Startling as the Imrana rape case and its aftermath have been, some issues have crystallized with the controversial Islamic verdict that has stunned the entire country. We would do well to examine the tragedy and its denouement dispassionately to arrive at a reasoned understanding of how the continued operation of unreformed personal laws amount to injustice against the very community that regards protection of personal laws a religious right.
A brief recapitulation of the facts suggests that 25-year-old Imrana, wife of a rickshaw-puller in Uttar Pradesh, was allegedly raped by her father-in-law on 3 June 2005. The said rape was witnessed by two women of the family, who rushed to the spot on hearing the victim cry for help.
Once the scandal became public, the community panchayat declared that the rape had resulted in automatic divorce between the couple. Imrana was told to treat her husband as a son and to marry another man of her choice, if she wished. Initially, both Imrana and her husband, Noor Ilahi, decried and rejected the verdict.
Faced with growing public outrage, the Deoband Darul Uloom jumped into the fray. On the positive side, the Deoband investigations established that even by the standards of the weighted-against-women Islamic law, Imrana was raped by her father-in-law, Ali Mohammad. She was proclaimed a victim; there were no attempts to question her personal integrity.
The Deoband fatwa, however, raises questions about the legality, morality, and propriety of a sovereign and secular State ceding religious clergy the power to adjudicate on matters deeply affecting the lives of individual members of a community, without scope for appeal or redressal in the event of a faulty verdict. The Darul Uloom upheld the community panchayat’s view that Imrana is automatically divorced, and directed her husband to maintain their five children.
In one stroke, the victim of an atrocity was expelled from her home and denied the emotional anchorage that her husband wished to give her. A family with five children was broken up. It was repeated ad nauseum that Imrana is free to marry another man of her choice, but how does a burqa-clad mother of five find a man of her choice. What happens to her five children if her husband remarries, as is likely, and is forced by poverty to renege on maintenance commitments to Imrana?
The ulema had some harsh words for the rapist, but they were just that – words. There are no social consequences for him, and if he manages to get around the legal system, he will be a free man. But Deoband destroyed Imrana and Noor Ilahi; the couple was willing to challenge the community panchayat’s decision on automatic divorce, but cowered before Darul Uloom.
Some months ago, a Muslim jawan declared dead by the Army returned unexpectedly from Pakistan to find that his wife, Gudiya, had been married off to another man and was heavily pregnant. Rather than facilitating a discreet divorce so that the young girl could live with her second family, where she was deeply happy and loved, the ulema muscled in and made Gudiya’s return to her legal husband a prestige issue for the Shariat. Although Gudiya, her second husband and family and even the entire village where she lived wanted the jawan to go away, the poor girl was browbeaten in a televised and lopsided panchayat, and forced to return to the first husband.
The human dimension of Imrana’s tragedy has moved the newly created All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board, but one doubts how it can help the beleaguered couple. Sharia expert Tahir Mahmood opined that the Arabic provision of automatic divorce in the event of rape by a husband’s close kinsmen made sense in a society where divorced women could remarry almost instantly. It should not be imposed upon a couple that wishes to continue the marriage.
There is another aspect to the tragedy. Women’s activists know that in Muslim society, mehr payments are often deferred while there is a growing menace of dowry. Girls are ill-treated to make them forego mehr and sometimes families pay handsomely to get unhappy girls a divorce. The Imrana judgment may unleash a trend whereby families wishing to end a marriage for whatever reason simply rape a woman and make her haraam (prohibited) for her husband.
The Indian State must take cognizance of the Shariat’s capacity to unleash sheer social and religious terror against innocent Muslims. Unfettered powers of the ulema have made ordinary Muslims second-class citizens. The bells have been tolling for some time, but we did not then know how to decipher the signals. Nearly two decades ago, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to ulema pressure on the issue of just alimony for Muslim divorcees, the Hindu community expressed anger at the politics of appeasement. It was pacified by opening the locks of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya.
This is the ultimate irony of the minority-appeasing quality of Indian secularism – even those opposed to it can fall into its trap. We demand a Mansarovar subsidy when we only want to end the Haj subsidy. Hindus opposed to Nehruvian secularism have always posited Indic civilizations’ inclusivist tradition as the correct way to affect a minority-majority synergy. Now, when the road from Shah Bano to Gudiya to Imrana is literally paved with tears, it is imperative that we make the State act to contain an ulema that has tasted the blood of beleaguered Muslim women. A common civil code is a national imperative.
Organiser, 10 July 2005