Karachi: In colorful clothes and traditional hand-made garlands, over 70 Hindu couples tied the knot at a mass wedding here in Pakistan’s largest city, according to media reports on Monday.
The mass wedding was organized by the Pakistan Hindu Council (PHC) and held on Sunday at the Railway Ground on II Chundrigar Road.
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For 14 years, MNA Ramesh Kumar Vankvani, who is also the PHC Patron-in-Chief, has organized mass weddings every year for poor Hindu families who cannot afford to marry off their children.
At the first mass wedding in 2008, 35 Hindu couples married at the same time. That number has grown over the years.
This year we only invited half of them to the ceremony due to security measures related to the coronavirus pandemic, Vankvani said, adding that it was a cultural activity for the Hindu community.
The event also sends the message to the world that our minority communities are completely free to hold their social events in accordance with their religion, he was quoted as saying in The News International newspaper.
During the mass wedding ceremony, 72 Hindu couples got married. Most of the couples had traveled from Sindh and were accompanied by their parents, relatives and friends, the Dawn newspaper reported.
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“I work as a packer boy in a cell phone company in Korangi. If I had left it to me, I would have had to wait several more years to save up and get married, said Laxman, who married Mehek.
Vickey and Nandni belonged to Ibrahim Hyderi. Vicky said he worked as a street sweeper for the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation.
We have been engaged for three years. I’ve tried saving since we got engaged, but it wasn’t enough. Eventually we decided to get married in a mass wedding, Vicky told the Dawn.
Nandni’s mother had her youngest child, five-month-old Krishan, on her lap. Her eyes moisturized when someone said the bride would miss her little brother, the report said.
But that is life. Daughters have to leave the parental home. I’ll miss my daughter too, we all will, she said.
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After the wedding, each couple was given jewelry, dishes, cooking pots and utensils made of pure silver, as well as a check for the start of a new life.
The politician Mangla Sharma and several advocates of interreligious harmony and minority rights honored the occasion.
According to the 2017 Pakistani Census, there are 4.4 million Hindus in Pakistan, which is 2.14 percent of the total population, although the Pakistan Hindu Council claims there are around 8 million in the country.
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