by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : A day after Congress President Rahul Gandhi sought the Prime Minister’s support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday asked him to support the proposed law to prohibit triple talaq and nikah halala.
He said that as national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress cannot have two sets of standards in dealing with women and their rights.
In a letter to Gandhi, which was released to the media, Prasad said: “As part of the new deal, we should approve, in both houses of Parliament, the Women’s Reservation Bill, the law prohibiting triple talaq and imposing penal consequence on those who violate the law, and prohibiting nikah halala.”
Under the triple talaq practice, a Muslim man can instantly divorce his wife by orally repeating the ‘talaq’ word thrice. As per ‘nikah halala’, a woman divorcee has to marry someone else, consummate this marriage to get a divorce and remarry her earlier husband.
Prasad’s letter came a day after Gandhi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek his support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament’s monsoon session starting on July 18, claiming that the BJP appears to have had second thoughts on the proposed law even though it was a key promise in its 2014 manifesto.
“As national parties, we cannot have two sets of standards in dealing with women and their rights. We are already too late in conferring the right of adequate representation, equality in personal laws and doing away with such provisions which compromise women’s dignity,” Prasad said.
The BJP leader also targeted the Congress chief over the lapsing of the Women’s Reservation Bill with the dissolution of the last Lok Sabha.
“The bill was originally proposed by the National Democratic Alliance government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee but could not be passed for want of a consensus in Parliament.
“It was reintroduced during the UPA-II government in the Rajya Sabha. Despite disturbances, the BJP and NDA stood in firm support of the bill and got it passed in the Rajya Sabha. For reasons best known to the government of that day, no effort was made to get the bill passed in the Lok Sabha,” Prasad said.
The Minister said that the Modi government welcomes Gandhi’s initiative to support the bill. “However, the government will like to understand fully the reasons why the bill was not taken up for three years by the UPA government in the Lok Sabha and allowed to lapse?”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh) : Raking up the controversy over the reported remarks of Rahul Gandhi that the Congress is a party for Muslims, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday accused the Congress and other parties of wanting continuance of practices like triple talaq.
He also wondered whether the Congress was interested only in the welfare of Muslim men and not women.
“For the last two days I am hearing that a naamdar leader (a sarcastic reference to Rahul Gandhi) recently said that the Congress is a party of Muslims. I’m not surprised. Even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once said that Muslims have the first right over nation’s natural resources.
“But I want to ask the naamdar of Congress, congratulations to them. But please tell us whether the Congress is only for Muslim men? Or does it have space for Muslim women too because they don’t stand with Muslim women on issues of triple talaq and nikah halala,” he said addressing a public meeting after inaugurating the Purvanchal Expressway in a speech aimed at the next Lok Sabha polls in the battle ground state.
Modi said all the parties have been exposed on the issue of triple talaq. It concerns the lives of lakhs and crores of Muslim women. Even in Islamic countries, there is a ban on triple talaq, he said.
The Prime Minister’s attack on Gandhi and the Congress on the issue of Muslims came a day after Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman accused the Congress of dividing the country on communal lines and playing a dangerous game before 2019 general elections.
Citing a report in an Urdu daily which claimed that Gandhi told a meeting of Muslim intellectuals earlier this week that the Congress is a party for Muslims, she had demanded an apology from the Congress President.
The Prime Minister also accused the opposition parties of not allowing Parliament to function. “They don’t allow the Parliament to function. They stall the proceedings. I would like all anti-Modi leaders to go and meet these women who have been affected by triple talaq and nikah halala and then come to Parliament. People have to be alert about such parties.
“These parties want triple talaq to continue. I will try to make them understand and bring them together for the sake of Muslim women so that they get freedom,” he alleged.
He said these are 18th century parties in the 21st century and cannot do any good for the country.
Modi said that Purvanchal Expressway will take Uttar Pradesh to greater heights. “More than Rs 23,000 crore will be spent on the project. All cities, towns between Lucknow and Ghazipur, that fall on this route will witness a change.”
The Prime Minister also said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had changed perception about Uttar Pradesh.
