Pakistani Hindus marry in mass ceremony in Pakistan due to poverty and persecution in Pakistan

Over 120 Hindu couples tied the knot in the southern port city of Karachi on Sunday night, in a ceremony organized by the Pakistani Hindu Council (PHC) so that the poor can save mounting wedding expenses.

“I am getting married here because my parents are poor. They cannot afford the wedding expenses,” said 25-year-old bride Kalpana Devi, swathed in traditional red attire.

“This is a good opportunity for me as my financial state is very weak. I was not able to raise funds for the wedding,” said 25-year-old Sateesh Parmar, the brother of bride Neha Parmar.

The country is clawing its way out of a financial crisis, and rights monitors have long warned that marginalised Hindus suffer some of the worst socioeconomic discrimination in Pakistan.

Rights groups say Hindu women are sometimes subjected to forced conversion to Islam through marriage.

Last January, United Nations experts said there was a reported rise in girls as young as 13 being “kidnapped from their families, trafficked to locations far from their homes, made to marry men sometimes twice their age, and coerced to convert to Islam”.

Read on also:

Mass Hindu wedding defies poverty and persecution in Pakistan