Historic Hindu marriage bill passed

Sets minimum age for wedding at 18 and breach will lead to jail and fine

Pakistan’s lower house of parliament has passed a landmark bill giving its small Hindu minority the right to register marriages, the last major hurdle on the way to enacting a law aimed at protecting women’s rights.

Activists say that Hindu women have been disproportionately targeted for abduction, forced conversions and rape because their marriages were never officially recognised and therefore not provable in court.

The National Assembly passed the bill on Monday after 10 months of deliberation. The Senate is expected to pass the law without any significant delay.

Hindus make up approximately 1.6 per cent of Pakistan’s Muslim-majority 190 million population, but have not had any legal mechanisms to register their marriages since independence from Britain in 1947.

Christians, the other main religious minority, have a British law dating back to 1870 regulating their marriages.

The new bill sets the minimum age for marriage for Hindus at 18. The minimum legal age for marriage for citizens of other religions is 18 for men and 16 for women.

Breaking the law regarding the minimum age would result in six months’ jail and a 5,000-rupee (Dh175 or $47) fine. Unicef estimates 21 per cent of women aged 20 to 24 in Pakistan were first married before age 18, with three per cent married before age 16.