“The Yogi Adityanath government has been able to control crime rate, corruption in Uttar Pradesh. He has contributed immensely in the state’s development,” Modi said.
He also said besides highways, work was also on relating to waterways and airways.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Books, News, Politics
New Delhi : Poorly informed Muslim clerics are often to blame for the plight of women in the community, particularly when it comes to triple talaq, the Muslim practice of instant divorce that has been declared illegal, says a new book.
The state of affairs is more pronounced in small towns, particularly in northern India, says Ziya us Salam in “Till Talaq Do Us Part” (Penguin).
In just a month after the Supreme Court set aside instant triple talaq, three Muslim women — one each in Hazaribagh (Jharkhand), Jodhpur (Rajasthan) and Rajkot (Gujarat) — were thrown out by their husbands by uttering “talaq” thrice, the book says.
“The three incidents do not merely prove the limitations of the judicial order in a society where ignorance renders the best of laws ineffective,” the book says, adding, “They relate a story of local maulanas unable to give the right advice at the right time, and men and women, even educated ones, not sure of their rights and duties in Islam.
“It is drilled into almost every other man that instant triple talaq is the best, or maybe the only, way to end a marriage. And the maulanas seldom rise to the occasion to save a marriage.
“The (three) incidents also speak eloquently of the failure of Muslim society to instil in its men the teachings of the Quran; instead, they end up relying on the Quran’s interpretation by the local maulanas.”
The book says that the most common Muslim families in small town India depend on the local imam to interpret the Quran for them, or even advise them on any issue pertaining to religion.
The book adds: “Unfortunately, the local imams are often not well versed with the Quran. Probably all of them are hafiz, that is, they have memorised the Quran from the surah, Fateha, to the last sura, Naas.
“But they know not what they read or recite. They have no knowledge of Arabic or of Arab society at the time of the revelation of the Quran. Hence, they read the Quran, even commit it to memory, without understanding it…
“Worse, most of these imams are not reliably conversant with the Hadith either. They usually come from poor families and join a madrasa at least partly because it offers affordable-to-free food and accommodation.”
According to Salam, the ignorance of boys who become imams in smaller towns and villages across India, particularly in the Hindi-speaking belt, often impedes the community’s development.
“The ignorance of the local imam or maulana often has disastrous consequences for many marriages…”
“They never, ever, pull up an errant husband or even suggest that the woman can leave such a man through khula, a women’s inalienable right to divorce, where she is not even expected to disclose the reasons for her decision.”
According to the book, there is zero tolerance towards dowry in Islam. In fact, it is considered a sin to ask the bride’s father to host the wedding feast. A Muslim man is not supposed to receive any dowry and is not allowed to bring another woman home, even as a legally married wife, without the permission of his first wife.
“The way forward lies in a better understanding of the Quran,” says the book. “No judgement of the Supreme Court has gone against the Quran… It is time somebody started a crash course in understanding the Quran for many maulanas.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : NGOs working among the Muslims in India are filling the space left vacant by the state but they remain isolated despite the dream of a new India by 2022 held out by the Narendra Modi government, former Vice President Hamid Ansari said on Tuesday.
“Many NGOs mentioned in the book operate in spaces left vacant by the state and remain isolated despite the dream of a new India by 2022 being promised,” Ansari said in his keynote address as he released the book “Working with Muslims: Beyond Burqa and triple talaq” authored by Farah Naqvi in collaboration with NGO Sadbhavna Trust.
“They often working on small budgets and are playing the role of a functioning state by providing development opportunities focused on health, education and employment,” he said.
Ansari observed that Muslims in India, apart from poverty and deprivation, specifically suffer from identity-based discrimination and sporadic violence.
“India’s Muslim citizens constitute 14.2 per cent of the population, number around 189 million, are geographically dispersed, are not homogeneous, do have castes or caste-like structure among them, and are afflicted like many others in the rest of the citizen body by deprivation and under-development. In addition, they specifically suffer from identity-based discrimination and sporadic violence,” he said.
