not influence or control the flow of the storytelling sessions or of the deliberative exercises while conducting the matrix ranking. The researchers were particularly directed to keep their previous knowledge about the persecution and marginalization of the minority communities at bay in order to capture the new and experiential accounts through the eyes of the participants. Researchers completely alien to the situation would not have been able to steer the conversations using vignettes. The researchers were therefore grouped in pairs, with one of them belonging to the same locality and having similar religious identity. This helped to build a rapport with the participants of the storytelling sessions and matrix ranking; otherwise it would have been difficult for the ‘outsiders’ to collect the rich information that we did. Pairing the researchers from the same community also helped in navigating the local contexts the participants were referring to during the sessions.

Similarly, we placed a stringent emphasis on following ethical practices while engaging with the participants of the research. These included asking for written and verbal consent regarding the research study and recording of the storytelling sessions and interviews. At times the participants of the research did not allow us to record the conversations. All the researchers were directed to take utmost care of the recordings and share on the Google drive as soon as it was possible. Similarly, we placed a high value on the protection of gathered data, and nothing was shared with anyone except the core research team. The entire team pledged not to use any data whatsoever other than that recorded this research assignment.

Matrix ranking

The idea of matrix ranking was proposed to capture collective preferences for community uplifting projects later to be implemented as part of the final stage of PAR.

The team received training in matrix ranking through various mock ranking exercises, to acquaint them with the process. A brief matrix ranking template was developed by the lead researcher, keeping in view the aims of capturing intersectional marginalization and religious inequalities. However, this does not mean that researchers went into the field with the existing bias towards the sources of deprivation and set of preferences for community action. Rather, guidelines to conduct the matrix ranking group exercise were shared with all the researchers to enable them to clearly explain the process to the respondents. After the individual storytelling session, a group matrix ranking exercise was conducted in each locality where the participants of the storytelling sessions gathered. The matrix ranking sessions were not necessarily conducted on the same day as the interviews, but the participants of the matrix ranking remained the same, as they already knew what intersectional marginalization was and how it impacted their well-being.

The facilitator first explained the concept of matrix ranking to the participants and the entire idea of the exercise to reach a consensus-based conclusion as to what is the most important public service that is lacking and the source of vulnerability for the community. After thorough discussions among the participants on lack of access to public service and the most pressing sources of deprivation, a consensus was generated that led to the identification of the areas that needed most urgent intervention. The results of the matrix ranking, at a later stage, through a deliberative process with the community, translated into community uplifting projects including installation of water filtration plant in Joseph Colony, establishment of a medical clinic and installation of solar panels in Rimsha Colony in Islamabad.

Limitations of the research

This research activity, using participatory research methods, aimed to learn from the participants about how they ascribe meanings to marginalization based on their experience of everyday life in their current settings. It also aimed to collate these experiences to form a narrative that could inform a wider audience of the nuanced forms of marginalization emerging from embedded religious inequalities in Pakistan. Additionally, these sessions were conducted to enable dialogue around the most pressing issues minority communities faced and to identify community action projects. Individual narratives were recorded to explore the precise realities of minority life in Pakistan, especially with respect to Christian and Shia marginalization. The key challenge to this learning process was building trust with the participants in the research in the first place. HIVE’s key informants and resource personnel helped the research team to enter the research areas. However, research of this kind requires in-depth exploration of various factors because of the complex nature of the issue.

Establishing rapport with the respondents requires a researcher to get involved in their everyday life to record, assess and validate the collected information. It may involve recurrent visits, spanning months, to establish a rapport with the respondents to win their trust and confidence. It is also important to note that the respondents from Joseph Colony could have shared more, had they been engaged in storytelling sessions outside their areas because of security concerns and a perpetual history of violence.

