Lahore’s temples are lit, but nine in ten of the province’s 250,000 Hindus live in Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur, where cash cards, marriage registration and protection from forced conversion count for most.
LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif greeted Hindus on Diwali on Sunday, promising them a “rightful share in every sphere of life” and pointing to cash cards, a virtual police service and new marriage laws. For most of the province’s Hindus, those promises will be judged far from Lahore’s lamplit temples.
Punjab had 249,716 Hindus in the 2023 census, about 0.19 percent of its population. Around 90 percent live in the southern districts of Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur, many of them in the villages and desert settlements of Cholistan. Rahim Yar Khan is the only district in Punjab where Hindus make up more than 2 percent of the population.
“Diwali’s lamps spread the light of love,” Sharif said in her message. “We are not only committed to protecting the rights of Hindu brothers and sisters and other minorities but also determined to ensure their rightful share in every sphere of life.”
She praised the Hindu community’s role in Pakistan’s progress and recommitted to Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of freedom and rights for minorities. She called Pakistan “a beautiful bouquet” of faiths and said Hindus and other minorities were “the beautiful colours of Pakistan, which would never be allowed to fade.” Punjab, she said, was “rapidly moving towards a society where love and tolerance will become our identity.”
The provincial government had announced Diwali events across Punjab, including one in Lahore on November 6. Lahore’s main celebrations are traditionally held at the Krishna Mandir on Ravi Road, with the Valmiki Mandir near Neela Gumbad and the Jain Mandir near Anarkali lit up in recent years by the Parks and Horticulture Authority. Lahore’s Hindu families also marked Karva Chauth last month.
Promise one: cash in hand
The Minority Card was itself a Diwali promise. Sharif announced it at Diwali in 2024 and launched it in January 2025, paying Rs10,500 per family every quarter to Hindu, Christian, Sikh and other minority households through the Bank of Punjab. The target rose from 50,000 to 75,000 families, and by April this year officials said 100,000 people were receiving payments.
The budget for 2026-27 sets aside Rs3 billion for the card and Rs4 billion for a Chief Minister’s Minority Development Programme. The festival grant for minority families was raised from Rs10,000 to Rs15,000.
The amount is modest, about Rs3,500 a month. At the launch, Sharif herself called Rs10,500 “a meagre amount” and “a token gift”, and promised increases. The government has not published a breakdown showing how many cards have gone to Hindu families or to the southern districts where most of them live.
Promise two: marriages on paper
Sharif said Punjab was the first province to approve a Sikh Marriage Act and had approved the long-pending Hindu Marriage Act 2017. The details show how slowly such laws move from paper to practice.
The Hindu Marriage Act is a federal law passed in 2017 and applies in Punjab, but it could not be used in the province until rules were made. Punjab’s cabinet approved the Hindu marriage registration rules only in January 2025, nearly eight years later, after pressure from the National Commission for Human Rights. The Punjab Sikh Anand Karaj Marriage Act was passed in 2018, and its rules were approved by Sharif’s cabinet in May 2024.
For Hindu women in particular, a registered marriage is more than a formality. It is the document they need to prove a marriage, claim inheritance and maintenance, seek a divorce, and update identity papers. Rights groups have urged the government to make sure registrars are notified and active in every district, especially in the south.
Promise three: a line to the police
Sharif also cited Minority Virtual Police Stations. The Punjab Safe Cities Authority runs Meesaq, a virtual centre for minorities that takes complaints by phone and online. By August last year, it had received more than 4,000 cases, resolved over 3,600 and registered more than 750 FIRs, according to the authority.
Those numbers suggest demand, but the authority has not said what kinds of cases they involved, how many came from Hindus, or how many led to convictions.
The harder questions
Rights groups say the most serious threat to Hindu families is the abduction, forced conversion and underage marriage of girls. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s report on freedom of religion for 2024-25 said such cases persisted in Punjab and Sindh, exposing a failure to enforce child marriage laws. Its latest report, covering 2025-26, says girls from Hindu and Christian communities continue to be abducted and forced into marriage, made worse by poverty and weak police responses.
The UK-based Centre for Social Justice counted 421 reported cases of abduction and forced conversion of minority girls and women across Pakistan from 2021 to 2024, 282 of them involving Hindu girls. Most Hindu cases are reported from Sindh, but southern Punjab’s Hindu belt shares the same poverty and remoteness. A federal bill to criminalise forced conversions was rejected by a parliamentary committee in 2021.
Peter Jacob, executive director of the Centre for Social Justice, has acknowledged that the Punjab government is taking several steps but said minorities also need measures that ensure sustainable economic development and protect their fundamental rights.
Supporters of the government point out that Punjab has gone further than other provinces in some respects that it was first to give Sikhs their own marriage law and among the first to pay minorities a regular cash grant. Its heritage work has also reopened sites such as the restored Padhana gurdwara near Lahore.
The Jinnah benchmark
Sharif invoked Jinnah, as Pakistani leaders often do on minority festivals. In his speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, Jinnah told Pakistanis they were “free to go to your temples” and that religion had “nothing to do with the business of the State”. His legacy is remembered every September with official tributes.
Punjab meets that standard will be decided in Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur as much as in Lahore including how many Hindu families draw the card, how many marriages are registered, and how quickly police act when a girl goes missing.
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