KARACHI: Divorced or widowed women from minority communities in Sindh have been granted the right to remarry, six months after separation from their spouse or his demise under the Sindh Hindu Marriage Amendment Bill, 2018. The Sindh Assembly passed the bill on Friday. The bill allows women in strained marriages to file for separation. The bill also states that, in case of separation, the man will have to provide for the children. Prior to the passage of the bill, divorced or widowed women from the minority communities in Sindh were not legally allowed a second marriage. The amended bill passed Friday has also prohibited bigamy. It states that a person cannot get married the second time while their first spouse still lives with them. Under clause 18 of the bill, “Any marriage solemnised after the commencement of this act is void if at the date of such marriage either party had a spouse living.” Anyone marrying without informing their partner or by lying to them will be sentenced to either six months in jail or a fine of Rs5,000, or both. The bill, by setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage, also makes an attempt to tackle the pertinent issue of child marriage faced by minorities in Pakistan. During the past few years, a number of marriage-related issues were reported from the Hindu community, mainly from Sindh. Since there was no law in place to deal with them, jirgas and panchayats announced arbitrary decisions without considering the rights of women and children or the question of their livelihood. A bill on Hindu marriage was passed in Sindh for the first time in 2016. It was the first such legislation that gave Hindu marriages validity in the province by allowing them to get registered. The Sindh Hindus Marriage Bill, 2016 also specified the procedure and conditions for marriages in the minority communities and provided them with legal cover. Earlier, speaking in the House as he presented the amendment bill on Thursday, Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) parliamentary leader Nand Kumar Goklani, said, “The Hindu community, especially their widows, suffer a lot because of outdated customs and traditions that don’t allow them to remarry in our society.” “We want to get rid of old and outdated customs, which is why we are going to amend the law and give rights to widows to remarry after six months of iddah (prescribed Islamic waiting period),” added Goklani. Parliamentary Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro and Law Minister Ziaul Hasan Lanjar supported the law which was passed unanimously on Friday. Before the passage of the Sindh Hindu Marriage Act 2016, the province’s three million strong Hindu community never had any legal framework to register their unions, unlike the country’s other main religious minority, Christians, who had a colonial-era law recognising their marriages. Sindh, with its sizeable population of 3 million Hindu Pakistanis, has become the first province to recognise Hindu unions. Before the law was proposed, Hindu couples were facing a plethora of logistical problems with basic activities such as opening bank accounts, applying for visas, getting national identity cards and getting shares of property, because they lacked proof of marriage. Published in Daily Times, May 27th 2018.