Observing July 31 as ‘Muslim Rights Day’ on the completion of one year of annulment of the regressive practice of triple talaq, the ruling BJP and the Union Government on Friday said that the Modi Government’s policy was of empowerment of Muslim women and not that of exploitation.
Senior BJP leader and Union Minister for minority affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said August first is a day which made Muslim women free from social evil of triple talaq adding that the day will remain a “golden moment of Indian democracy and parliamentary history.”
Naqvi said the law which has made instant divorce as a criminal offence has strengthened “self-reliance, self-respect and self-confidence” of Muslim women of the country. He said the Modi-government has “ensured gender equality and strengthened constitutional, fundamental and democratic rights” of Muslim women by bringing the law against the triple talaq.
The Minister said social evil of triple talaq or Talaq-a-Biddat was neither Islamic nor legal and it could have been passed in 1986 by the Rajiv Gandhi Government when it instead used the Congress majority to make the Supreme Court’s milestone judgment in the famous Shah Bano case ineffective.
Naqvi said since the passing of the law by the Modi-government in last one year, there is a decline of about 82 per cent in triple talaq cases in the country.
He said the BJP Government is committed to “political empowerment” and “not political exploitation” and bold reforms are reflective of it.
The law, formally called the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, was passed in last year after intense debates in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, with opposition parties, courting conservative sections of Muslims alleging it targeted the Muslim community even as the Centre asserted that it would help achieve gender justice for Muslim women.
Union Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Smriti Irani, and Naqvi took to social media to hail their Government’s actions and pitched the ban on instant triple talaq as a huge step for the empowerment of women.
The BJP Minority Morcha and the Mahila Morcha have organised programmes in different states to mark the occasion. There were many videos shared on social media of Muslim women thanking the Prime Minister for getting the anti-Triple Talaq law passed in 2019, using the hashtag ‘’ThanksModiBhaiJaan’’.
Naqvi also shared videos on his Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts in which Muslim women from various parts of the country thanked the prime minister. In the videos, Sahabiya from Hyderabad, Shahida Abbas from Maharashtra, Shabana Rehman and Tabassum from Delhi thanked the prime minister for the bill, asserting that Muslim women are feeling secure now.
The Modi Government made the law against triple talaq following the Supreme Court’s judgement of 2017 that declared as unconstitutional the instantaneous practice, followed by Muslim men, of divorcing a wife by uttering the word ‘’talaq’’ thrice.