Finally Hindu wives and husbands can call their husbands and wives legally married and their sons and daughters can call their parents Ma and Baba.
Statesman February 14, 2016
Hindu marriage bill creates row in Pakistan
IANS
| Islamabad
| 14 February, 2016
Representational Image (Getty Images)
A clause in
the draft Hindu marriage bill, which states that a marriage will be annulled if
either spouse converts to another religion, has triggered vehement contest
between its opponents and supporters in Pakistan.
Seeking an
end to the controversy, Senator Nasreen Jalil, chairperson of the Senate
Standing Committee on Law and Justice, has called a meeting of the panel to
discuss the matter, Dawn online reported.
The draft
legislation has been passed by the National Assembly's Standing Committee on
Law and Justice.
Senator
Jalil said: "We would like to discuss the matter. If there is a consensus,
the committee will forward its recommendations to the speaker of the National
Assembly to get the clause deleted."
At its
meeting on February 8, the National Assembly Standing Committee witnessed
serious opposition from Mohammad Khan Sheerani, the Jamiat Ulma-e-Islam-Fazl
(JUI-F) chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), to the clause.
But Shugufta
Jumani of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and Ali Mohammad of the Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaf clearly said if any of the spouses embraced Islam, the marriage
should be terminated.
Clause
12(iii) says a marriage would be annulled if either spouse converts to another
religion.
The
patron-in-chief of Pakistan Hindu Council, Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, said the
matter was related to the basic human rights of Hindus in Pakistan.
“There are
fears the clause will be misused for forced conversions of married women the
same way young girls are being subjected to forced conversions," he said.
He referred
to the kidnapping of teenage Hindu girls who were then presented them in courts
with a certificate that she had married after converting to Islam.
PPP Senator
Taj Haider opposed the idea in the law.
"I do
not understand how the marriage will be annulled if any of the partners
converts to Islam," Haider said, adding the clause will also discourage
cross-marriages.
Civil
society activist Kishan Sharma, who is also the chairman of REAT Network, an
independent civil society organisation, said this clause was added by the CII
and it was not a part of the original draft.
“The key
concern is that only one option of dissolution of marriage has been included in
the law and that too where the partners might be willing to live together
despite different faiths."
“As
societies change, attitudes of individuals also change and even now we see
youths belonging to Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities deciding their fate
to live together," Sharma said.
"But
stopping this change through laws will only add to discontent and frustration
in society," he said.
Hindus in Pak protest for law to register
their marriages
March 30, 2012
Rezaul H Laskar in
Islamabad
Pakistan's minority
Hindu community has protested the prolonged delay in the approval of a law to
register their marriages, saying the lack of legislation affected the
inheritance rights of women.
A large group of Hindus
joined a protest outside the National Press Club in Islamabad on Thursday and
shouted slogans against the government. They also performed a mock Hindu
marriage to protest the delay in the approval of the Hindu Marriage
Registration Act by parliament.
Shakuntala Devi, an
activist of the Scheduled Caste Rights Movement, said Hindu women had suffered
for more than six decades due to the absence of any law to protect their
matrimonial rights.
"There are no
family laws for Hindus. Their marriages are not registered. The women cannot
claim their inheritance rights as they cannot produce any evidence of their
marriage in court," she told the media.
There were cases of
married Hindu women being kidnapped while their husbands were unable to
approach the court because they had no documentary evidence of their marriage.
"Women cannot file
for divorce nor can they claim custody of their children as men often deny the
marriage in court," Shakuntala Devi said. There were also cases of Hindu
women being abducted and married off to non-Hindus and even this phenomenon
goes unchallenged because there is no law to protect the women, she said.
"The most
challenging task is to get our national identity cards. We have to bribe the
staff to get the NIC and sometimes, we cannot stay in a hotel because we are
unable to produce a marriage registration certificate," she said.
Over 100 members of the
minority Hindu community from across Pakistan joined Thursday's protest that
was organised by SCRM and ActionAid. Some of the protesters carried placards
with their demands and slogans like 'No more delay to marriage registration'.
"What they are demanding
is just documentation. It has nothing to do with religion," said Amir
Nadeem, a lawyer who joined the protest. He listed several incidents in which
Hindu women were denied their legal rights only because they did not have any
documents to prove their marriage.
Shakuntala Devi said
Hindu women were "constantly victimised" as were deprived of basic
social, political and economic rights in the absence of a marriage registration
law.
"It has been over
four years that we have been waging a struggle for our rights. In 2011, a bill
was presented in the National Assembly for a law to register Hindu marriages
but so far there has been no progress," she said.
All Pakistan Hindu
Rights Movement chief Haroon Sarab Diyal said the Hindus prepared the draft
legislation in 2009. "The draft was prepared after extensive research on
prevailing Hindu marriage laws in India and Nepal and it was made according to
the Pakistani constitution but it was never passed by parliament," he
said.
The same draft is
pending with the Human Rights ministry but landlords and some influential
members of the Hindu community, who want the 'panchayat' system to remain in
place, were creating hurdles in its passage, Diyal claimed.
He also contended that
Hindu lawmakers should be directly elected instead of being
"selected" by political parties.
