[DAWN] SARDAR Kalyan Singh, a teacher at a government-run college in Gujranwala, considers himself to be among a small minority of fortunate Sikhs for having managed to get his marriage registered, albeit following a tedious six-month legal proceeding in court. The crux of the problem is that there is no marriage law for Pakistain's Sikh or Hindu communities on the statute books. According to Mr Singh, a large majority of Sikh marriages in the country do not 'officially' exist.Among the host of challenges facing our religious minorities, the absence of marriage legalisation and non-registration for the issuance of Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) are the most pressing for a substantial portion of these communities.
CNICs are the very foundation of citizenship, and their denial or delayed issuance impacts the minorities' economic and political rights. The issue of marriage legalisation mainly concerns Hindu and Sikh communities as well as several Christians belonging to new denominations.