The unanimous approval of the Hindu marriage bill by the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights is indication that Pakistan is on the path of progress. The bill would, for the very first time, give Pakistani Hindus an officiallyrecognised proof of marriage document, so that they could get their marriage registered with the authorities and even appeal in courts. It also safeguards the rights of Hindu women by providing for a Hindu widow to remarry after six months of her husband’s death. It appears that the state’s apathy towards the plight of minorities is changing for the better. And while reactionary voices may protest, and even brazenly issue threats, but all of that does not seem to stop those who want to see Pakistan as an inclusionary state.
However, giving full legal rights to minorities is the duty of the state, and all of this should not be seen as a favour on a minority group. Rather, this is the beginning of undoing historic injustices towards those who chose to stay in the country. As virulent and intolerant right wing religious groups gained increasing space in Pakistan, the freedoms of minorities started to vanquish. This is not merely about legal rights as most of them were in place. It is about the terror and persecution that minority groups have to face in Pakistan. Religious seminaries have produced individuals in Pakistan who subscribe to a dialectic of religious purity in which the reason behind Pakistan’s formation was convoluted into a supposedly ‘pure’ space for Muslims to live and be free from the influences of Hindus and other ‘non-Muslims’.
Hence, religious minorities have been targeted by accusing them of serious offences. They are ostracised from society, and even the anachronism of the caste-based practice of keeping at a certain distance the untouchables applied to certain religious minorities. There is a big segment of Pakistani society that is proudly intolerant and they parade their beliefs with sanctimonious self-assurance. Amid all of this is lost the real reason of the formation of Pakistan, which was based on a political issue regarding the intransigence of the Indian National Congress. Ironically, the country that was created to safeguard the political rights of Indian Muslims turned into one in which its own minorities were not safe.
All of this shows that apart from legal protection, the country needs to be made safe for minorities. In this, the National Action Plan has laid dow zero tolerance for those who incite hate against other communities. But it seems that, on that front, either the sate has capitulated or it lacks the political will to stop intolerant clerics and militant leaders from spewing their hate. It was very recently that a mob of angry bigots besieged the place of worship of a minority group in Chakwal, but no concrete action has yet been taken against them. Unless the perpetrators of such terror are punished to the full extent of the law, there is little reason for minorities to celebrate in Pakistan.
