It has been argued that any legislative change in the Muslim personal law would violate the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Indian Constitution. The argument is contested, but the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) failed to take an explicit stand at their recent meeting in Bangalore. It is no longer possible to keep deferring an issue that is not only affecting. Muslim women but is also so central to their future welfare and security: Already, demands for judicial activism and pressure are mounting from some Muslim women organisations to amend the laws relating to 'triple talaq'. Time and again precedents from other Muslim countries, including Pakistan, are cited to clamour for some measure of reform in the Muslim personal law. Members of the AIMPBL would do well to pay heed ...
Today, the contentious issue is not the preservation of 'Muslim identity', expressed through mosques, religious institutions, the traditional system of education and charitable institutions. There is an overall consensus, despite the spurt in majoritarian stridency, on guarding minority rights provided by the Constitution. Nor is the sanctity of the Shariat in question ... At the heart of the present debate, so argued the Deoband-educated Maulana Said Ahmad Akbarabadi in the 1960s, is the distinction between those Quranic injunctions that were specific to the Arab customary law of the time and those applicable to Muslim societies in other times. This distinction has been made in the past, and that alone enabled Islam to pass through many stages of reorientation and readjustments.
The scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, A.A.A. Fyzee, positioned himself against the traditional belief that in Islam law and religion are coterminous. He argued that law is a product of social evolution and it must change with time and circumstances.
In the past, the AIMPLB has not been impressed with these arguments; I doubt if they think differently now or are sensitive to the powerful and successful reformist initiatives in Muslim societies. They may settle, in response to certain court judgements, for a few cosmetic changes without satisfying the growing and persistent demands for gender justice for Muslim women. Perhaps, the only way out is to ... bring about some form of consensus (ijma, the most important legal notion in Islam) not on the enforcement of a uniform civil code but on substantial reforms in the provisions on 'triple talaq' and maintenance for the Muslim widows.
Jawaharlal Nehru ... may have been right in thinking that the time was not ripe for bringing Muslims within the preview of a uniform civil code, but the initiative on such matters should have rested with Parliament and not the religious traditionalists and the defenders of the status quo.
Not many people know that Nehru's Cabinet received suggestions, in 1961, for reviewing and reforming the Muslim personal law ... Lengthy discussions followed, and the Law ministry was asked to make appropriate recommendations. But the mere hint of an inquiry in the ministry's report led to a public outcry. A gathering of Muslim ministers and MPs, chaired by Zakir Husain, the vice-president of the Republic, echoed their sentiments without any serious deliberation.
No government after Nehru could contemplate reforms to ensure the equal status of Muslim women. Electorally, the risk was too great. In consequence, state intervention in the Shah Bano case came about with an eye on the "Muslim vote" ... This is because the political regime, acting in unison with the Muslim orthodoxy, had legitimised the AIMPLB members as the sole custodians, interpreters and transmitter of the Shariat.
. The urge for reforms must come from the community itself. One hopes that patience, persistence and education will lead to a reappraisal of existing attitudes and that more and more educated Muslims will take recourse to Ijtihad (exercise of independent judgement), defined by lqbal as "the principle of movement" in Islam. (Source: The Indian Express, 15 November, 2000)