Rapport-building is an organic and dynamic process which leads to the in-depth exploration of intersectional marginalization. Researchers tried to establish rapport with the community by making recurrent visits and multiple conversational methods such as the use of vignettes as prompts. Researchers faced significant difficulties that impacted their movement across research areas. For instance, In Joseph Colony researchers were asked to leave by the female members of a household, citing the potential dangers, and were asked to delete the audio-recordings of the interview as well. Even in Mochi Gate, researchers faced issues in building rapport with the respondents initially, even though interlocutors belonged to the same community. Research of this scope aimed to better understand the very complex phenomenon of marginalization. This requires validation through researchers’ observation of the processes, events and life patterns to reveal various factors that shape community life in a given socio-economic and cultural setting. Additionally, to understand these factors, it is necessary to engage with the community at a deeper level, which is only possible through continuous engagement with them.

‘The settings (socio-economic and political) in which these (minority) communities live are extreme. Our job here is to look at what sorts of marginalization impede their well-being. It is indeed a huge responsibility; however, at the same time we need to make sure that our own imagination does not cloud the day-to-day experiences that shape life around here.’ (Asad Shoaib – lead facilitator)

Another important challenge was to identify female researchers from these communities. Women, in general, face ‘cultural’ and religious barriers to acquiring education. As a result, more girls are out of school than boys (HRW, 2018). The repercussions of this attitude become more visible when one encounters the unavailability of female researchers. Religious minorities are also part of the same society where girls’ education is discouraged. Moreover, the fear of persecution or forced conversions also prevent girls from Christian and Hindu families from accessing higher education (Maheshwary, 2020). As a result, finding female researchers from these communities becomes a significant challenge which we also faced during our research. Though we managed to find female researchers, it had halted the project for a few weeks.

Reflections on the use of participatory methods for understanding intersectional marginalization

The use of participatory methods, particularly the storytelling sessions, helped us to navigate the extent to which social exclusion and marginalization are shaping the lives of Christian and Shia minority communities in Lahore and Islamabad. The storytelling sessions uncovered the most detailed accounts of everyday persecution and marginalization that these communities experience. Storytelling and matrix ranking sessions enabled participants to meticulously explain and deliberate about how certain religious inequalities deprive them of exercising their agency, denying their voice against injustice and treating them as lesser humans. The participants of the matrix ranking were asked what they thought were the most pressing issues they faced in their localities that hinder their well-being. Here is one of the deliberative conversations that was recorded among two participants during a matrix ranking session in Youhanabad, Lahore.
Participant 1:Education is the only way to graduate out of poverty. You educate your kids and they land good jobs and make their families proud. But how do you educate them if schools do not provide equal treatment to our kids? How can they attain education?
Participant 2:Education is no doubt an important aspect, but we lack these basic amenities such as access to clean drinking water, or the sources for livelihood. Education comes later; first we need clean water to drink to avoid contracting water-borne diseases.

The storytelling process helped researchers to document the instances of deprivation, exclusion, marginalization and violence perpetrated on minority communities in their own unique understanding. Storytelling is different from other qualitative research techniques because it allocates more value to the participant experiences than researchers visualize. This method is focused on ‘bottom up’ knowledge creation where participants guide the conversations actively instead of being the passive respondents of questions that researchers deem significant. matrix ranking, too, is an interactive and iterative method that helps to navigate the importance participants attach to various forms of services while at the same time, highlighting the most important social and economic vulnerabilities and sources of deprivation. These participatory methods give prominence to individual understanding and experiences that researchers often lack while conducting research using other qualitative methods.

During this study, participants in the research exercise had differing degrees of responsiveness on questions. For instance, recalling about their experiences about marginalization, one participant would be responsive in assessing the connection between their economic status and marginalization while another would not. It varied between Shia and Christian communities. The Shia respondents showed a certain degree of uneasiness about being identified as poor during interviews, whereas Christian respondents showed no displeasure on the usage of words such as Ghurbat or Ghareeb.7 The Shia population in Mochi gate, although financially weak/poor, feel humiliated when sharing their financial miseries and pretended to be doing well.

