Dalit women in Pakistan

According to the Pakistan national census of 1998, Scheduled Castes and Dalits number 330,000 and reside primarily in five districts of Southern Punjab bordering India.

Dalit women of Pakistan fall victim to sexual abuse, abduction and forced religious conversion. Dalit women tell of kidnappings and abductions leading to forced conversion and marriage into Muslim families. The stories of the women’s families reveal that religious conversion is a barrier to the return of women to their families and action by police personnel (1).

The Punjab region in particular is home to a large population of Christians, most of which have converted from Hinduism to escape caste discrimination. However, they have not escaped their social status as Dalits, and Dalit Christian women are subjected to a combination of both gender and religious discrimination, targeted for being women and for being non-Muslim(2).

As a religious minority, Dalit Christian women experience violations such as rape and torture as a form of punitive measure and prosecution. Furthermore, law enforcement personnel are criticized for abusing religious minorities in custody.

In the Sindh province about 1,8 million people live in bonded labour, a majority of which are Dalits originally from India. A combined effect of low education levels, exclusion from family decision making processes and a lack of property rights make dalit women vulnerable to this labour exploitation and bondage(3). Rape of female bonded labourers is widespread and violent, and there is little legal recourse(4).  

References:

Christian women face unknown world in Pakistan by Lys Anzia, Women News Network. May 18, 2009.

Dalit Women: Fear and Discrimination by Meena Anand, Gyan Books, 2005: 52 (Not available online).

More Resources:

Poverty, discrimination and slavery - The reality of bonded labour in India, Nepal and Pakistan by Krishna Prasad Upadhyaya Anti-Slavery International 2008.

The Choice of Reforms: The human rights situation of ethnic, linguistic, religious minorities, scheduled castes Hindus and indigenous people in Pakistan, a Joint NGO report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for the examination of the 15th-20th periodic reports of Pakistan at the 74th CERD session in February 2009.

Long Behind Schedule – a study on the plight of scheduled caste Hindus in Pakistan’ by Zufilkar Shah 2007, submitted to IIDS and IDSN.