All in a picture

Although the Hindus of Pakistan – variously estimated at standing somewhere between nearly three million and over seven million, with the vast majority based in Sindh – enjoy equal rights as citizens under the constitution, their practical reality is quite different. The Hindu community, shockingly enough, has no marriage law to govern unions even more than six and a half decades after Partition. The 1962 Muslim Family Law covers Christian marriages, but not Hindu ones. An 1872 colonial era law makes a vague allusion to Hindu marriages, but goes into no depth or detail. The result is that a married Hindu couple has no way to prove they are married, since there is no documentation for this. In the same way, there is no proof their children are legitimate. Documents maintained privately, or sometimes at temples, record marriages but have no legal standing. A photograph is essentially all that Hindus have to prove a marriage was conducted.
The neglect in this matter is sad. Pakistan has a sizeable Hindu population, even though it has been decreasing, essentially as a result of large-scale migration due to circumstances for Hindus at home worsening. A bill, intended to cover Hindu marriages, put up by a PML-N MNA from the community in 2014 has been referred to a National Assembly standing committee. Hindu legislators keep up the effort to have it turned into law, so that marriages between Hindus as well as other aspects of personal law can be made a part of Nadra data. The provinces would also be required to pass similar legislation. We can hope only that the bill will take the shape of law, truly giving Pakistan’s Hindus equal standing and ending the current state of limbo over marriages. The issue of the forced conversion of Hindu girls, many of them under-age, who are forcibly wed to Muslim men, also needs to be more forcefully taken up. And there is no reason why only Hindu legislators should be driving the issue forward. This is something that affects a large group of citizens, and the campaign to grant them equal rights needs to be expanded.