Matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance and alimony for the Muslims and Christians in Pakistan are governed by laws deemed in line with their own faiths. But the three million Hindus in the country have waited for such laws for decades. At times, they have no legal way at all to prove that they are married. Now, the minority community has been given not one but two separate laws that will regulate Hindu marriages in various parts of the country. Will these laws solve their problems?
The Sindh Assembly passed the Sindh Hindu Marriage Bill of 2016 on February 15. A week before that, on February 8, the federal Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Human Rights unanimously passed the proposed Hindu Marriage Bill of 2015 for debate in the National Assembly. The Punjab Assembly passed a resolution on February 26, through which it endorsed the federal bill. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have already passed resolutions in favor of the federal bill.
The legislation follows a National Conference on Hindu Marriage Bill held in Islamabad on January 27 and 28, which brought together Hindu leaders from across the country to express concerns about a lack of such regulations.
Personal laws have become a provincial subject since the passing of 18th Amendment in 2010. Article 144 of the Constitution of Pakistan enables provinces to surrender their power to legislate to the federal government, through a resolution.
Chaudhry Bashir Mahmood Virk at the National Conference on the Hindu Marriage Bill in Islamabad
The federal Hindu Marriage Bill of 2015, backed by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), was tabled in the National Assembly by Minister for Information and Human Rights Pervaiz Rashid in March last year. The legislation was deferred minutes before its enactment in July. Just before that, the ruling party’s Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani had said he would table a resolution in the Sindh Assembly so that the federal law could be extended to the province. But before National Assembly could pass the bill, the Sindh Assembly made its own law.
Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid told me that the National Assembly will pass the bill in its upcoming session in any case. “There is no significant difference between the Sindh law and the federal bill,” he said.
But Chaudhry Bashir Mahmood Virk, chairman of the Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Human Rights, says the Sindh law is not comprehensive.
India allowed Hindus to divorce in 1955
The province’s Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Khuhro, who tabled the bill in the Sindh Assembly, says the objective of the law is “to provide a formal process of registration of marriages for Hindus”. He says Hindus “needed a legal mechanism to register their marriages.”
But the provincial law “doesn’t cover such matters as judicial separation and annulment of marriage,” Virk says. He says representatives of the Hindu community had expressed concern over the limitations of the Sindh law.
He also believes there will be possible legal problems because of the overlapping of the two statutes.
The Sindh law defines “Hindu” as “any person who practices the Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Sikh religions in any of the forms or developments” – a definition several Sikh leaders have expressed concern about.
Punjab parliamentarian Sardar Ramesh Singh Arora says that the Sikh community did not want to be clubbed with Hindus. “Sikhism is a separate religion,” he says. “How can ‘Hindu’ mean ‘Sikh’, even for the purpose of marriage?”
A major reason why Hindus had been calling for a law that would help them legally register their marriages was the phenomenon of abductions, forced conversions, and forced marriages of Hindu women – even those who had already been married. There was no way for Hindu couples to legally prove they were married. The Hindu Marriage Bill of 2015 does not solve that. It says the annulment of marriage can take place if one party “has ceased to be Hindu by conversion to another religion to another religion.”
Peter Jacob, the executive director of the Center for Social Justice says the clause “implies that the law in Pakistan prohibits diversity of belief for cohabitation or marriage.” He also quoted legal cases – such as Ms Kundani v The State (PLD 1988 FSC 89) and Ms Fatima Bibi v SHO Ichchra Police Station Lahore (PLD 2005, Lahore 128) – that held that “conversion of faith does not dissolve a marriage automatically”.
The new law does solve some problems, such as acquiring national identity cards, passports and visas, and opening bank accounts.
The earliest efforts for such a law began in the 1970s, but failed because of differences within the community on the final shape of these regulations. India enacted a Hindu Marriage Act in 1955, allowing divorce and annulment of marriage.