‘We are not poor. Hussain is our guardian. Mola Ali [the fourth caliph and first imam of Shi’as] has held our hands. We just face issues from the Wahabis [anti-Shi’a polemics and violence]. How can the devotees of Mola Ali and Hussain remain poor?’ (One of the respondents during a storytelling session in Mochi Gate, Lahore)

In contrast, most of the Christian participants thought that their weaker economic status was the cause of marginalization, whereas the Shia participants thought that their marginalization or selective targeting aimed to deprive the community of its intelligentsia such as doctors, traders, lawyers and professors. Noushan Ali Rana, a Lahore-based professional, explained that

there are multiple factors [behind the genocide of Shi’as in Pakistan]. Religious [sectarian identity] is, of course, the prime reason. But there is also a political factor. If you see the target killings of Shi’as, the majority of the deceased were professionals or influential people [posted on some high-level positions in media, government and banks]. This is a well-thought strategy of marginalising Shi’a by killing their professionals and influential people. (Rana, 2020)

It was not possible to generalize the acceptability of certain marginalization-related aspects among those taking part in the research. It was observed that participants exhibited varying communicative priorities even within the same communities. However, the research exercise indicates that Christian respondents were more open in terms of referring to their experiences of social exclusion and fear of persecution. Shia participants, by contrast, seemed to have internalized the threat of violence, and consoled themselves by associating with the historic connotation of ‘Husssainiyat vs. Yadiziyat’.8 The research exercise established that the method of storytelling triggered the respondents to share intricate details about their experience of marginalization; however, the recorded contradictions within each interview also suggest that participants either exhibited a varying degree of openness to the researchers or had different ideas about marginalization and exclusion.

It is evident from the current research activity that both of the religious minorities studied face marginalization across the five research areas. However, the responses collated through the storytelling sessions reveal distinctive area-specific characteristics that shape marginalization and its implications differently for each religious minority. The Christian religious minority faces severe marginalization at Joseph Colony for several reasons. First, Joseph Colony is a small Christian settlement of around 130 households. It is surrounded by the factories of various kinds and some majority Muslim areas. Christians at Joseph Colony are the most vulnerable of all the research areas because of the prevalence of extreme poverty, non-existent public good provisions and the relatively small population in comparison with the other Christian settlements explored in this research. Members of the Christian community inhabiting Joseph Colony are more prone to communal violence and marginalization because of their low socio-economic status and smaller population in the area.
‘My children were running for life with no clothes on, and this the most terrifying incidence I had to witness being Christian. The women had no dupatta in their necks, nor did they have their shoes on, everyone ran without any clothes on, and all this happened because we were Christians and Muslims burnt our town over a petty small issue.’ (A Christian resident of Joseph Colony9)

Youhanabad is an area with a similar socio-economic status to Joseph Colony. However, living in Youhanabad, although marred in endemic poverty, does not entail as much fear of violence as living as a Christian in Joseph Colony. Basic life-sustaining public goods are equally absent in both, Youhanabad and Joseph Colony.

Similarly, the fear of direct violence is relatively low in Bahar Colony, another majority Christian settlement, adjoining one of the upper-middle class vicinities of Lahore: Model Town. Majority of the Muslims residents of Model Town depend on Bahar Colony’s Christian community for their low-paid menial chores such as sweeping, cleaning and home helps. Bahar Colony, too, is an impoverished community and the inhabiting Christian community faces marginalization of various forms, yet the frequency of incidents is much lower than the marginalization faced by the Christian community in Joseph Colony. Since it is peripheral to an upper-middle-class vicinity, access to public services – schools, hospitals, parks and clean drinking water filtration plants – is much easier than in both Joseph Colony and Youhanabad. Similar to Bahar Colony in terms of its close proximity to the upper-middle-class Muslim vicinity is 66 Quarters in Islamabad. A significant population of Christian community members from 66 Quarters are employed – mostly as sweepers for janitorial jobs – in Islamabad’s Capital Development Authority (CDA) and are also in service in the nearby Muslim households. This is one of the causes to which the less frequent incidents of direct physical violence can be attributed. They are also able to access public goods such as parks, basic healthcare units and schools.

‘We can independently disclose our identity and have religious freedom. However, if there are untoward conditions in the country and there are some attacks on churches then we will be restricted from going to the church and gather in some other way.’ (A Christian resident of 66 Quarters, Islamabad, shared during the interview)

This and such other responses gesture towards the difference between the experiences of the ghettoized Christian community members and those who live closer to the urban middle-class neighbourhoods. Since the majority community living in the upper-middle-class neighbourhoods depend on the Christians for menial work, their experiences are ‘better’ than those in Youhanabad and Joseph Colony.

