Pakistan Peoples Party, which counts Hindus among its key voters, has named Saveera Parkash as its candidate from Buner in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, making her the first Hindu woman to stand for a direct election from a general seat
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) can be faulted on multiple counts. For one, its leadership continues to be the preserve of the Bhutto family. The PPP has faced serious corruption charges and has done little to end the feudalist status quo in its stronghold of Sindh, the country’s second most populous province. But the party’s commitment against the odds to inclusive, liberal values and women’s rights remain its redeeming factors.
American President Barack Obama famously hit the nail on the head when he noted In 2014: ‘You can judge a nation, and how successful it will be, based on how it treats its women and its girls.’ Pakistan has a long way to go on that score but the PPP has significantly contributed to it.
Trailblazers
That women have occupied top positions in Pakistan has much to do with the PPP. The PPP gave the country its first woman Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1988). It nominated Fehmida Mirza as the first woman speaker of Parliament in 2008. Hina Rabbani Khar of the PPP would become Pakistan’s first woman foreign minister three years later. Pakistan’s first batch of six women fighter pilots was trained when PPP was in power from 2008-2013 before their induction shortly after the party was voted out of the government.
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The PPP nominated Krishna Kumari Kohli, a so-called lower caste Hindu woman, to Pakistan’s upper house of Parliament in March 2018 from a general seat. Kohli became the second Pakistani Hindu woman senator after Ratna Bhagwandas Chawla (March 2006 to March 2012), who also won on a PPP ticket.
Ahead of the 2024 Pakistan general election, the PPP has nominated Saveera Parkash, 25, a Hindu doctor, as its candidate from Buner in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Saveera Prakash, who will be the first Hindu woman to contest a direct election from a general seat instead of a reserved religious minority seat, insisted she never faced any discrimination.
In her first election speech in Pashtu and Urdu, Saveera Prakash called accessible education the key to fixing all issues. Saveera Parkash spoke to The Indian Express about an ‘amazing’ response from the people, who call her ‘Buner ki Beti’. She added they do not see her as a Hindu woman but as a pukhtana or native Pashtun person.
Saveera Parkash described divisions on religious lines as ‘very outdated’ and called for the need to move on while listing education, health, and women as her priorities. Daughter of doctor couple Yelena Parkash, a Russian, and Om Parkash, a PPP member who runs a clinic in Buner, Saveera Parkash expressed happiness over good luck messages from India. She said she has become ‘a common point’ between people of the two countries.
Saveera Prakash, who described her father and Benazir Bhutto as her inspirations for getting into politics, insisted she never felt any difference while pointing to common cultures and history. She pledged to act as a bridge between both countries if she gets some power after being elected.
Saveera Prakash, who was preparing for civil services exams before her nomination, underlined the need for strong people-to-people ties between India and Pakistan. Her father, a cardiologist who heads the PPP’s provincial doctors’ wing, said his family stayed back during Partition since Buner was part of the princely state of Swat, whose rulers were ‘kind to minorities’.
Saveera Prakash’s nomination has enhanced PPP’s image as a progressive party, which counts the Hindus among its committed voters.
Star Turn
Sherry Rehman, one of the more recognisable Pakistani women leaders who came into much prominence as the climate change minister, also belongs to the PPP. She hit the headlines for her role in setting the agenda at United Nations climate talks in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh (COP27) in November 2022.
The Economist noted Pakistan is not often praised for its leadership and yet Rehman was ‘one of the star turns’ at COP27 as she helmed the G77+China negotiating group of developing countries. It added Rehman won ‘plaudits for shepherding a new deal to channel money from rich countries to poor ones that have suffered climate-related disasters.’
The Economist called this the ‘annual climate jamboree’s single main achievement.’ It noted Rehman, a former ambassador to the US who became the first woman Opposition leader in Pakistan’s Senate in 2018, is also known for her fights against killings in the name of honour and draconian blasphemy laws.
Three of the five women ministers, including Rehman and Hina Rabbani Khar, in the previous Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif-led government were from the PPP. Khar made a mark during her previous stint in the government. But she was relegated to PPP’s princeling Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s deputy in foreign affairs when the party returned to power as part of a multi-party coalition following Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ouster.
Khar’s last stint was shorter. But she quickly covered herself in glory through her symbolic and momentous trip to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Khar made the trip without conforming to the Taliban’s dress code for women. She was dressed typically stylishly covering only the back of her head with her transparent dupatta as much of her hair was visible.
Khar’s visit as the head of a delegation to Kabul with mostly male subordinates followed the Taliban’s ban on women and girls from visiting parks and gyms even if male chaperones accompanied them. She became the first Pakistani minister to travel to Kabul after the more centrist Shehbaz Sharif-led government took over in April. She made a statement through her trip as the Taliban continued to erase women from public life.
Khar sat across the table to hold talks with the Taliban’s interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi-led all-male Afghan interlocutors. The optics were significant as the Taliban have failed to live up to their pledges and continued to chip away at the rights and freedoms of women and girls, who have been the worst sufferers in Afghanistan since the Soviet occupation plunged the country into turmoil over 40 years ago.
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is a journalist and the author of the Penguin Random House book The Other Side of the Divide
