Sacred Sovereignties and Sexual Politics: Interfaith Marriages and the Marginalisation of Minority Women in Pakistan

Abstract

This article examines the layered intersection of gender, law, and religious identity in contemporary Muslim-majority Pakistan, through the lens of interfaith marriages involving Hindu and Christian minority women. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical postcolonial and feminist legal studies, and grounded in activist experiences, this article highlights how legal lapses, patriarchal religious interpretations, powerful landlords, and state neglect collectively control and limit women’s sexual and religious autonomy. In cases of interfaith marriages, women of religious minorities face double marginalisation, caught between majority and minority patriarchies. This is primarily an analytical essay from a feminist scholar-practitioner perspective which includes a discussion of a sample of forced conversion and marriage cases, field interviews with feminist activists, and official data from Pakistani human rights organisations. It critiques the framing of the politics of piety as benign or neutral, calls attention to the co-optation of women’s consent in cases of faith conversion and marriage by both majority and minority patriarchs and ultimately, makes a case for a reframing of minority women’s rights through a feminist legal lens.