by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Salman Khurshid
By Prashant Sood,
New Delhi : The triple talaq bill is a step towards imposing a Uniform Civil Code and the judicial verdict on the practice is a lesson for the Muslim community that matters such as polygamy and nikah halala might similarly end up in court if reformative steps are not taken, Congress leader Salman Khurshid has said.
Khurshid, who has written a book “Triple Talaq: Examining Faith” (OUP/pp 260/Rs 316), said a bill on the subject that is pending in parliament “does not make sense” as the practice has been outlawed by the Supreme Court.
Khurshid, a former External Affairs Minister, accused the BJP-led government of pursuing a “divisive agenda.”
“What is the effect of taking away triple talaq? This is what I have tried to say in my book — that triple talaq is bad. We are not for it. It’s a silly way of giving talaq.
“But there is no difference between talaq and triple talaq, except that talaq is reversible and triple talaq is irreversible,” Khurshid told IANS in an interview.
Asked if the reform on triple talaq should have come from within the Muslim community, Khurshid said: “I agree that this is something that the Muslim community, through its chosen leaders, should have addressed before the court took hold of it. And, therefore, this is a lesson about other matters that might similarly end up in court if the community does not take steps to reform.”
Asked to elaborate, he said: “Polygamy is one such thing and the nikah halala is another one. I think there are good ways of showing and explaining that both of them do not pose as great a threat to equality as is made out to be, but certainly popular perception about them is very bad. Therefore they should be addressed from within the community.”
As per “nikah halala”, a woman divorcee has to marry someone else and consummate this marriage before getting a divorce to remarry her earlier husband.
Khurshid noted that only a microscopic percentage of the Muslim community resorts to instant triple talaq and reforms normally happen if something becomes overwhelming and people think it is becoming a burden. “If it is microscopic, it often gets overlooked, neglected. And then there were larger issues that people amongst Muslims were preoccupied with,” he said.
Asked if the triple talaq bill was a step towards imposing Uniform Civil Code (UCC), he said: “Yes, it certainly is.”
“There is a hidden agenda, or not-so-well hidden agenda, there of trying to impose (the UCC). But even (for) trying to impose it, this is a very shabby way of doing it. You can’t impose the code on the peril of criminal culpability. If it it’s to be introduced, it has to be introduced as a code and that code is not criminal. The code has to be a civilian code.”
Khurshid said talaq is part of personal law and nobody has challenged it.
“It is only triple talaq that has been challenged, and the world over the understanding is that triple talaq or a talaq said three times, six times, 100 times, is only to be considered as talaq said once and talaq said once is perfectly valid and, therefore, triple talaq’s first talaq is also perfectly valid,” Khurshid said.
He said the Congress is very clearly against the criminalising element in the triple talaq bill.
“To impose criminal liability in essentially a civil matter, which is the matter of a family affair, I think, is wrong. Also on fundamental jurisprudential principles, to punish somebody for something that does not exist is against the principles of criminology,” he said.
The Congress and several other opposition parties have said that the bill, which is pending in the Rajya Sabha after the Lok Sabha passed it, should be examined by a select committee.
Khurshid said even women who are against triple talaq have not come out in favour of criminalisation.
Khurshid, who assisted the court during the triple talaq hearing, said if the government is genuinely concerned about divorced women, it should provide for them irrespective of the community they belong to.
Accusing the BJP of pursuing a “silly divisive agenda” to portray Muslims as “regressive”, “counter-productive for modern society” and Muslim society being divided among men and women, Khurshid said: “That is a completely wrong understanding of Muslim society.”
He said the BJP was “grievously mistaken” if it thinks it will get votes of Muslim women due to the triple talaq bill. “You think Muslim women don’t watch television and see what happened to Pehlu Khan and Mohammad Akhlaq who were killed by cow vigilantes? I think it is a very myopic understanding of Muslim women.”
Asked about the perception that the BJP got votes from the Muslim community in (last year’s) Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, Khurshid said: “That’s an impression they give. I have very serious doubts.”
He said the government will not find the going easy on the bill as it lacks a majority in the upper house.
“They still do not have strength to pass it in the house. They may get the strength after a year or whatever, and they just have to wait till then. And then there will be matter of testing it in the courts. It is not smooth sailing as they might imagine,” Khurshod conteded.
