Is There Anything for Women of RMs in This Year Aurat March?

Sanjay Mathrani

Umerkot: Every year in March, people begin wondering why women choose to take to the streets on March 8. This, of course, is partly to raise awareness of the importance and relevance of the contribution women are making in our society and partly to draw attention to the many struggles and challenges they face in their everyday lives.

Women in Pakistan play a huge role in every field of life, with a participation rate of about 43 percent. They are involved in a number of diverse and competing roles, struggling to mitigate these from their birth to the last breath.
When it comes to women from religious minority (RM) communities, particularly those living in the Sindh province of Pakistan, they relatively live differently.

The 23-year-old Dr Bhawna Kumari, a student of Chandka Medical College Larkana, noted the fact that most issues relating to minorities are highlighted by the foreign media and are reached in Pakistan mostly through social media and picked up by the mainstream media.
She referenced the death of Nimrita Kumasi at her university, a BDS final-year student. She was found dead in her hostel room in Larkana City on September 16 last year. The recent final post-mortem report shocked many.

According to the report issued by Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), Nimrita was sexually abused before she was murdered in her hostel room. The implications of atrocities of this type are that the majority of parents will not allow their daughters to pursue higher studies or education. Such incidents and a lack of law and order are stopping aspiring females from accessing and benefiting from education, Dr Bhawna Kumari explained.
Maya Kumari, a resident of Manuu Malhi, stated in her response to a question about the lived experiences of religious minorities in Pakistan that religious minorities continue to face violence, repeated attacks on their places of worship, discrimination in law and practise, and forced conversion; girls belonging to minority Hindu, Sikh, and Christian communities are kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to men belonging to the majority community.

In 1947, Sindh’s Hindu population was 28 percent, but currently, Hindus make up about 6.51 percent, according to the census conducted in 1947 and the recent one. This decline in the population of RMs continues.
Maya added that everyone, including those leading the ‘Aurat March’, is discussing forced conversion and abuse of women, but no one is asking about the real cause.

Traditional cultural and religious rituals are needed to revise Hinduism, or Sanatan Dharam. The age-old tradition of ‘watta-satta’ is now becoming a way of life in Sindh rural areas, and most of the women suffer here; they don’t even have the right to share their consent.
A 21-year-old widow from Mandhal Umerkot Sindh, Jaiwanti Mohan, said that her husband died in a road accident back in November 2021. “I always felt different because everywhere I go, people either give me sympathetic looks or are scared that I will bring bad luck to them; even my in-laws treat me like this just because my husband is no more.”
With tears in her eyes, she said widows are still considered a bad omen in our society. Many widows are ostracised from society, whereas they are deprived of their rights to remarry and inherit property.

It is very important to recognise them as equal and contributing members of society by empowering them as much as possible so that they are able to lead ‘normal’ lives. They demanded that their legal issues and bonded lives be discussed at ‘Aurat March’ for justice.