![]() ![]() The first and only Catholic church in Qila Natha Singh was built in the 1990s by a Belgian Capuchin missionary, Father Jerome, who also founded Kasur Parish, one of the oldest in Lahore Archdiocese. “Relative to their percentage of the total population, a high proportion of bonded brick kiln workers in Punjab are Christians,” noted a recent report by New York-based Human Rights Watch. Parveen Bibi removes dried dung cakes from the front wall of her house.įaced with social, cultural, economic and political isolation, along with rising security threats, these poor Christians had little to fall back on other than their religion and physical labor.Ī majority of them still work as bricklayers. They are called chuhras, a Punjabi derogatory word that connotes dark skin, low social status and untouchability. Punjabi Christians were always treated with contempt due to their caste background and dark skin. They had nothing in common except their faith with the educated Christian professionals, mostly Anglo-Indians, Goans and native elite converts who lived in big cities such as Karachi and Lahore. “In their dress, poor economic status and religious beliefs, Christians in the Punjab were closer to the Muslims,” she wrote. Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal records the turn of events from 1850 through to decolonization and the partition years in her book, Self and Sovereignty, albeit from a Muslim-centric perspective. “Even if you did not want to work, they would take you anyway,” she recalled. Like her fellow religionists, Parveen Bibi’s family also worked in the fields. ![]() Yet most of the native Christians remained dependent on the Sikh and Muslim landlords, working for them as hired hands. Most of these model villages are located in Kasur, Khanewal, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Sheikhupura districts and were able to provide decent living conditions to a few thousand Christian converts. Laborer families clean the dirt off potatoes in Qila Natha Singh village. The Catholic Church and Methodist Church set up around 20 villages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to bring together scattered local converts in order to improve their socioeconomic conditions, according to historical accounts. “There is a lot of poverty here,” Parveen said.Īround 1909, Catholic missionaries joined their Protestant counterparts in encouraging Punjabi Christians to settle as tenants and peasants in these vast tracts of land. Most Punjabi Christians are unskilled, landless rural fols with little or no education. Qila Natha Singh, named after a prominent Sikh resident in the pre-independence era, is located close to Pakistan's border with India in the province of Punjab, which houses four-fifths of the country’s Christian population. Parveen Bibi (right) with parishioners at the Catholic church of Qila Natha Singh village. Putting food on the table was a difficult task as Nadeem had forsaken his daily wages during the couple of weeks it took to restore the church roof.īut for 51-year-old Parveen Bibi it was a small sacrifice she and her son were making for the sake of their faith and the local church community comprising of some 25 Catholic families, most of them farmers and laborers, living in a Muslim-majority village.įor them, the church located on a street behind their house was not a mere place of worship but the Biblical rock upon which the Christian faith had been built over a century or so in Punjab province. “We would get up at five in the morning and start laboring after a quick breakfast of leftovers from the previous night’s meal or make do with eggs from our hen pen.” The villagers joined us later,” Nadeem told UCA News. “We started by removing the old cracked beams. ![]() Sacks full of potatoes grown in Qila Natha Singh village in Pakistan's Punjab province. The 20-year-old decided to forsake his meager daily earnings of 500 rupees (US$2.69) and joined his mother to begin the repair work at the church. “I couldn’t refuse her,” said Nadeem, a school dropout who worked as a laborer, loading vegetables and hay bundles at the truck stop on the outskirts of their village, Qila Natha Singh, around 80 kilometers from Lahore. Nadeem Masih was taking a nap on a hot summer afternoon in 2020 when his mother woke him up to remind him that he was supposed to repair the damaged roof of the local Catholic church.Ī month had passed since the old wooden beams had caved in under the weight of tiles and Parveen Bibi hadn’t been able to sleep thinking about it. My prayer book and rosary are my weapons in times of joy and sorrow, says Mary Hariyat a Catholic mother The faithful Sri Lankan matriarch from Negombo ![]()
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