Slow but welcome change

For decades, the injustices meted out to the estimated 60 million Muslim women in the country were either overlooked or justified in terms of community rights. Practices that had no spiritual sanction, like the pronouncement of unilateral talaq, have wrought havoc on the lives of innumerable women. The cynically-termed Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act enacted by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986, far from protecting women only left them even more vulnerable by depriving them of their right to maintenance, once their marriages broke down. It is against such a backdrop that the exercise to make laws governing Muslim marriage more gender-sensitive, recently undertaken by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), must be perceived. And it must be unequivocally welcomed. True, change has been extremely slow in coming, but it points to a substantial transformation of attitudes within the community. Of course, reforms suggested by the AIMPLB now require clearance by the clerics, and thisprocess may face its own hurdles.

In a series of 13 public hearings conducted by the National Commission for Women over the last two years, in which Muslim women in cities all over the country articulated their problems, abandonment by the husband through ingenious devices like the “postal talaq” among others, was the one issue that came through most of all. This is why the AIMPLB’s suggestion that husbands should not be allowed to give more than one talaq at a time, thus imposing a restriction on the unilateral and instant pronouncement of talaq, is singularly important. The other important principle upheld by the AIMPLB is the woman’s power to divorce under situations like desertion, or failure to provide maintenance for a year, or insanity. This recalls the progressive legislation that the ulema led by Maula Ashraf Thanvi had drafted as far back as 1939. That Act, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, had granted much relief to women whose husbands were missing. AIMPLB also recognised problems like inadequate meher and thecontinued incidence of polygamy, and came up with a model nikahnamah or marriage certificate.

Of course, even if these reforms become part of Muslim Personal Law, that is only half the battle won. One of the biggest handicaps that women in the community have had to reckon with is their own disempowerment. Not only are their literacy levels abysmal, their participation in the workforce is much lower than that of their counterparts in other communities. This being the case, it is not surprising that many have been cheated even of their traditional rights. Therefore, legal reform should rightly be only one part of a reform project that seeks to ensure a better existence for the Muslim women of this country. The world has changed. There is no reason that when Muslim nations like Pakistan and Bangladesh have introduced laws that have controlled polygamy and made relations within marriage more equitable, women here have to inhabit a medieval world dominated by the three `C’s — the choolah, the chaddar and the chardewaari.