RSS urges Muslims to revisit triple talaq

Bahujan Samaj Party’s Mayawati criticises prime minister over his stance

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) yesterday said the Indian Muslim community should seriously ponder over the continuance of the “triple talaq” tradition, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi denounced this practice among Muslims.

As a debate over the contentious issue of triple talaq raged, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati criticised the prime minister over his stance on the subject, saying he should not “force his opinion and decision” on the believers of any particular religion by “following the RSS agenda”.

The RSS while asking the Muslim community to give a serious thought to triple talaq hoped that the Muslim women who have moved the court seeking abolition of this practice secure justice.

“The triple talaq issue is an internal problem of Muslims and in this context the Muslim community should seriously think over it. Muslim women have gone to court on this issue.

“In the present era there should not be any kind of gender-based discrimination. On talaq issue, women have gone to court and we expect that they get justice properly,” RSS all-India general secretary Bhayyaji Joshi told reporters in Hyderabad.

“The Muslim community should also think and decide on it. We feel that there is a need that the court should also give (its) views on this matter through humane perspective,” Joshi said on the concluding day of the threeday all-India executive council meetings of RSS.

Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Centre of tinkering with issues related to Sharia, Mayawati said such matters should be left to the Muslim community and not raked up with an eye on the upcoming assembly elections in some states for political gains.

“BJP and its central government led by Narendra Modi have now started a new controversy over Muslim personal law, triple talaq and common civil code before the assembly elections in some states to serve its petty politics. BSP strongly condemns it,” Mayawati said in a statement in Lucknow.

“The prime minister and central government instead of interfering in the issue of triple talaq should better leave it to the Muslim community to form a common opinion,” said the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh ahead of polls in the politically crucial state due next year.