It is more than two months. Hundreds of Muslim women in Delhi are sitting on the road day and night for a cause which has nothing to do with them or any of their fellow Indians. They are protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which gives citizenship to the religiously persecuted minorities of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and is no way related to any citizen of India. And then, their opposition is to National Population Register (NPR), which is only a collection of data of the population of India required for the Census done at a gap of ten years. And finally, there is National Register of Citizens (NRC), which is yet to be drafted. Nobody knows what provisions would be laid in it. Yet the Muslim women are sitting on the road round the clock and protesting for the unknown NRC, a routine NPR and the harmless CAA. The Muslim women are so concerned that they have been sitting in the open in chilling cold which has already claimed the life of a four-month-old.
There was a lady called Shah Bano Begum, a mother of five children who was divorced by her affluent husband at the age of sixty two and was left in the lurch. She ran from pillar to post for help but did not get any. At last, she moved to the Supreme Court, which came to her rescue and ordered a regular amount of money for her maintenance. But the Mullahs saw the meagre amount of Rs 200 per month as a severe threat to Islam and the ‘protest’ began. The Rajiv Gandhi Government, with more than four hundred members in the Parliament, came to its knees and amended the Constitution to deprive the poor lady of the poor amount of maintenance. The Muslim women of India did not come out of their homes to sit in dharna for the cause of Sah Bano Begum.
Then, there was the eternally hanging sword of Triple Talaq over the heads of Muslim ladies. Any woman, any time and for any or no cause could be inflicted with a verbal divorce by her husband for which she would have no scope to defend herself or challenge the one-sided supremacist verdict of her male partner. Triple pronouncement of a single word ‘Talaq’ would ruin a well-settled woman and turn her life to a hell full of agony. Muslim women were being divorced by a verbal pronunciation of the word ‘Talaq’, by a telephonic message, by an e-mail or Whatsapp message and the so on. They were absolutely under the whims and mercies of their husbands. No woman could know which moment of her life would turn her to a destitute. The Muslim women of India never thought it necessary to come to the street against the heartless practice.
Then, there is the hellish Halala system. A divorced woman is to marry and establish physical relation with another man if she were to marry her earlier husband who had divorced her but has condescended to marry her again. The lady has to undergo a process which humiliates her very existence. She has to marry another man and have physical relation with him in order to qualify for a second marriage with her old husband only if her new husband gives her Talaq. This has never urged the Muslim ladies to sit in a dharna in any part of the country.
Then, the prevailing polygamy practice which allows a husband to have four wives and a wife has to share her husband with three more co-wives under the same roof. This existing system is yet to motivate the Muslim women to come out to demand its discontinuance.
And also the Muttah Nikah or the temporary pleasure marriage (mostly vogue in Kerala) in which aged people like Sheikhs of Arab marry young poor girls during the formers’ holidays in India. At the end of the stipulated time, the girls, mostly pregnant, are left behind entirely to their fates. Muslim women of India never thought of coming out of their homes against this heinous practice.
And the inconvenient attire ‘Burkha’ which has been banned in many countries in the globe but is prevalent in India has never urged the Indian Muslim women to come out to the road and demand liberation from it.
But for these women it was indispensable to come out to the road and sit in dharna by taking Delhi to ransom because, for them, the Constitution is in danger. Among them are grand old women above ninety who perhaps do not know the meaning of “Samvidhan”, they are sitting to protect. And what is their model of ‘protecting the endangered Constitution’? It is by unconstitutionally blocking a road which is causing inconveniences to lakhs of people every day and a huge daily loss to the local business. Their model of ‘protecting the Constitution’ is to curse the Prime Minister and wish a death of ‘Hitler’ to the same Narendra Modi who liberated these ladies from the swords of Triple Talaq hanging over their heads since centuries. Their model of ‘protecting the Constitution’ is to display placards like “Free Kashmir” and slogans like “Jinnah Vali Azadi”. Their model of ‘protecting the Constitution’ is planning to “separate Assam by blocking the Chicken Neck”. Their model of ‘protecting the Constitution’ is to desecrate the ‘Om’ and the ‘Swatstika’. Their model of ‘protecting the Constitution’ is by celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Kashmiri Pandits’ holocaust and exodus on 19.1.2020 as “Jasn-e-Shaheen”. And above all, their model of ‘protecting the Indian Constitution’ is by pressurising the Indian Government to give citizenship to the Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh because of whose persecution Hindus and Sikhs, etc., are fleeing from these countries to India for refuge.
(Dr Das is Director, Academy of Yoga and Oriental Studies, Bhubaneswar. indulatadas@gmail.com)