(Prashant Sood can be reached at prashant.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mohd Asim Khan,
New Delhi : The triple talaq bill, unilaterally drafted and brought by the Narendra Modi government, is politically motivated, feels the Muslim intelligentsia cutting across sectarian lines and schools of thought — but they are happy that the controversy has created awareness in the public mind about the evils of the practice.
Is the saffron party indeed serious about addressing the root issue of the social evil called instant divorce, and wants it stopped, or is it indulging in political posturing? The latter, say an overwhelming majority of stakeholders — from “fundamentalists” to liberals, Islamic clerics and women rights activists.
They think that the bill in its present form cannot stand judicial scrutiny.
“It’s an atrocious piece of legislation which is against the constitution because it discriminates on the basis of religion,” Irfan Ali Engineer, Director, Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, told IANS.
Irfan, son of acclaimed reformist-writer and social activist Asghar Ali Engineer, and a petitioner in the Shayara Bano case, explained: “It is discriminatory on the ground that if a Muslim man divorces his wife in a particular way, he would be jailed. But if a man of other religion abandons his wife, there is no legal action against him.”
He said there is “no doubt” the legislation is “politically motivated”.
Jamat-e-Islami Hind General Secretary Mohammed Salim Engineer said he could not understand the objective of this legislation.
“If the said bill had held three talaqs (divorces) as one, it would have made some sense. Which would mean that a divorce will not take place no matter how many times a man utters the word ‘talaq’ in one sitting, and which is in consonance with several schools of Islamic jurisprudence,” he said.
All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat Chairman Navaid Hamid had a similar view: “This bill is clearly faulty. In many Muslim sects, talaq pronounced thrice is treated as only one talaq. But this bill would hold a person of any sect guilty no matter if as per his belief irrevocable talaq has not happened.”
The government moved the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill — which proposes a three-year jail term for a man pronouncing irrevocable triple talaq — in the Lok Sabha on December 28 last year and got it passed the same day despite opposition’s pleas to send it to a parliamentary committee. However, the Bill was stalled in the Rajya Sabha where the BJP and allies are in a minority. The government has said it is open to “suggestions” if these are “reasonable”.
Yasmin of Awaz-e-Niswaan, a women rights collective and an intervener in the triple talaq case, said that she and other activists had welcomed the Supreme Court’s August 22, 2017, decision to ban the triple talaq but the legislation brought by the government serves no purpose other than “furthering the BJP’s agenda”.
“We are against criminalistion of talaq. The Domestic Violence Act and the Section 498A of IPC are already in place to deal with any atrocities or violence against women, and which equally apply to Muslim women. So there is no need for a separate law… It looks like a conspiracy,” Yasmin told IANS.
Other women’s bodies such as Bebaak Collective and the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) have publicly slammed the triple talaq legislation for its flaws and inherent contradictions.
Interestingly, the Muslim organisations that are against banning the triple talaq, activists and women bodies which wanted it banned and the opposition parties in Parliament have expressed concerns over the consequences of sending a man to jail for as long as three years.
Who will provide for the woman in her husband’s absence? Shouldn’t the government form a corpus for such women’s financial assistance/pension? Will the marriage remain intact even after the husband is jailed purportedly on the complaint of the wife? Are women’s rights safeguarded through this law in cases of other forms of divorce?
These are some of the questions raised by the critics of the bill and the political opposition inside Parliament. The government hardly attempted to assuage such tangible apprehensions and mostly resorted to an abstract emotional appeal that “the bill gives Muslim women their rights and dignity”.
Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, who is opposed to instant divorce and wants it abolished, could not find a reason to justify the penal provision in the bill.
“In Shias, there no such thing as talaq-e-biddat. The penal provision is not right, but so is not talaq-e-biddat. Even our Sunni brothers say that this is sinful,” he said.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), the most vocal body in matters pertaining to Muslim Personal Laws, has already denounced the Modi government’s attempt to “encroach through this bill upon the Muslims’ fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution” and has termed the bill as uncalled for and unnecessary after the Supreme Court ruling has rendered triple talaq as null and void.
“In case your government considers it necessary to enact a law in this respect, consultations must be held with AIMPLB and such Muslim women organisations which are true representatives of Muslim women,” the AIMPLB has said in a letter to Prime Minister Modi.
The plea highlights the general grouse — that nobody was consulted while drafting the bill. Let alone the hardline Muslim clerics, even the liberal opinions including those of various women bodies, were not sought by the government.
People like Irfan Engineer feel that a law is required to address the issue, but it should be “comprehensive”.
