Sunita Parmer: This, too, is Pakistan
Tharparker is a forgotten speck in southern Pakistan. It is defined by grass thatched roofs and a dysfunctional feudal electoral system that has undermined 1.6 million of its residents. Then, of course, there is the fact that half its population is Hindu in Muslim-majority Pakistan. In addition, the region is immensely water-stressed and the only transport is to sit on a donkey and set off to a far-flung hospital in case of a medical emergency. It is miserable to be a woman there.
Most women in Thar play along like a cactus adapts to barren land. They take on a silent disposition and live in abject poverty with the world’s highest infant mortality rate. Sunita Parmer is also a water-fetching, colorful-clothes-wearing and bone-tired woman from Tharparker. However, one day she decided it is no fun being bitter-prickly cacti.
Parmer is the master’s-level graduate who took on the system her ancestors cowed before. She decided to stop pleading with feudal lords to have some mercy for her marginalized community. “The men come into power and solve all the men-problems and leave.” She took on the established Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) candidate Maharaj Mahesh Malani and said that it was time for change.
She is now the first Hindu woman contesting a general seat from Thar. Parmer filed her nomination papers as an independent candidate from PS-56 and thus challenged some of the most anti-women practices: Forced marriage, kidnapping, rape, forced religious conversion and an extreme form of disrespect for women’s opinion.
Sindh's former Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim thought he was offering conclusive evidence that women are weak when he said that all women are afraid of lizards. Parmer is neither afraid of creepy crawlies nor the far more dangerous political incumbents that stop at nothing to show a woman her place in a patriarchal pecking order. Amid immense pressure to immediately withdraw her nomination, this mother-of-three has been an unrelenting mighty oak. She said: “The women of Thar are no longer feeble.”
Maybe this will be a new ending. Maybe the women of Thar will defeat the men who solve only men-problems. Maybe it will not end well. By running for the 2018 elections, Parmer has, however, already won the battle of bravery, spirit and soul against that of oppression. By refusing to leave politics despite continuous harassment against her community, she has given women across Pakistan the confidence to defeat sinister power politics that excludes women.
Although Parmer has a chance to disrupt the majoritarian order of Tharparker given that more than 70 percent of the vote-bank included Menghwar, Bheel and Kohli Hindu communities, the fact remains that the culture of violence is tough to push against. She is venerable and, sadly, courage is not always strong enough armor.
She is a huge force against the unwinding of our status-quo politics. Even the most ardent supporters of this political game are now saying that celebrating the exclusion of minorities has gone too far.
Aisha Sarwari
There is no doubt that if democracy is allowed to work unhindered, it is precisely designed to give sincere grassroots independent candidates power to change a Thar that is deprived of basic health and education.
The problem is that democracy has a prerequisite — freedom. It is difficult to learn to be free, just as it is convenient to keep marginalized people down. Another woman like Parmer, named Krishna Kumari Kolhi, became the first Hindu Dalit woman senator.
Kolhi, 39, is also from Thar and is a member of PPP. It could be argued that Kolhi set the stage for Parmer. Freedom is, thankfully, made up of contagious elements.
The new Hindu marriage law has helped slow the endemic problem of forced marriages among young non-consenting Hindu girls. With more women like Parmer embracing their religious identity as Pakistani citizens who are equal in the eyes of the law, there is now greater awareness that the feeble have legal options. This also helps to end the socially sanctioned practice of forced conversions from Hinduism to Islam.
When Pakistan was created, its founding father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, said: “Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in a religious sense because that is the personal faith of an individual, but in a political sense as citizens of one state.”
Amid this, Parmer is reminding us that we must revert to honoring the international human rights charters the country has signed. We must be a Muslim-majority country that is inclusive because this land’s history obliterates the oppressive regimes time and time again.
Parmer is a huge force against the unwinding of our status-quo politics. Even the most ardent supporters of this political game are now saying that celebrating the exclusion of minorities has gone too far.
• Aisha Sarwari is co-founder of the Women’s Advancement Hub, a grassroots platform for women to amplify their voices. She has been working on women’s rights for more than 15 years in Pakistan.
Twitter: @AishaFSarwari
