Pakistan’s minority Hindus unaware of law pertaining to women, don’t avail its provisions: Report

11 May, Islamabad, Pakistan Asian Lite noted that Pakistan’s minority Hindu population does not take use of legal protections for their women, property, inheritance, and marriage because they are not aware that such protections exist.
Little has been done to inform the nation’s largest minority community, which makes up a tiny 1.8% of the 220 million people in the country, about the 69-year-old law’s existence and “negligible” use. According to Asian Lite and Dawn, the law was enacted six years ago. The bulk of Hindus reside in Pakistan’s Sindh province, which has its own law that was passed after years of contentious debate.

The Hindu Marriage Act, 2017, which is in effect in Punjab, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, “reeks of our institutionalised prejudice” towards the group, claims Dawn. Simply put, no one in the community for which it has been implemented is aware of it.
According to ABC News, the law is crucial, particularly for women since every year in Pakistan, more than 1000 young girls from the minority Hindu, Christian, and Sikh faiths are abducted and forced to convert to Islam.

Hindu and Christian girls from lower Castes and low-income households make up the majority of the targets.
The Hindu community in Pakistan was referred to as “frozen out” by Dawn. It mentioned that the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expressed concern at a recent event that marginalised groups were “ignorant about laws that protect them.”
The Hindu Marriage Act’s restrictions have been softened to accommodate various reservations. According to Asian Lite, they are still ‘opaque’ regarding who is permitted to solemnise Hindu marriages.
The publication noted that the voyage of the bill has been “paradoxical.Even though it is a thorough document that breaks with many strict customs, its implementation to date has just substituted a marriage certificate for a wedding photograph.

“The majority of women from a frozen-out community in Pakistan continue to live without official documentation, consent and inheritance, and submit to underage marriage as well as social and domestic violence,” Dawn said, Asian Lite reported.