e_Paper, Thursday, September 7, 2017

14
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
DT
Opinion
The politics of triple talaq
Good change takes time
A better deal for Muslim women?
REUTERS
activists and a sizable section of
Hindu community keeping the
provision opting out in marriage
registration. All quarters of the
community are more or less happy
and Awami League’s traditional
Hindu vote bank remains intact.
Ideally though, a law confirming
this simple basic right shouldn’t
have taken so long.
How did the BJP become
interested in Muslim personal
laws and that too being a Hindu
nationalist political party, whereas
Congress and others maintained
a careful distance? There are two
explanations.
Pretense of progress
Firstly, the fact that the BJP aim
for Hindu vote consolidation
in its favour with anti-Muslim
rhetoric. Thus it generally has no
expectations for Muslim votes.
It can have several tones.
One, they don’t do (so-called)
Muslim appeasement, like others.
Two, they have sympathy for
the oppressed quarters of the
minority. Often the BJP talks about
Muslims being used as vote bank
by pseudo secularists, implying
that the BJP are the real seculars,
just a Hindu party. Perhaps the
truth lies somewhere between the
two explanations.
Only .03% of Indian Muslim
women were affected by triple
talaq. It’s not a major issue
concerning Indian Muslims.
The triple talaq judgment
actually won’t change the careful
approach the Indian state takes to
personal laws of the minorities.
The judges who gave their
decision in favour of banning
triple talaq delivered it from
the theological ground that
the practice isn’t mentioned in
the Qur’an, and hence is not
fundamental to the Qur’an.
They were perhaps mindful of
the sensitivity and long-settled
status of Muslim personal laws
in the Indian context and the
social dangers of rapid judicial
interventions in a politicallycharged
environment.
Good changes must come. It’s
better that they come gradually. •
Sarwar Jahan Chowdhury is a freelance
commentator on politics, society and
international relations. He currently
works at BRAC Institute of Governance
and Development (BIGD).
• Sarwar Jahan Chowdhury
The Supreme Court of India
recently suspended the
practice of Talaq-e-Biddat
(instant triple talaq) as
unconstitutional for six months,
and asked the government of India
to enact statute to this effect,
including other relevant aspects of
Muslim marriage and divorce.
The judgment came on a
narrow 3:2 split decision from
a five member bench which
included the then chief justice JS
Khehar.
Interestingly, all five judges
come from five different religions
-- Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Parsi,
and Christianity. However, regular
triple talaq with proper procedure
and time was not an issue in the
petition and hence, stands valid as
always.
The credit of moving the
petition primarily goes to few
brave Muslim women who
courageously moved to the apex
court against this highly regressive
religious practice.
It’s noteworthy here that in
Bangladesh and Pakistan, instant
triple talaq has been banned for
ages. But, like in Bangladesh,
successive government in India
were hesitant to deal with matters
of minority personal laws.
Even the British Raj was careful
about socio-religious practices of
the people of the sub-continent,
and they basically created laws
to give formal character to these
practices in their system, for
example, the Sahriayat Act 1937.
After 1947, both in India and
Pakistan, the governments did
some codification of personal laws
of their majority communities,
for example, the Hindu Code Bill
1951 and the Muslim Family Laws
Ordnance 1961.
It was relatively easy to pass
common Hindu family laws
because of the diversity within the
Hindus and absence of a Muslimlike,
well organised communal
jurisprudence.
Too much trouble
Bangladesh, after its
independence, furthered the 1961
Act with Family Act Ordnance of
1985. All these states refrained
from doing or were very slow to
do much to codify the minority
personal laws, let alone reforming
those.
For example, despite the big
number of cases of Bangladeshi
Hindu women being abused and
abandoned by their husbands,
and in spite of repeated demands
from prominent activists, the
Hindu Marriage Registration Act
has only recently been enacted
in Bangladesh, and that too
as a voluntary basis -- not as
compulsory.
There has hardly been any
formal record of marriage of Hindu
women in Bangladesh, nor were
there any provisions of alimony
from ex husbands or property
rights (from both father and
husband). Mainstream political
parties don’t want to get into
these issues considering these
troublesome. All mainstream
political parties in South Asia
maintained a traditional apathy
and careful distance from minority
personal matters due to the
communally charged history of
the sub-continent.
In fact, this sort of disinterest
closes most channels for women
within the minority communities
if they wish for any justice against
the highly regressive patriarchal
practices of their communities.
Politics behind laws
However, of late, there have been
some movements. Pakistan, like
Bangladesh, has also enacted
Hindu marriage act, and the
Indian court has banned instant
triple talaq. But there seems to be
varying degree of politics linked
to it.
In Bangladesh, the incumbent
Awami League, which is officially
a secular party, only did it after
substantial pressure from rights
How did the BJP become interested in Muslim
personal laws, and that too being a Hindu
nationalist political party, whereas others
maintained a careful distance?
and they work for their slogan
“Sab ka sath, sab ka bikas” (with
all, progress for all).
In reality, it often seems, they
have no wish to offer any social
progress package to the socially
backward Muslims. Rather, their
activities with regards to cow
protection have indeed put the
Indian Muslims, for whom beef
is a staple food and cheap source
of protein, in considerable peril
from the newly cropped up cow
vigilante goons.
That being said, with not
much progress in development
matters, the party is looking for
votes from any corner to prevent
anti-incumbency momentum
developing before 2019. Hence,
more Hindutva are targeting a
section of Muslim women votes.
The second explanation is a
more naïve one, which is the BJP
is getting interested to become an
all-inclusive party gradually, and
it wants to shed the label of being