The Modi Government’s resolve to support a petition before the Supreme Court for a ban on polygamy and NIkah Halala, is in keeping with its desire to enhance gender equality among Muslims in the country. Earlier it had not only backed the Supreme Court’s order that declared instant triple divorce of Muslim women as unconstitutional but also brought in a law which criminalised the practice and imposed a prison term for the offender. Then, a section of the Muslims, especially the clerics, had slammed the Government for allegedly interfering into personal matters of the religious minority which they claimed were covered under the Muslim personal law.
But the Government drew support from progressive sections of the community and society in general — though its opponents continued to raise questions over the Centre’s motives. Perhaps emboldened by the support and having realised that the environment was right to take the other steps that were needed to secure legal protection to Muslim women that are available to those from the Hindu and the Christian communities, the Union Government will unambiguously back the petitioners whose plea for scrapping the two practices will be heard by the apex court once the vacation ends.
The court has said that it would hear matters of Nikah Halala and polygamy separately. As per the first, a divorced Muslim woman can remarry the husband she divorced only after she gets married to another person and consummates her marriage. In the second case, a Muslim man has the right to have four wives. It’s amazing that when all over the civilised world and in democracies where equal rights for all citizens, whether men or women, have been enshrined in the Constitution, practices such as NIkah Halala and polygamy should have flourished among Muslims in India for decades since independence. Policymakers shied away from taking the bull by the horns because they feared a backlash from the traditional clerics who saw any design for gender equality, a threat to their status.
Electoral considerations kept the politicians away from revamping the law or challenging the premise that these practices were an intrinsic part of Islam. But over the years and especially since the Modi regime came to power four years ago, the campaign for the abolishment of these unfair practices gained momentum. Organisations such as the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan have been in the forefront, demanding these changes, and Muslim women who have suffered the consequences of these dated practices are increasingly speaking out. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court does justice.
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