Mochi Gate in Lahore is a Shia residential area with a historical root dating back more than 400 years (Sheikh, 2018). It is one of the oldest urban settlements in the historic city of Lahore. Part of the walled city of Lahore, this area is a busy retailing hub with a considerable Sunni, Barelvi population.10 The Sunni and Shia communities of Mochi Gate have co-existed since the earlier days of the settlement. They have over the years developed a co-existence model of non-interference in each other’s sectarian faith. Another interesting reason for the relatively peaceful co-existence is the communal marriages that have taken place between both the communities.

‘We do not experience any violence in the area as the area is majority Shia with some Sunni population. We have developed a mutual co-existence model without having to preach to each other. Both communities are supportive of each other. During Ashura processions, the Sunni community help in maintaining the security of the area. Inter-sect marriages are common in the area as they have been living here for more than 200 years.’ (Custodian of a Shi’a congregation centre in Mochi Gate, Lahore)

Since the matrix ranking exercise aimed at prioritizing areas for a community action project, it was also instrumental in bringing to the surface the major sources of deprivation among the socially excluded groups. The participatory nature of the matrix ranking exercise helped the participants to exchange their viewpoints vigorously and deliberate on the direst sources of deprivation alongside exploring opportunities for community uplifting projects. The matrix ranking, as previously highlighted, was facilitated by the researchers whereas participants engaged energetically with each other to reach a consensus to finalize the community action projects. During the matrix ranking exercise, participants reflected on various dimensions of social exclusion and sources of deprivation while highlighting instances where they were subjected to feeling alienated, disgusted and vulnerable.

‘We are called Churhas [dirty, a derogatory word used against Christians] in public space. The other day someone called me that. Of course some of our people do the cleaning stuff but that does not make us filthy. Does it? If we don’t clean up the mess created by the rich people around, this city would stink like a heap of garbage. Such comments leave us frustrated and disgusted. I don’t think we deserve this. Do we? You tell!’ (A Christian respondent during one of the matrix ranking sessions)

This opportunity also provided them a platform to navigate their status within the society from a relational standpoint. Through the matrix ranking exercises, the participants were allowed to engage in deep conversations about the persecution and the underlying causes that lead to such persecution while detailing how these can be mitigated by uplifting the minority communities by adopting various solutions.

Conclusion

Freedom of Religious Belief (FoRB) is a difficult topic to explore in a country like Pakistan, where minorities have perpetually faced persecution at structural and attitudinal levels. Minorities, under the fear of persecution and social exclusion, restrain themselves from mentioning their plight as a result of political and social arrangements. The fear of being exposed keep the minority communities from expressing their day-to-day experiences with ‘outsiders’. The current participatory exercise, however, enabled the minority community participants to express themselves freely because of its conversation-based approach. The conversations allowed the participants to candidly share their everyday experience of living among the majority Muslim communities. Instead of following and responding to the questions posed by the researchers during the interview-based models of inquiry, the participants were able to speak about their lived experiences with a greater degree of ease and comfort.

The initial rapport building, and the decision of assigning the data collection task to the researchers with a similar religious background, turned out to be an effective method, yet the conversation-styled data collection techniques proved to be pivotal in terms of recording the most intricate and experiential details of living in Pakistan as minority community members. Despite the richness of the data collected through the conversation-based participatory methods, the amount of time researchers spend in the field determines the extent to which participants are comfortable in sharing their lived experiences. Time plays a key role in building trust with the participants of the research. Even during the current research study, a few participants were initially reluctant to share their stories with the researchers, and refused to get their stories recorded. However, they felt at ease when our researchers visited them multiple times and built a considerable rapport through continuous engagement with them.

The research team at HIVE tried to develop as much rapport and understanding with the community members at each locale. It is highly recommended that future researchers studying intersectional marginalization in these locales spend more time in the community over a longer period to record more rigorous details of everyday life. It is also highly recommended that future research projects engage with the local community in the area using participatory research methods, which can help record important details of everyday life in terms of various groups – such as women, young groups and the elderly – within each community. The research team also identified the importance of working with the peer researchers (member of the religious minority community from the same locality with the lived experience of the issues under discussion) to improve the level of trust between the researchers and the community. Researchers who worked in pairs retrieved more rich stories than the individual, ‘outsider’ researchers. It is highly recommended to work with the peer researchers, accompanied by a highly trained researcher to bring out the nuanced experiences.