The Hindu February 18, 2017
Pakistan Senate passes
landmark Hindu marriage bill
Islamabad:
February 18, 2017 11:18 IST
The
much-awaited landmark bill to regulate marriages of minority Hindus in Pakistan
is set to become a law with the Senate unanimously passing it.
The Hindu
Marriage Bill 2017, which is the first elaborate Hindu community’s personal
law, was adopted by the Senate on Friday.
The bill had
already been approved by the lower house or the National Assembly on September
26, 2015, and it now just needs signature of the President, a mere formality,
to become a law.
Dawn News
reported that the bill is widely acceptable to Hindus living in Pakistan
because it relates to marriage, registration of marriage, separation and
remarriage, with the minimum age of marriage set at 18 years for both boys and
girls.
The bill
will help Hindu women get documentary proof of their marriage.
It will be
the first personal law for Pakistani Hindus, applicable in Punjab, Balochistan
and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. The Sindh province has already formulated its
own Hindu Marriage Law.
The bill
presented in the Senate by Law Minister Zahid Hamid faced no opposition or
objection. It was mainly due to the sympathetic views expressed by the
lawmakers of all political parties in the relevant standing committees.
The bill was
approved by the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights on January 2 with
an overwhelming majority.
However,
Senator Mufti Abdul Sattar of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl had opposed the
bill, claiming that the Constitution was vast enough to cater to such needs.
While
approving the bill, committee chairperson Senator Nasreen Jalil of the
Muttahida Qaumi Movement had announced, “This was unfair —— not only against
the principles of Islam but also a human rights violation —— that we have not
been able to formulate a personal family law for the Hindus of Pakistan.”
Ramesh Kumar
Vankwani, a leading Hindu lawmaker from the ruling Pakistan Muslim
League—Nawaz, had been working relentlessly for three years to have a Hindu
marriage law in the country.
“Such laws
will help discourage forced conversions and streamline the Hindu community
after the marriage of individuals,” he said, expressing gratitude to the
parliamentarians.
Mr. Vankwani
also said it was difficult for married Hindu women to prove that they were
married, which was one of the key tools for miscreants involved in forced
conversion.
The law
paves the way for a document ‘Shadi Parath’ —— similar to the ‘Nikahnama’ for
Muslims —— to be signed by a pundit and registered with the relevant government
department.
Dawn February 15, 2015
KARACHI: For
the first time in the country's history, marriage laws for millions of Hindus
living in Sindh have been codified after the Sindh Assembly approved the Hindu
Marriage Bill, 2016, on Monday.
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.
The bride
and groom cannot be less than 18 years, according to the text of the approved
draft.
Married
couples will be required to obtain a marriage registration certificate, while a
couple can also face fines in case their marriage is not registered. The law
can be applied retroactively to existing marriages.
Zoroastrians
and Sikhs will also be able to register their marriages under the new law.
Hindus,
despite being the second-largest religious minority group in Pakistan, with a
population of 3.3 million, had no legal mechanism to register marriages.
Unlike the
Muslim majority or Christians, Hindus lacked any legal framework for protection
of their marriages and are unable to provide legal proof when required.
Christians,
the other main religious minority, have a British law dating back to 1870
regulating their marriages.
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 in 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 of the committee 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 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.
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.
But many see
the passage of the bill as a ray of hope.
“Now after
the passage of this bill in the Sindh Assembly, after 70 years, Hindus will
also have a marriage certificate just like Muslims do,” said Shahnaz Sheedi,
the coordinator for South Asia Partnership Pakistan, a civil rights movement.
“We hope
that bill will be soon adopted at the national level,” she said. The National
Assembly in Islamabad has been considering such a bill it is still in
committee.
Dawn January 2, 2017
In what
appears to be a New Year's gift for Hindu minorities in Pakistan, the Senate
Functional Committee on Human Rights unanimously approved the much-awaited
Hindu Marriages Bill on Monday.
Earlier in
September, the National Assembly had passed the Hindu Marriage Bill 2016, thus
paving the way for the adoption of a comprehensive and widely-acceptable family
law for Hindus living in Pakistan.
The bill
will enable the Hindu community to get their marriages registered and to appeal
in courts of law in cases of separation.
There are
penalties for violating the provisions of the bill, which allows Hindus to
finally have a proof of marriage document called the shadiparat, similar
to the nikahnama for Muslims.
The bill
also allows separated Hindu persons to remarry. Clause 17 of the bill states
that a Hindu widow "shall have the right to re-marry of her own will and
consent after the death of her husband provided a period of six months has
lapsed after the husband’s death".
The Senate
committee under the chair of Muttahida Qaumi Movement Senator Nasreen Jalil
took up the bill for discussion.
Soon after
the bill was approved, the committee room 4 in Parliament House echoed with
jubilation as senators and officials of different ministries started thumping
their desks.
Minority
member in National Assembly Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani called the move a new
year's gift for Hindus living in Pakistan.
"Today,
we are proud to be Hindu Pakistanis after the approval of the bill. Hindus will
now be able to get registered their marriages and also apply for divorce under
family laws," he said.
Top
constitutional expert Senator Aitzaz Ahsan said the bill is in accordance with
the essence of the Constitution.
Ahsan
clarified that the bill was not in contrast with Islamic jurisprudence as Islam
emphasises protection of minorities.
