Daily Times

KARACHI: The southern province of Sindh on Monday became the country’s first region to give its small Hindu minority the right to register their marriages officially.

Non-Muslims make up only about three percent of the 190 million population of Pakistan, which was founded as a haven for the sub-continent’s Muslims on independence from the British in 1947 with a promise of religious freedom to minorities.

But Hindus have had no legal mechanism to register their marriages. Christians, the other main religious minority, have a British law dating back to 1870 regulating their marriages.

“The objective of this bill is to provide a formal process of registration of marriage for Hindus,” said the bill passed by the legislature in Sindh, where most of Pakistan’s Hindus live.

The law can be applied retroactively to existing marriages.

Senior PPP leader and Sindh Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Ahmad Khuhro moved the bill in the provincial assembly, which was later passed after a debate between the opposition and treasury benches.

Conditions for a marriage to become recognised under the bill have been set and are as follows:

A) Parties to the marriage are of 18 years of age or above

B) Parties to marriage are able to give consent

C) At least two witnesses are present at the time of the solemnisation and registration of the marriage

According to the bill, every marriage being solemnised under the act will be registered with the union council or ward within 45 days of the solemnisation.

Further, it added, the bill should have retrospective effect for the purpose of validation and registration of the marriage prior to this law. Any person who fails to get his marriage registered will be liable to pay a fine of Rs 1,000. The opposition has, however, demanded to increase the penalty.

Zoroastrians and Sikhs will also be able to register their marriages under the new law.

Without the law, Hindus say their women were easy targets for rape or forced marriage and faced problems in proving the legitimacy of their relationships before the law. Widows have been particularly disadvantaged.

Without official proof of relationships, getting government documents issued or moving forward on any other activity which involves documentation — from opening bank accounts to applying for visas — became next to impossible for any citizen.

After the 18th Amendment, the issues of religious minorities and their family matters became provincial subjects but the Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assemblies passed resolutions allowing the federation to legislate Hindu marriage law.

A similar resolution is pending with the Punjab Assembly.

A draft bill has already been passed by the National Assembly standing committee on law and justice, while Senator Nasreen Jalil, the chairperson of the Senate standing committee on law and justice, has also convened a meeting to take up the matter.

A clause in the draft Hindu Marriage Bill, which states that a marriage will be annulled if any of the spouses converts to another religion, is being vehemently contested by both its opponents and supporters. Clause 12(iii) says a marriage will be annulled if any of the spouses converts to another religion.

The patron-in-chief of Pakistan Hindu Council, PML-N MNA Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, said the matter is related to the basic human rights of the Hindus in Pakistan.

“There are fears the clause would be misused for forced conversions of married women the same way young girls are being subjected to forced conversions.”

He referred to the current practice by certain elements who kidnapped teenage girls and eventually presented them in courts along with a certificate that the girl had married after converting to Islam.

PPP parliamentarian Senator Taj Haider opposed the idea in the law, and said the clause could also discourage cross-marriages.

Pakistan’s Hindus and other minorities have faced a surge of violence in recent years as militant attack groups that do not share their interpretation of Islam. All of Pakistan’s minorities – Hindus, Christians, Ahmadis and even Shia Muslims – say they feel the state fails to protect them and sometimes even tolerates violence against them.

The US Commission on Religious Freedom said in a recent report that conditions in Pakistan had ‘hit an all-time low’ and governments had failed to adequately protect minorities and arrest those who attack or discriminate against them.