Secular law or religious personal law?

At a meeting on Saturday to discuss the codification of the Muslim personal law, among the attendees were members of a group called All India Muslim Women’s Rights Network.

The codification process aims to remove the arbitrary manner in which religious marriage and divorce laws are often imposed on women by legislating it in Parliament. Though their members were present at the meeting last week, the MWRN is not part of the consultation process.

The group says that by seeking the codification of religious family laws, the groups behind the codification process are suggesting that Muslim women continue to derive their marital rights only from religious laws. Hasina Khan, an activist with the Bharat Muslim Mahila Andolan, a group affiliated to MWRN says that the Muslim women, like their counterparts from other religions, should get their rights from the country’s secular constitution. “We believe religion is personal and laws should not be derived from religion. Muslim women should get their rights from the Constitution; why is there a dual identity for Muslim women in India?” asks Khan.

Khan said that at the meeting, a small group of men, apparently from a right-wing community group, tried to dominate proceedings. “These men even said girls are ready for marriage once they reach puberty. Children nowadays reach puberty at the age of 10; are you going to get them married at that age? Should we even talk to these people?” asked Khan.

The codification process started a few years ago and apart from the meeting in Mumbai, there have been gatherings in other cities like Delhi. Among the experts involved in the experiment is  Dr Zeenat Shaukat Ali of the department of Islamic studies at St Xavier’s College, whose interest in the subject started after she completed her thesis on ‘Marriage and Divorce in Islam and Appraisal’ in 1984.

Based on their personal laws, Ali classifies Muslim-majority countries and those with substantial Muslim populations into three categories. Turkey, which was the first to codify its personal laws in 1917, only to replace it with a secular civil legislation in 1926, belongs to the first group. The second group included countries that still follow the classical law, like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. The third group, which consists of Syria and North African countries, began codifying their law in the 1950s. Of these, Tunisia banned polygamy and relied on Koranic verses to enforce the new rule; Syria made it compulsory for men wanting to enter polygamous marriage to prove with documents that they had the wherewithal to look after multiple wives. “In effect, they made polygamy almost impossible. The codification process made the process legal,” says Ali. “We are a secular democracy and did nothing about it.”

According to Ali, considering the way the issue has been politicised in the past, the uniform civil law that Khan is talking about is difficult to create in India. “If we talk about a common civil law, whatever little reform that we want will not happen. We have to do this without ruffling religious leaders; this is how it works in India.”

According to Ali, all the countries that have reformed their religious family laws have done so within the limitations of the Koran. “The process is not easy, but it has begun. It must be done in our lifetime,” said Ali.