From Shah Bano to Shayara Bano :: India's evolution in redressing the plight of Muslim Women

CE 1986 

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 was passed by the Rajiv Gandhi Government relenting to pressure posed by Islamic Orthodoxy, to nullify the Supreme Court's judgment entrusting the lady the right to alimony, divorced at the age of 62.  

CE 2016
The Narendra Modi Government on the instructions of the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation titled ‘Muslim women’s quest for equality’, filed by Shayara Bano, takes a much more humane stand and got the Law Commission activated to circulate a Questionnaire to know the views of the larger cross section of stakeholders on the universal issue of gender equality amidst the Muslim community despite all hue and cry from the Muslim orthodoxy.

India seems to have come a long way from the era of Shah Bano to 

that of Shayara Bano. In these 3 decades, the governance of the country which used to be driven from an extreme sense of dynastic entitlement has been entirely transformed to that of being driven entirely by democratic discourse. The aforesaid comparative case in point is a glaring testimony to the same.

Despite all the noises on the eve of major electoral battles ahead, Narendra Modi who is known for his objectivity & integrity of office, has responded in a manner true to his reputation. 

The Muslim Community of India has been persecuted & deceived since the hey days of India's Independence on one count or the other. First it was the ambition of a dying leader, which later became the formula to stay in perpetual power duly exploiting the electoral mathematics. A perennial sense of insecurity was indoctrinated within the psyche of the Muslim Population which was made to ghettoize and inevitably serve the vested interests of their community leaders and the ones beyond.  

Despite the wide spectrum of appeasement compromising the progressive constitutional framework of the country, advancements on legal & policy frontiers extending innumerable benefits & reprieves and preferential apportioning of national resources, the Muslim community has not been able to progress and catch up with the national mainstream on a large number of development indices. 

The plight of the Muslim Women has had been a horrendous tale of persecution duly protected by the regressive & inhumane conventions beset by the power brokers of the Muslim Society who leave no stone unturned to perpetrate their hegemony. The container of conversations around the fairer sex of the Muslim ilk had to be made impregnable or else reforms & disruptions shall ensue. The Muslim leadership doesn't even allow for a safety valve as it knows quite well the intensity of the pascal scale within which shall blast off if given even the smallest outlet. 

After having conducted the surgical strikes challenging the enterprise of terror gaining legitimacy on aberrated religious interpretations, the Narendra Modi Government advanced its tactical move to contain the fury & flare of the world of Islam emanating out of its regressive ethos & conventions. The standing up for redressing the plight of Muslim Women by advancing a larger discourse is certainly one of the most ingenious moves. Any reform in the state of Muslim Women in the World's second most populous Muslim country would have a natural course correction and response from across the world of Islam. Women, they say are the biggest and most effective agents of change.

The graphic tales of savagery as enunciated by the Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad Basee Taha met at the hands of the ISIS fighters and the debauchery of the monsters of Boko Haram, sends shiver down the spine of even the most resolute soul. This might be an extreme representation of the sordid state of Muslim Women but just gives a glimpse of what's lying beneath the veil and within the impregnable container of Muslim Society. 

The Safety Valve of the Muslim Society is probably on the verge of getting released. Thanks to NaMo that he is not keen to apply the reverse pressure to maintain the inhumane status quo which has been tormenting the Muslim Women for ages as if he is reverberating with these prophetic words of another Narendra a century ago, "Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth.

They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal."

India has surely taken a giant leap forward in taking her rightful place in the comity of nations to wage global peace & end all forms of persecution. The standing up for the cause of Muslim Women and liberalizing them from the yoke of savagery is just but an excellent headstart.