Talaq
Judgement: Muslim Women A Play Thing In Communal Politics?
Saeed
Naqvi
Put it down to my acute perversity,
because as soon as celebrations broke out and I glanced at the Supreme Court’s
Triple Talaq judgement, Josh Malihabadi’s rubayee (quatrain) swam into my ken:
“Ae rind kya yehi hai baaghe rizwaan?
Na hooron ka kaheen pata na ghilma ka
nishaan
Ek kunj mein maayuus-o-mulool-o-tanha
Bechare tahel rahey hain Allah mian”
(O’ Tavern companion, where have we
come? Is this the promised garden?
I see no beautiful houris, nor handsome
men.
In a gloomy corner, crestfallen,
Sad and lonely, Allah Mian paces
ponderously)
Josh is mocking at Man’s distortion of
God’s purpose.
Ofcourse, this is escapism on my part,
but I can hardly help it because in all my 75 plus years I have never known
anyone, even by remote association, who discarded his wife by pronouncing
“talaq, talaq, talaq.” Since Muslims are supposed to be in the grip of this all
pervasive practice, I may be forgiven for feeling a little left out.
The defiance and passion with which the
General Secretary of Jamiat Ulema e Hind Maulana Mahmood Madani, has reacted
leaves me breathless:
“If you wish to punish the person (for
pronouncing triple talaq) you may do so but such a talaq will be recognized” by
Jamiat and society at large. The Maulana, to his credit, advises Muslims not to
resort to triple talaq but he insists that the courts or the state not be
allowed to interfere with Muslim practices, presumably based on Muslim law.
Do I stand with the Maulana to keep my
Muslim identity intact? Or do I ignore him as I have ignored all clerical
edicts throughout my life?
That a five judge bench of the Supreme
Court has struck down the obviously abhorrent practice, should find me in the
ranks of those thunderously applauding the judgement. But that too is not my chosen
path.
I spot triumphalism in this national
exultation led by Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath and leaders of
other parties in supporting roles. The Muslim male has been administered a
double-fisted punch on his chin and his women freed from his basement harems.
Chief Justice Kehar has accorded
protection to 90 percent of Muslims from the barbaric practice.
Do I belong to this 90 percent or was I
always protected, being among the 10 percent who, by His Lordship’s calculus,
were outside the dark canopy of shoddy Islamic laws?
Since most surveys seem to suggest
talaq-talaq afflicts not more than one percent, does it behove their Lordships
to paint the entire community with one brush?
Should not the Ministry of Social
Welfare, the Minority Commission, instead of sitting on their haunches, do a
survey to establish the extent to which the practice is prevalent?
Beef is a sensitive word these days. But
beef (not buffalo but cow) is slaughtered and eaten by Muslims, non Muslims and
dalits in the North East, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu etcetera. Would their
Lordships judge Hindus as beefeaters along with Muslims across the country or would
a clarification be in order that the practice is prevalent only in specific
regions of the country?
Does the universal celebration over the
judgement inspire optimism? Now that the Indian establishment across the board
is so demonstrably filled with the milk of human kindness towards the divorced
Muslim woman, it probably augurs well not just for the Muslim “Suhagan”
(happily married) but for the entire Muslim community, all 180 million of them.
In his very first speech in Parliament
in May 2014, Narendra Modi became the only Prime Minister to openly say what
never came naturally to Congressmen that among the many burdens that weighed
the nation down was “1,200 years of foreign subjugation”. Congressmen said this
privately but never publicly.
The official party line, the one that
the Congressmen went public with was about “200 years” of British rule. The
Muslim period was glossed over. There was no public debate.
In fact at the earlier stages, soon
after 1947, a common and particularly galling allegation was: “Muslims
partitioned the country and then stayed on.”
There is no record of Congress leaders
ever offering a clarification for this canard. So implicated were they in the
country’s fracture, that they refrained from encouraging debate on this issue lest
it turn upon them.
The Congress was not the only guilty
party. Even socialists like Ram Manohar Lohia talked of the “spirit of
Haldighati” as a panacea for boosting Hindu morale. He went along with the version
of history which credits Maharana Pratap with victory over Akbar, a highly disputed
proposition.
Since I stayed with JP in his Kadam Kuan
residence in Patna, I saw firsthand how the Bihar movement was put together by
Nanaji Deshmukh of the RSS and his close friend, Ramnath Goenka, publisher,
owner of Indian Express. Socialists, conservative Congress leaders who had
broken away from Indira Gandhi (or whom she had disbanded) all came together in
the Janata Party government. Subsequent politics during Indira Gandhi and Rajiv
Gandhi years had become manifestly sensitive to this reality: varying shades of
Hindu majoritarianism were an essential requirement for the electoral game. It was
on this trajectory that Narendra Modi gained exceptional height in 2014. Has he
peaked?
The other day my sister and her daughter
travelled by AIR INDIA. She had asked for a vegetarian diet, her daughter for non
vegetarian. The printout of her ticket said: “Vegetarian Hindu meal”. The other
printout was equally explicit: non vegetarian “Muslim meal”. Their Lordships may
wish to find out if institutionalized apartheid is creeping upon us?
This is the background against which the
nation and its media are amplifying the turn that the Supreme Court has given
to the plight of Muslim women, divorced by recourse in an ungodly method. Intentionally
or unintentionally on the part of their Lordships, the situation created by their
judgement is fraught with politics, even though only one percent of Muslim women
who have escaped talaq, talaq have reasons to rejoice. If propaganda is the name
of the game, these ladies should be facilitated on their way to Mecca for Haj, by
way of thanksgiving. This is a photo op not to be missed.
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