‘Practice inhuman, violates rights and dignity of women’
LEGAL RECOURSE SC to examine if Islamic marriage law is anti-women, following Uttarakhand woman’s plea
NEW DELHI: As twilight casts soft shadows across the sparsely furnished living room of Arshiya Ismail’s tiny rented flat in New Delhi’s Dwarka area, the 46-year-old sits near the balcony looking through a sheaf of court papers that have come to define her life in the past few years.
A school teacher with a post-graduate degree in English and an MBA, Ismail was allegedly divorced in 2011 by her husband, a wing commander in the Indian Air Force, by uttering the ‘triple talaq’, an age-old custom that allows a Muslim man to leave his wife simply by saying the Urdu word thrice.
“In courts and at offices of civil rights activists, young Muslim girls in burqa ask me how an educated woman like me became a victim of this unjust practice,” says Arshiya, articulating the commonly-held belief that triple talaq is prevalent only among the less educated, orthodox and economically backward sections of the community.
The Supreme Court on June 29 decided to examine if Islamic laws governing marriage and inheritance violated the fundamental rights of women and take a call on how far it can intervene to modify the existing laws.
The debate around triple talaq had received a shot in the arm earlier this year when a victim, Shayara Bano of Uttarakhand, filed a petition in the apex court seeking a ban on the practice. She had also challenged the practices of polygamy and nikah halala, which mandates that a woman has to marry another man and consummate it if she and her divorced husband wish to get back together.
“Shayara Bano in her petition said the inhuman practice of triple talaq affected her fundamental rights, besides violating her dignity as a woman…,” says Balaji Srinivasan, advocate on record for Bano and Gulshan Parveen, another petitioner.
“Shayara Bano’s challenge of the practice is the first instance of an individual from the community seeking legal recourse against the practice,” he adds.
A former Tamil Nadu legislator, Bader Sayeed, has also asked the top court to bar clerics from validating triple talaq.
India has separate sets of personal laws for each religion governing marriage, divorce, succession, adoption and maintenance. While Hindu law overhaul began in the 1950s and continues, activists have long argued that Muslim personal law, which has remained mostly unchanged since 1937, is tilted against women.
In the famous Shah Bano case in 1986, the Supreme Court had decided in favour of granting alimony to a Muslim woman after she was divorced. However, the Centre later enacted the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, that virtually nullified the court directive.
“There is a nexus between the maledominated Muslim clergy and elected representatives which allow Muslim men to interpret the laws according to their convenience. The legal discrimination of Muslim women has to end,” says Zakia Soman, one of the co-founders of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, which has been pushing for reforms in Muslim personal laws.
She believes that the system of triple talaq, as is being practiced today, is not sanctioned by the Quran. “There is no mention of triple talaq in the Quran. The decision of talaq can be taken by both husband and wife, but there has to be an attempt at reconciliation, followed by mediation by friends and family. It is a procedure that takes place over a period of time. Talaq has to be just and fair,” she insists.
However, in recent years, talaqs are
INDIA HAS SEPARATE SETS OF PERSONAL LAWS FOR EACH RELIGION GOVERNING MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, SUCCESSION, ADOPTION AND MAINTENANCE
often instantaneous and being communicated through text messages and over WhatsApp with women often left clueless of their husbands’ intention of divorce till the last moment.
Instances of triple talaq haven’t gone up, feels Soman, “but women today are more aware of their rights and are speaking up against it,” she says.
Several women spoke of domestic violence, rape, mental torture, dowry demands or just a desire for remarriage in men culminating into talaq. In most cases, the women are left without any maintenance or means to support themselves or their children.