Rats of Shah Dola or Shah Daulah (Urdu: شاہ دولہ کے چوہے) or 'rat-children', 'chuas' or 'mice' are children or adults suffering from microcephaly, exploited as beggars at the shrine of Shah Dola situated in Gujrat City, Punjab and elsewhere in Pakistan. They have sloping foreheads, narrow faces which have a rodent quality and mental disabilities.
One explanation to the origin of Rats of Shah Dola is a so called abuse myth. Shah Dola was a saint belonging from Seherwardi School of thought from Aurangzeb's Era, came in Gujrat (Punjab, Pakistan). According to the abuse myth Shah Dola claimed that he had the power of making incapable women fertile, but at the price that those women had to donate their first born baby to shrine to be a “Rat of Shah Dola”. Otherwise the rest of her children would become disabled. According to the story he deformed children's heads with iron caps to get them to help him by begging, and the practise is continued even today.
The gathering of disabled at the shrine of Shah Daulah was probably begun in a charitable spirit. It weakened over time to become a form of exploitation. This activity was later misinterpreted with allegations of 'cranial deformation'. The abuse story has been examined and rebutted by British, Indian and Pakistani investigators, district officers, physicians and anthropologists. The natural occurrence of microcephaly, and innocent local customs of manipulating infants' heads for beauty, give explanation. However, some exploitation of people with microcephaly did happen at the shrine and the government took control of it in 1969. Begging continues within the religious tradition of the itinerant 'faqir', and some microcephalic adults earn their living independently in this role. Nowadays there are thousands of disabled children at the shrine.
A possible reason for large occurrence of microcephaly in Pakistan is the fact that 60 percent of Pakistani marriages are made between first cousins.