Pakistan's Senate will discuss a controversial clause in the landmark Hindu Marriage Bill that calls for annulment of a marriage if any of the spouses converts to another religion, after unanimously passing the law recently.
TheNational Assembly committeeon law and justicelast week approved the draft law on Hindu marriages, paving the way for registering marriages in the minuscule religious minority of Pakistan following decades of delay and inaction.
Chairperson of standing committee on law and justice Senator Nasreen Jalil has calleda meeting of the committee this week to take up the matter.
The Hindu Marriage Bill clause 12(iii) says, a marriage will be annulled if any of the spouses converts to another religion.
Jalil said some opposed the clause others supported it. There needs to be a consensus among the committee members.
"If there is a consensus on deletion of the clause the committee will forward its recommendations to the speaker of National Assembly," Dawn Newspaper quoted her as saying.
On the other hand, National Assembly standing committee has witnessed serious opposition to the deletion of the clause by Maulana Mohammad Khan Sheerani, the JUI-F parliamentarian and chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII).
PPP'sShugufta Jumani and Ali Mohammad of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf said if any of the spouses converted to Islam, the marriage should be terminated.
PPP Senator Taj Haider said "I do not understand how the marriage will be annulled if any of the partners converts to Islam. The clause will also discourage cross-marriages".
RulingPML-N member Ramesh Kumar Vankwani who is also patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council, said the matter is related to the basic human rights of Pakistani Hindus.
"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 said.
He also referred to the current practice by elements who kidnapped teenage girls and eventually presented them in courts along with a certificate that the girl had married after converting to Islam.
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Civil society activist Kishan Sharma said this clause was added by the CII as 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," he said.
He said Pakistani society is opening up with growing urbanisation and modernisation and more and more people are not living in communities nowadays, adding asthe societies change, attitudes of individuals also change and "even now we see youth belonging to Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities deciding their fates to live together".
But stopping this change through laws will only add to discontent and frustration in society, he said.
Five Hindu assembly members were specially invited to the deliberations of the Standing Committee on law and justice before approvals of the Hindu Marriage Bill 2015.
Thecommittee adopted the bill unanimously after making two amendments to fix the minimum age of the marrying male and female at 18 and making the law applicable to the whole country, instead of just the federal territory.
Vankwani had been pushing for approving the bill but members of other parliamentary parties who claim to be more liberal persisted with their objections. Vankwani said open- mindedness was wanting in the society.
"If Hindu boys and girls elsewhere can marry into other religions why cannot this be a reality here?" he asked.
