Eradicating triple talaq

Bill will give victims access to legal remedy and ‘demonstration effect’ will be salutary

The announcement by the Union Government of setting up a Ministerial panel to draft a Bill providing for punitive action against those Muslim men who pronounce instant tripletalaq or talaq-e-biddat that will be introduced in Parliament in the forthcoming Winter Session should be welcomed across the board. Not only will a law enable police and administrations to take cognizance of victims' complaints who may approach them after having been subjected to instant triple talaq by their husbands under punitive provisions, it is hoped that the law would also include provisions against those acquiescing in such an act. The Supreme Court had in August struck down the controversial Islamic practice of talaq-e-biddat as arbitrary and unconstitutional but as cases reported in the media since then have shown, instances of Muslim men pronouncing instant triple talaq and a male clergy winking at the practice despite it being against the law of the land have continued, making a law necessary.

All Indians should be clear that this is not a “community's internal issue” as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has argued; it is an issue of every Indian citizen having the same rights under the Constitution without any discrimination, in this case on the basis of gender. Moreover, it is often held that reform in any community should come from within. Well, that is always ideal, and there has been a growing movement over the past few years within the Indian Muslim community for gender parity. Voices that for decades after Independence were silenced by the sheer weight of the power delegated to the conservative Muslim clergy/community leadership by a political establishment with an eye on bloc votes and its narrative of ‘difference', as opposed to diversity which is welcome and to be celebrated, are now being heard. It is also important to keep in mind, however, that the history of social reform movements, especially among monotheistic, Abrahamic religions, has shown that real change, especially when it comes to ensuring that individual rights can never be trumped by group rights, needs both internal and external pressure to come to fruition.

For example, the separation of Church and State in medieval Europe came about not just because of the reforms propagated by Martin Luther and his ilk but also by the advent of the movable metal type printing press which led to the mass (for its time) production of the Gutenberg Bible that broke the monopoly of the Church in having the final say in deciding what was sacred and what profane. So, technology was a pressure from outside as was, albeit for different reasons, the break from the Catholic Church engendered by King Henry VIII of England. Similarly, the advent of print capitalism, as Benedict Anderson's work has argued, led to the creation of national consciousness across Western Europe. Which in turn reformed religion in national contexts. In India, where the larger Indic community has in the main been both respectful and sensitive to the customs and traditions of Abrahamic religions, the fact that archaic practices such as instant triple talaq were challenged from within by Muslim women and moderates and from outside by political forces such as the BJP augurs well for the birth of a genuine multiculturalism and a Uniform Civil Code in this land. Do not underestimate the 'demonstration effect' of the punitive provisions in the proposed new anti-triple talaq law.