It’s really painful to know that there are still some people and bodies like All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) who openly support practices like triple talaq. AIMPLB said that the triple talaq bill was ‘anti-Muslim’ and that it snatched the right to divorce from men. What rights are they talking about?
The ‘right’ which gives men the power to destroy any woman’s life just by the utterance of three words?
The ‘right’ due to which a pregnant woman was divorced verbally, after refusing to terminate her pregnancy because her child would be born a female, and was left to suffer on the streets with her other two daughters?
The ‘right’ which allows several Muslim men to give triple talaq even over WhatsApp – and that too just by putting up a display picture with the word ‘talaq’ repeated thrice?
They think that it’s their ‘right’ – what a shame! No, it’s not their right – it’s patriarchy at its worst.
It’s shocking to know that triple talaq is the easiest and most common method of divorce among Indian Muslims. According to a survey conducted by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), out of all the divorced Muslim women, 65.9 % were divorced verbally, 7.6% were divorced through a letter, 3.4 % were divorced over a phone call. All in all, 78% women were divorced unilaterally and 95% of divorced women received no maintenance from their husbands. In many cases, the women were not in a position to take care of their kids.
When the Supreme Court ruled ‘triple talaq’ as unconstitutional and decided that a five-judge constitution bench will begin hearing cases on the practice of triple talaq, the AIMPLB urged the SC “not to meddle with its personal laws” as the issues fell outside the realm of the judiciary. Now, this is one of the main problems of religious committees when it comes to reforms that challenge their orthodox rules.
It’s interesting to know that as India still struggles to ban triple talaq, as many as 22 Muslim countries have already banned the practice, including Pakistan. Apart from that, many of them have adopted secular family laws.
Indian Muslim women still live with the mental fear of being divorced at any time by their ‘righteous’ husbands at a moment’s notice. Just imagine the amount of insecurity they have to live with daily.