The lamentable humiliations of Hadiya
W e should be grateful for small mercies. On Women’s Day, a day when hashtags were declaring ‘Time’s Up’, our highest court reaffirmed a more basic right: the freedom to marry.
Social media was split into two camps: Those convinced that the 24-year-old Hadiya was brainwashed and incapable of making choices, and those celebrating the granting of her freedom.
But at the heart of the Hadiya controversy lies not so much the right of a grown woman to make choices but attitudes towards women by society at large. Seventy years after Independence and despite a Constitution that guarantees us equality, we are not to be trusted when it comes to decisions about life choices, particularly if they don’t meet social approval. It is not good news and certainly not worth celebrating.
Hadiya’s marriage to Shefin Jahan fol- lowing her conversion to Islam has been problematic for not just her father, a selfdeclared atheist, but also the state and several Right-wing organisations that see a larger conspiracy of love jihad that falls flat in this case: If Hadiya married after conversion, where is the conspiracy?
In response to a petition filed by her father, the Kerala High Court ordered Jahan not to have contact with his wife, gave the parents ‘custody’, and even annulled the marriage on grounds that a “girl [sic] aged 24 is weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways”. This was done despite numerous affidavits filed by Hadiya asserting that she had not been coerced.
The March 8 Supreme Court verdict does overturn that pernicious judgment and a court-ordered NIA probe into a larger conspiracy continues. One must wait to find out what evidence our anti-terror organisation eventually unearths.
Yet, uncomfortable questions persist, starting with a scrutiny of why the marriage needed to be restored in the first place.
Why didn’t the apex court reunite Hadiya and grant her freedom in November itself when it ruled that she could continue her studies under the ‘guardianship’ of her college principal?
In which democracy must an adult woman beg for her freedom before three judges? The very fact that we should talk of ‘custody’ of a 24-year-old woman is obnoxious.
The treatment meted out to Hadiya has been humiliating and cruel. One wonders how many Hadiyas are out there, battling social pressure so that they can steer their own destinies? How many have the stamina to withstand such a fight?
It should not have taken a court battle right up to the Supreme Court, media attention and a dogged pursuit of justice by Hadiya to win her freedom. That it came on a day when women were asserting their right to equality and freedom only reinforced the irony. For a longer version, visit: http://read.ht/BiYz Namita Bhandare writes on social issues and gender The views expressed are personal