Another important learning was the comfortability of the participants to speak about instances of marginalization in a group setting. This was also observed during the matrix ranking exercises, where those taking part in the exercise engaged vehemently in rich discussions to reach a consensus. Although this practice is time-consuming, it provides better opportunities to the researchers not only to track the level of marginalization and persecution but also to gather important prompters for individual storytelling sessions.

Notes

1

The whole data collection involved eight people who had facilitated in collecting stories, conducting and arranging interviews. These eight people consisted of males and females from Christian, Shi’a and Sunni backgrounds. The authors of this chapter, Asad Shoaib and Jaffer A. Mirza, belong to Sunni and Shi’a Muslim backgrounds respectively. Both authors are aware about the religious identities, power dynamics and privileges associated with them. Therefore, throughout the research, both researchers have thoroughly and consciously tried to be aware of their position of privilege and ensure that the inherent biases of the data collectors and note-takers do not impact the findings of the research. For this, we time and again had team conversations and debriefing sessions in which we emphasised multiple times the importance of maintaining our objectivity as much as we could.

2

Reports on Anti-Ahmadiyyah Riots, 1953–1954. Digital Archive LUMS. Available at: https://archive.lums.edu.pk/anti-ahmaddiyah-reports/

3

Pakistan witnessed a new wave of anti-Shi’a campaign in Pakistan. See Mirza (2020a, 2020b); Annual review of anti-minority hatred and discrimination.

4

Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID) is a project initiated by the Institute of Development Studies to understand the intersectional marginalization faced by religious minority groups and how it impacts inclusive development. The research findings helped in drawing useful insights about the attitudinal bias and structural inequalities that religious minority groups faced. The research findings helped to design community action projects aiming at reducing such inequalities.

5

Asad Shoaib, the lead facilitator for this research, is an academic and a development researcher with more than seven years of field and desk experience of conducting primary and secondary research studies on diverse topics related to development. He led CREID in Pakistan with support from HIVE Pakistan. HIVE Pakistan is a research and innovation organization based in Pakistan. HIVE was the implementation partner of CREID in Pakistan.

6

Dr Shandana Khan Mohmand is a social scientist based at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

7

Ghurbat and ghareeb mean ‘poverty’ and ‘poor’, respectively.

8

Hussainiyat and Yazidiyat are anecdotal constructs in Shia Islam where Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussain or Hussayn, is hailed as a protagonist in the battle of Karbala, a modern-day city in Iraq. In Shia Islam, it is part of the faith that Islam resurged after the Prophet’s grandson sacrificed his life for standing upright for his principles. The antagonist of the story is Yazid, who was a coercive ruler and the second Caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty. This battle was fought in 680 between Yazid’s army and Hussain’s comrades, mostly his family members. Hussain was martyred in the battle. ‘Hussainiyat is also a Manichaean concept in Shia philosophy in which Hussayn and his followers (Shias) are in continuous struggle against ‘evil’ Yazeed and his ‘progeny’ (in the shape of militant terrorist organizations that target Shias and their practices). Shias see or interpret the current violence they are facing as the continuation of the battle between right (Hussayn) and evil (Yazeed).

9

In 2013 a Muslim mob burned more than 100 Christian houses in Joseph Colony because of a false accusation of blasphemy. (Naeem, 2013). Since the incident, Christians in Joseph Colony have lived in constant fear of further attacks.

10

The Sunni Muslims of South Asia are divided into two major sub-sects, Deobandi and Barelvi, named after their places of origin in India in the nineteenth century. Barelvis believe in intercession between humans and Divine Grace. This consists of the intervention of an ascending, linked and unbroken chain of holy personages, reaching ultimately to the Prophet Muhammad, who intercedes on their behalf with Allah. Barelvis constitute the majority within the Sunni population of Pakistan.

References

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