He pointed out that until the Sachar Committee Report came out in 2006, it was “insufficiently recognised” that many amongst Muslims also suffer from “multiple development deficits” and therefore required empowerment through “focused affirmative action to enable them to join others and take their place at the commencement-point from which aSabka sath, sabka vikas’ becomes meaningful”.
Quoting from the book, he said that there was an urgent need to provide Muslims with developmental opportunities by “embracing the problem, politically, socially and economically”.
“Big segments of the Muslim community are basically poor and powerless, and do not have access to amenities and opportunities. The state and its citizens therefore need to see this development gap and not build sectarian walls around progress,” he said citing the book.
The release was followed by a conversation between noted journalist Siddharth Varadrajan, activist and columnist Harsh Mander, activist Madhavi Kuckreja and researcher Hilal Ahmed.
Giving an introduction of the book, Naqvi said that the book is about the issues which the mainstream politics should be about – but unfortunately is not – that is, health, education, livelihood etc.
She said that the “voluntary sector”, or NGOs could not be a substitute for the state, but still it is crucial.
Noting the activists need to challenge both the politics of communalisation and the Muslim community’s conservatism, she added that the NGOs could not work with just 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the focus but with a broader horizon and long-term goals.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
By Mohd Asim Khan,
New Delhi : The government is ready to discuss the triple talaq bill in the Rajya Sabha and was open to suggestions from the opposition — but referring it to a Select Committee made no sense, Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said.
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill — commonly called the triple talaq bill as it criminalises “instant” divorce among Muslims — is scheduled to be taken up in the Rajya Sabha in the coming week as part of the government’s business.
“Let’s discuss the bill in the House and the members can move amendments. Nobody can stop a member from moving any amendment,” Naqvi told IANS in an interview.
“But where is the sense in insisting on refering the bill to a select committee of the House? What will the Select Committee do? Even the House can scrutinise legislation,” he added.
The Select Committee may also invite suggestions from stakeholders such as various Muslim organisations and women’s bodies, which the government has apparently not done.
The opposition, Muslim bodies and women’s rights groups have accused the government of “unilaterally” drafting the legislation without seeking any opinion from the stakeholders or those who would be directly affected by the proposed law.
However, Naqvi said: “We have said it earlier too and reiterate that the government is open to suggestions on the bill from the opposition and others.”
But on the question of negotiating the penal provision — which is the main bone of contention — the minister said the bill would make no sense without this as the practice of triple talaq continues even after the Supreme Court banned it.
Under Section 4 of the bill, “Whoever pronounces talaq upon his wife by words, either spoken or written or in electronic form or in any other manner whatsoever, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and fine.”
It also provides for a subsistence allowance for a divorced woman and her children as determined by a magistrate and provides custody of the minor children to the woman in case of divorce.
The government had introduced the triple talaq bill in the Rajya Sabha on January 3 this year during the winter session of Parliament. The Lok Sabha had earlier passed the bill.
Almost all the opposition parties have objected to the penal provision in the bill and had insisted it be sent to a Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha for closer scrutiny. Congress leader Anand Sharma and Trinamool Congress member Sukhendu Shekhar Roy had moved amendments to this effect.
Sharma even suggested the names of the 17 members of the select panel from the opposition’s side, leaving it to the government to give its names.
The government, however, vociferously objected to the proposal, citing various technical reasons. The opposition even demanded voting on the issue on the day the bill was introduced as well as the next day, January 4.
However, on the first day, the treasury benches members created a ruckus, forcing the chair to adjourn the House for the day, saying voting could not be done unless the House was in order.
The next day, the government listed the bill at the bottom of the day’s business, prompting loud protests from the opposition, which wanted it to be taken up early and a vote taken. The chair said he could not help as it was the government’s prerogative at which position to list a bill. Amid pandemonium, the House was adjourned for the day.
The winter session concluded the next day on January 5, and the triple talaq bill is still pending in the upper House.
On March 16, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel, while announcing the coming week’s business, also listed the triple talaq bill for considering and passing.
(Asim Khan can be contacted on mohd.a@ians.in )
—IANS
