Pakistan was founded as a state for the subcontinent’s Muslim minority, and hence a state that would protect the rights of the marginalized. Over the decades, however, there has a gradual erasure of the voices of most marginalised groups from Pakistan’s mainstream political discourse.
As an editorial in Dawn pointed out, this is because “political representation of marginalised communities has been reduced to mere tokenism, with seats in parliament handed out to handpicked individuals by political parties rather than being given to those who have demonstrably won their communities’ trust.”
At a recent ‘National Conference on Electoral Participation and Political Empowerment of Marginalised Groups’ the attendees noted that “issues that marginalised communities — including non-Muslims, the differently abled, trans people and women — face require a fundamental alteration in the way the state views their citizenship, because it is clear that these communities are still not considered ‘equal’ in terms of their right to political participation.”
The Dawn editorial lamented, “a nation is more than just the sum of its parts and that Pakistan cannot progress without embracing all its component communities and enabling them to participate equally in building a better future.”
