The Sindh Assembly of Pakistan has passed the Hindu Marriage Bill 2015, thus becoming the first province in the country to allow the minority community to register their marriages. Sindh Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro moved the bill, which will apply to entire Sindh province, which has a sizeable population of Hindus. During the discussion on the bill, he said it was the first time since the creation of Pakistan that such a bill was being passed.

Non-Muslims make up only about three per cent of the 190 million population of Pakistan, which was founded as a haven for the sub-continent’s Muslims on independence from the British in 1947 with a promise of religious freedom to minorities. But Hindus have had no legal mechanism to register their marriages. Christians, the other main religious minority, have a British law dating back to 1870 regulating their marriages.

All of Pakistan’s minorities – Hindus, Christians, Ahmadis and even Shi’ite Muslims – say they feel the state fails to protect them and sometimes even tolerates violence against them. 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.

Pakistan’s Hindus and other minorities have faced a surge of violence in recent years as militant Islamists attack groups that do not share their strict interpretation of Islam.