Ramchandra Gadgad recalls how he had to pay three or four times the price of a cup of tea that ordinarily cost the equivalent of six baht for other patrons of stalls in and around his town.
Not only did he have to pay for the tea, he had to pay for the cup. It was part of the price of being a Hindu in the Muslim community of Thari Mirwah, a sub-division of Khairpur district of Sindh province, 1,100 kilometres southwest of Islamabad in Pakistan.
"They would break the cup we Hindus drank the tea in or keep it only for serving tea to other Hindu customers. In some cases, they even washed the hand pump we drew water from before drinking its water," reminisces Gadgad, who laboured on the farm of a Muslim landlord in the village before fleeing to India in 1998.
Today Gadgad lives with his family in Pakistani Mohalla, a lower middle-class community on the outskirts of South Delhi, where thousands of Pakistani Hindus live as refugees. But he still cannot forget the reasons that drove him out of Pakistan.
Apart from untouchability, he says, he and other Hindus in Sindh faced constant religious discrimination from the majority Muslim community.
Shankar Kumar, who was a wagon driver in Pakistan, claims that the head of a mosque in his village pestered him to convert to Islam. "What is there in the Hindu religion? Be a Muslim and you will have everything," he quoted the green-turbaned mullah as having told him repeatedly.
Kumar also claims that Muslims even stopped buying rations from a grocery shop owned by his brother, forcing them to migrate to India.
Satram Das worked as an assistant with Allied Bank in Nawabshah city in Sindh. He says he and his grandfather were abducted by Muslim dacoits (bandits) and had to pay a hefty ransom for their release. Hindus, he told Asia Focus, also had no land in Pakistani villages to cremate their dead and, more often than not, had to bury them in the Muslim graveyards.
Das, 45, quit his job with the bank and came to India with his five children and his wife Amira Devi in 1998. His brother Bagh Chand, who has since married an Indian woman and obtained Indian citizenship, accompanied them.
A Hindu refugee in Pakistani traditional dress raises the Indian flag in Pakistani Mohalla. Photos: Narendra Kaushik
Balluram, 70, another Pakistani Hindu refugee in Pakistani Mohalla, recalled how he had to carry a Koran on his head around his village to get his stolen cattle back.
"My two buffaloes were stolen by armed dacoits one night. I was told to carry a Koran to every doorstep in the village and beg for the cattle. I got them back a fortnight later," he said.
Balluram, a grandfather of two, migrated to India five months before Satram Das, his distant relative. He believes it is impossible for any self-respecting Hindu to stay in Pakistan, where there is no security.
"Every time we would organise bhajan kirtan (devotional programme) at our temple in the village, we had to get protection from the local police station," he said.
The Hindu refugees in Pakistani Mohalla are among an estimated 200,000 Hindus and Sikhs who have migrated from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan in the last few decades in order to escape alleged religious persecution. India has also taken in about 100,000 Buddhist Chakmas, 73,000 Sri Lankan Tamils and 100,000 Tibetans as refugees.
There are about 400 refugee settlements in north, west and central India housing Pakistani Hindus alone. In May 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government provided citizenship to 34,000 such Hindu migrants.
The Indian government has also decided to grant citizenship to all non-Muslim refugees who have come to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. For this purpose, the government is amending the Citizenship Act of 1955. A bill to this effect was introduced in July in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.
After opposition parties sought detailed analysis of the bill by an expert panel, the bill was referred to a joint select committee. It has been asked to submit its report by November.
The bill says that non-Muslim illegal migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan will be entitled to Indian citizenship after six years of residence in India.
Earlier this month, the government allowed non-Muslim refugees access to basic identity documents including a driving licence, PAN card (Permanent Account Number to identify Indians who pay income tax) and Aadhar (individual identification number). They were also allowed to purchase property for self-employment, obtain long-term visas for five years instead of two years, and to take advantage of education and employment facilities.
The government also allowed Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Christian refugees to submit affidavits instead of renunciation certificates for citizenship.
Some observers draw parallels between what India is doing and the Law of Return, in effect in Israel since 1950, which gives Jews across the world an automatic right to citizenship in that country.
However, the government's decision to grant citizenship to non-Muslim minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan has not gone over well with Sri Lankan Tamils, Tibetans, Rohingiya Muslims from Myanmar and the country's secular intelligentsia.
The latter believe that the bill exhibits the Modi government's bias against Muslims. They cite the example of Pakistani Shia Muslims and Amadis, a small Muslim sect with roots in Indian Punjab, who are no less persecuted in Pakistan than Hindus have been, and writers such as the Bangladeshi secular humanist Taslima Nasreen, who has been living in exile for a long time.
Mohammad Haroon, a Rohingya Muslim from Arakan (now Rakhine) state in Myanmar, lives in a tiny camp on the outskirts of Delhi. He wants the Indian government to extend citizenship to the 35,000 Rohingya living in the country.
"We don't want to go Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan or Myanmar. We wish to stay in India and should be given citizenship here," Haroon told Asia Focus.
Apart from Delhi where a few hundred Rohingya families live in unhygienic conditions at four different places, the community has refugee camps in Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Saharanpur, Mathura, Aligarh, Jaipur, Mewat in northern India and Hyderabad in the South.
"There is peace in India. Here our children can go to school," said Haroon, who has lived in India over a decade. The long-term visas issued to him and many others are set to expire in March next year.
At least half a dozen European countries including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Slovakia have refused to take Muslim refugees for various reasons. Some cite cultural differences with Muslims while others fear the entry of Muslim refugees could lead to radicalisation and violence on their territory.
India has not signed either the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol because it fears that a conflict in South Asia may lead to mass movement of people across the porous borders and put a strain on her infrastructure and resources.