“We need a comprehensive legislation, one that safeguards the rights of women in case of divorce, but at the same time it should not make the divorce process cumbersome and unendingly long,” he opined.
However, amid the heat of discussion on tripel talaq, Zafarul Islam Khan, Editor of fortnightly Milli Gazette, sees something positive in the whole discourse.
“One benefit of this entire brouhaha has been that common people have got some awareness about the evil of triple talaq. Also, clerics have started accepting that triple talaq is wrong and it should be weeded out. In fact, all of us want this practice banished,” Khan said.
He also advised the Muslims to “not react” to and “ignore” the bill. “Because provoking Muslims to polarise the society precisely seems to be BJP’s objective,” he added.
(Asim Khan can be contacted on mohd.a@ians.in )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Parmod Kumar,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court stood out in 2017 for protecting and advancing the rights of citizens in more ways than one, but primarily by empowering them against any intrusion of their privacy by the State or the private sector as it elevated the right to privacy as a fundamental right.
The Supreme Court will be quoted not just for its verdict expanding the scope of the Right to Life by including within its ambit the sacrosanct Right to Privacy, but it will also be counted for its pronouncements that instant triple talaq was unconstitutional and sex with a minor wife in a child marriage amounted to rape.
The Year 2017 also saw the top court’s collegium finally putting in the public domain its deliberations on the appointment, transfer and elevation of High Court and Supreme Court judges with an explanation as to why a particular name was recommended or not.
This was viewed by some as the collegium throwing down the gauntlet for the executive, which is insisting on a provision in the Memorandum of Procedure (on appointments) that it can block a recommendation on the ground of national security but without elaborating on this.
The apex court did make serious efforts in making the government act on curbing advertisements and information on sex determination techniques available on the Internet but did not succeed to the extent that was expected.
In the end, virtually nothing was achieved in the matter as, even after a decade, says senior counsel Sanjay Parikh, and despite several court directions, the offending advertisements continue to appear on the Internet in violation of PNDT Act, resulting in a skewed girlchild ratio in some northern states.
All this apart, there is hardly an area impacting the life of the common people that escaped the top court’s scanner, be it clean air to breathe, making politics free of tainted politicians, baring the chilling insensitivity of the powers that be denying relief to the farmers faced with drought or not getting a just and reasonable minimum support price for their agriculture produce — leading to suicides.
Describing the 2017 as an “eventful year” with top court “standing up to the challenge” in addressing the issues of “great promise”, senior counsel C.A. Sundram said that Supreme Court has reaffirmed itself as the “final guardian” on any matter that affects the public at large.
“The court has also clearly established that with regards to any matter that affects the public at large they are the final guardians and have acted as a sentinel to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens,” Sundram told IANS.
“The decision in right to privacy is a sterling example,” said Sundram, a view also shared by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan and senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, well-known for espousing social causes.
“I think the Supreme Court has done extraordinarily well on social issues — but only up to a point,” said Gonsalves.
The top court’s pronouncements to cleanse the legislatures of tainted law makers that started nearly a decade-and-a-half ago and mandating the disclosure of the assets and criminal antecedents continued in 2017 when it proposed setting up of courts to exclusively try criminal cases against the law makers and politicians.
It approved the setting of 12 exclusive courts to fast-track the trial of 1,571 pending cases against lawmakers. “Let us not get bogged down… let them set up 12 courts… It is not an end of it. Starting something is difficult.”
Recognised the world over for its role in protecting the environment, the Supreme Court acted decisively as it prohibited the registration of vehicles that do not meet BS-IV emission standards from April 1, 2017, banned the use of pet-coke and furnace oil in the National Capital Region and, above all, stopped the sale of fire crackers during Diwali celebrations — a step which earned it both laurels — for relatively less polluted post Diwali morning — and brickbats, with some equating the ban on the sale of fire crackers as an assault on the Hindu religion.
The top court also came to the rescue of home buyers who have been deprived of their rightful dwellings years beyond the due date by the big real estate companies.
Besides achievements, the top court had its troubled spots too — its tussle with the executive on one hand and with a section of bar on the other.
However, when the government sought to criticise the top court for its pro-active approach and stepping into its policy-making domain, Chief Justice Dipak Misra was more than candid saying that the “protections of the fundamental rights of every citizen was a sacrosanct duty of the judiciary conferred by the Constitution”.
