STATE POLICIES AND THE MARGINALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES A CASE STUDY OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CHRISTIANS IN PAKISTAN DURING THE BHUTTO AND ZIA-UL-HAQ ERAS

Abstract

This article examines how state policies under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971–1977) and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977–1988) structured and intensified the marginalization of Pakistan’s Christian minority. Using a qualitative policy-legal analysis of constitutional provisions, criminal-law amendments, education and election reforms, and curriculum policy—triangulated with human-rights reports and secondary scholarship—the study traces mechanisms that converted majoritarian ideology into everyday exclusion. Under Bhutto, the 1972 nationalization of church-run schools and colleges eroded the Christian community’s educational capital and institutional autonomy, with denationalization proceeding only partially decades later (Centre for Social Justice [CSJ], 2020). Under Zia, Islamization transformed legal and political opportunity structures: the Hudood Ordinances re-ordered evidentiary standards and criminalized conduct in ways that disproportionately exposed minority—and especially Christian—women to vulnerability (Lau, 2007); blasphemy provisions were expanded (PPC §§295-B in 1982; 295-C in 1986), catalyzing case growth and chilling expression (Amnesty International, 1994; International Commission of Jurists, 2015); and the 1985 separate-electorate system segmented Christians from mainstream electoral competition, diluting voice and bargaining power until its reversal in 2002 (Ahmad, 2023). School curricula over this period further entrenched symbolic exclusion by narrowing depictions of non-Muslim citizens (Nayyar & Salim, 2003). The analysis shows path-dependent continuity across regimes: economic dispossession (via nationalization), legal precarity (via criminal-law changes), political disenfranchisement (via separate electorates), and cultural othering (via curricula) formed an interlocking policy ecology of marginalization. The article concludes with a reform agenda centered on procedural safeguards in speech-related offences, curricular pluralism, restitution/partnership models for faith-run institutions, and minority-inclusive electoral design, offering historically grounded benchmarks for rights-compliant policy in contemporary Pakistan.