The apex court seemingly succeeded in taming a section of the the bar seeking an SIT probe into the allegations of graft vis-a-vis a medical college involving a retired judge of the Orissa High Court, but not without its image taking a blow as it observed that its image has been damaged as “unnecessary doubts about the integrity of the institution have been created”.
(Parmod Kumar can be contacted at saneel2010@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Only the naive will believe that deep concern for the welfare of Muslim “sisters” and for the maintenance of the “dignity of women” and “gender equality” persuaded the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to introduce the bill in parliament to ban the practice of triple talaq.
For a party whose founder in its previous incarnation, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, thought that only a civil war can solve the Hindu-Muslim problem, as Tripura’s Governor, Tathagata Roy of the BJP, reminded us recently, and a BJP candidate in the Gujarat elections sought a reduction in the numbers of “topi and dadhiwalas” (sartorial allusion to Muslims), it strains credulity to believe that it has been guided solely by laudable motives to put an end to an admittedly reprehensible custom.
The belief will persist, therefore, that it is a desire to “garner votes” which is behind the decision, notwithstanding Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s disavowal of such an intention.
Few will deny, of course, that the practice itself is highly condemnable, not least because it is illegal even in Islamic countries. For a secular country, therefore, to allow it to prevail points to a flawed outlook whose roots lie in political calculations.
It cannot be gainsaid that the BJP is outlawing triple talaq for gaining political mileage both from sections of Muslim women and from those Hindus who will see the proposed law, first, as an example of “brother” Modi’s distress over the sufferings of Muslim women and, secondly, as a message to Muslims in general that the days are gone when they were given excessive leeway by less assertive governments.
The “secular” rulers of the past, on the other hand, also thought that they will gain votes by pandering to the predilections of the obscurantists among the minorities.
The worst example of this regressive attitude was the Shah Bano episode when the Rajiv Gandhi government negated a Supreme Court verdict in favour alimony for a divorced Muslim woman on the advice of Muslim fundamentalists.
Since the BJP’s rise from the sidelines of politics to the mainstream can be traced to that event in the mid-1980s, the Congress will have to tread carefully in deciding on its stance on the bill which has followed the Supreme Court’s recent declaration of triple talaq as unconstitutional in a case involving the litigant, Shayara Bano.
The difficulty for the Congress is that it has given secularism a bad name by making the concept virtually synonymous with minority appeasement. While the BJP will not mind being closely associated with Hinduism, the Congress has been trying to shed the impression that it has become “mussalmanon ki party” or a party of Muslims, as the Congress leader, Ashok Gehlot, has said, ever since the 2014 defeat made it aware of this unwelcome image, as the A.K. Antony report pointed out.
The triple talaq bill gives it an opportunity to refurbish its reputation by articulating a rational position on drafting the law, aiming at protecting Muslim women from cruel and whimsical divorces and at the same time ensuring that the legislation does not lead to a police witch-hunt targeting men. Since the bill has still to pass through the Rajya Sabha, Parliament’s upper house, there is ample scope for fine-tuning it for smoothing out the rough edges, the most egregious of which is to introduce an element of criminality in a civil legal procedure.
If the Congress and other “secular” parties play a leading role in ensuring that the new law will unequivocally serve the ends of justice where no one — neither the women, nor the men, nor the children of divorced parents — will suffer, then these parties will be able to retrieve much of their lost reputation about cynical kowtowing to bigots in the Muslim community and reassure the country in general that politics can rise above partisan and opportunistic considerations.
From this standpoint, the bill provides a golden opportunity to the secular outfits even if the BJP runs away with much of the credit for introducing it.
Outside of politics, what is noteworthy is the failure of the Muslims to deal with the problem on their own. But ever since partition robbed the community of bold, educated leaders and self-confidence by inducing the minority complex of being forever under siege under the numerically superior Hindus — unlike other minorities like Sikhs and Parsis who have retained their poise and self-belief — the Muslims have come under the retrogressive influence of the mullahs with the result that they have remained stuck in the past.
Triple talaq is one manifestation of such backwardness along with polygamy and the veiling of women as they reinforce the age-old patriarchal norms. Only a small section of upper middle class women — film stars and sports personnel being prominent among them — has been able to extricate themselves from the grasp of medievalism and enter the modern world. But the majority of the poor and lower middle class women have been denied the opportunity of advancement by orthodox Muslim society.
The new law offers them a ray of hope.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Ravi Shankar Prasad
New Delhi : The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed a Bill that criminalises instant divorce with three years of imprisonment for Muslim husbands after the government rejected an overwhelming demand from the Opposition to refer the legislation to a Parliamentary standing committee for detailed consideration.
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017 was passed by a voice vote after rejecting a resolution moved by Revolutionary Socialist Party member N.K. Premachandran that the legislation be circulated for public opinion.
Various amendments moved by opposition members, including Asaduddin Owaisi (AIMIM) and Premachandran, were negatived in divisions. The BJD and AIMIM later staged a walk out.
The government’s determination to get the Bill passed could be gauged from the fact that it was introduced in the morning and taken up for consideration in the afternoon by suspending relevant rules, and then passed in the evening by sitting late beyond the scheduled close of the House.
Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who introduced the bill and later piloted it in the Lok Sabha, said history was being created today.
He said the issue was not of religion or faith but of “gender justice and gender equality” and appealed to all the parties to rise above political considerations and politics of votebank. “Women are seeing that justice will be done to them. Let us speak in one voice that we are for gender justice and gender equity and pass the Bill unanimously,” Prasad said, winding up the discussion.
Opposition parties accused the government of bringing the bill with “ulterior political motives”.
Prasad said instances of instant triple talaq continue despite the Supreme Court ruling it as unconstitutional in August this year.
He said the government had hoped the situation will improve after the Supreme Court verdict. “We had hope. The judgment came on August 22. There were 300 triple talaq cases in 2017 of which 100 had taken place after the Supreme Court verdict. This raises a big question,” Prasad said.
He also referred to media reports on Thursday about an incident at Rampur in Uttar Pradesh in which a woman had been given talaq-e-biddat for waking up late.
The bill seeks to declare pronouncement of talaq-e-biddat (three pronouncements of talaq at one go) by Muslim husbands void and illegal in view of the Supreme Court verdict.
Prasad said while Justice Rohington Nariman and U.U. Lalit held in their judgment in August that instant divorce was unconstitutional and the government should look at bringing a law, Justice Kurian Joseph had observed that what is a sin in Islamic laws cannot be legal.
The Minister saw no justification in the demand for referring the Bill to a standing committee saying the affected Muslim women were crying for justice and were fully backing it. He said there was contradiction in members wanting it to be referred to a standing committee and some arguing why it was not brought earlier.
The Bill makes the act of pronouncing talaq-e-biddat punishable offence. There is provision for subsistence allowance from the husband for the livelihood and daily supporting needs of the wife as also of the dependent children. The wife would also be entitled to the custody of minor children.
Intervening in the debate, Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar said time was now ripe for the passage of the legislation in the interest of Muslim women. He recalled an instance of a British journalist interviewing the late Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru after the passage of the Hindu Code Bill when she asked when would the government introduce reforms in Muslim laws.
Nehru was not opposed to reforms of Muslim personal laws but merely said the time was not opportune then, Akbar said. “That time has come now.”
Though Opposition members, including from the Congress, supported the legislation, they wanted it to be referred to a parliamentary committee so that several lacunae can be removed and the provisions strengthened in favour of Muslim women. The law must ensure that subsistence allowance and maintenance to the women and the children was not stopped, they felt.
Some felt that the BJP government was in a haste to pass the Bill not because of its concern for Muslim women but because it sees this as a first step towards bringing in a Uniform Civil Code. They wanted the measure to be given up immediately.
During the debate, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi accused the Congress of appeasing Muslims and said there is a need for codification of Muslim personal laws in the country.
“They (Congress) always did appeasement politics for which the country has paid for 30 years and today we have this chance. If we lose this chance today we will not have another chance.,” she said.
“Codification of Islamic law is needed in this country. No one knows what is Sharia, Talaq-e-Biddat… No one knows the difference,” she added.
She also said that Muslim women need not be in any fear as they had a “brother” in Narendra Modi
Owaisi took several digs at the Modi government and also said those who “marry and abandon” their wives should be punished and the government should bring a law to this effect.
He termed the bill as “bad law”.
Prasad, who responded to the concern of opposition members about making triple talaq punishable, said such concerns were not raised when punishment was provided under Dowry Prohibition Act. He said the amount of subsistence will be decided by courts.
He said the bill was against those who seek to keep women in fear.
Sushmita Dev of Congress said the government was not legislating on the issue of marital rape citing that the law might be misused, and asked if the law on Talaq-e-Biddat may not be misused.
—IANS
