Q: Could you tell us something about your own background?
A: I’ll skip all the details about my childhood and I’ll start by saying that I lived as a housewife for 13 long years in a very violent marriage. I could stand it no longer and then went through a very painful separ-ation. It was because of the trauma that I went through that I came in touch with women’s groups in and around Mumbai, through which I discovered that my trauma was actually shared by numerous other women as well. So, it was my struggles with my marriage that led me to get involved with women’s organizations struggling for the rights of women.
After my separation I had to struggle to stand on my own feet, and so I decided to do my graduation, after which I did a degree in law and then went to the National Law School, Bangalore, where I did an M.Phil. For my thesis, which was later published by Oxford University Press, I worked on law and gender equality, looking at the politics of personal laws in different religious communities, examining, in particular, what these mean for women. I discovered that women, in all communities, are seen as the primary bearers of community identity, and this is reflected in the ways the different personal laws are constructed.
Q: You have been a prominent critique of what you see as the insensitivity of many ‘secular’ feminists to the particular issues of religious minorities. What exactly is your stand on this?
A: Yes, there is this sort of bias among many women who call themselves ‘secular feminists’. Often such biases are unacknowledged and sometimes are not even consciously held. Let me explain this by giving you my own personal example. I was a church going Catholic but I gave up all that and I joined the feminist movement that defined itself as ‘secular’. These women wanted to be known simply as ‘women’ and claimed that they had transcended community boundaries and so on. But soon it dawned on me that many ‘secular’ feminists were really not as ‘secular’ as they claimed. Most of them were Hindus, or of Hindu background. And so some of them would talk about how Christian and Muslim personal laws were flawed and discriminatory towards women, but they would never talk about aspects of Hindu personal law that discriminate against Hindu women. That’s when I began to feel the need to engage in this whole discourse on personal laws, to see what exactly the different personal laws actually mean for women, both in theory and in practice in the ways that they are interpreted by the courts.
So, this is how I came to feel the need to challenge the communalism that exists in significant sections of the women’s movement that defines itself as ‘secular’. A turning point was the 1991 women’s studies conference held at the Jadavpur University, Calcutta. I was invited to speak on Christian law, and what it means to be a Christian feminist. I was shocked! I mean, I had been working all along as a ‘secular’ feminist, and just because I have a ‘Christian’ name and because I happen to have been born in a Christian family I was branded as a ‘Christian’ and invited to speak in that capacity. Why were the other women at the conference not similarly labeled as ‘Hindu’ feminists, I asked the audience, unable to control my anger.
Q: What is your position on a Uniform Civil Code?
A: I am opposed to a uniform civil code. Who are we to decide what is best for other women? At best I think we can have an optional civil code, but it should not be made compulsory for all. That’s precisely what the Hinduvta lobby wants. In the name of a Uniform Civil Code it wants to impose Hindu law on everybody, and this is just another way of bringing other communities into the Hindu fold or to deny their separate cultural identities. Another problem with this argument is that it totally ignores the patriarchal provisio-ns in Hindu personal law.
I think we need to think of devising ways of reconciling gender justice with legal recognition of the identities of multiple cultural groups. So, instead of a Uniform Civil Code, I think we need to work towards separate gender-just personal laws for the different commu-nities. I think that, especially after the Shah Bano controversy and then the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the violence that followed, many women’s groups in India are veering round to this position, aware that supporting a Uniform Civil Code at this juncture would only play into the hands of the Hindutva-wadis. These gender-just personal laws have to emerge from the grassroots in a gradual manner in order to gain the acceptance of the different communities. They cannot be forcibly imposed or legislated from above. And as these different gender-just personal laws for the different communities evolve slowly it will lead to uniform principles, although not uniform laws.
Q: How did you get involved in activist work among Muslim women?
A: I studied Muslim personal law in the course of my thesis work, and then came the massive pogroms directed against Muslims in Mumbai in the wake of the destruction of the Babri Masjid. By this time we—some friends and I—had set up our own NGO, called Majlis, which was working among women in Mumbai, including Muslim women. I deposed before the Srikrishna Commission investi-gating the pogrom. After that, I began writing on Muslim personal law issues, and some of these were later published as articles in journals and as booklets. Through my writings I tried to critique the notion of Muslim laws as being neces-sarily and wholly anti-women, looking at the various ways in which these laws could be interpreted, and also the fact that in some respects these laws are more favorable to women than Hindu laws are. I also tried to critique various judgments that began appearing at this time that were clearly anti-Muslim. Particularly after the Shah Bano controversy there was an outburst of anti-Muslim sentiment, including in the women’s movement, with numerous ‘secular’ feminists claiming that Islam and gender justice were totally irreco-ncilable. In my own small way I tried to counter these stereot-ypes. For instance, I tried to show that the Muslim Women’s Maintenance Act, which Parliament passed in the wake of the Shah Bano controversy, is actually an improvement on the earlier position. Numerous judgments have interpreted the act to provide lifelong maintenance for divorced women lifetime, in accordance with the Qur’anic injunction to treat divorced women justly and fairly and to give them a reasonable maintenance. So, this supposedly retrograde law is actually helping Muslim women, but why, I keep asking, do many ‘secular’ feminists ignore this? Is it because of some deep-rooted anti-Muslim prejudice?
The course of my work I came into contact with Muslim groups in Mumbai, including with people associated with the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, giving them inputs on issues related to legal matters, including, but not only, on gender-related questions. I also worked with some Board members and Muslim social activists to draft a model marital contract or nikah namah.
Q: The ‘ulama claim that, as scholars of Islamic law, they have the ultimate authority to interpret Muslim personal law. In their writings, some ‘ulama even claim that non-Muslim judges in secular courts, such as in India, do not, or at least should not, have the right to interpret the shari‘ah. So, what exactly is the legal position on this?
A: The ‘ulama may say what they like, but the fact of the matter is that, according to Indian law, it is the courts that have the ultimate authority to interpret Muslim personal law. The judges of the courts may, of course, be of any religious background, not necessarily Muslim. So, a maulana may say that if a Muslim man pronounces talaq three times in one he has divorced his wife, and might claim that this is in accordance with the shari‘ah. But the courts need not accept that. They might say that this is insufficient for a divorce, and that the couple must first go through arbitration procee-dings and so on. The judgments of the courts, and not the views of any maulana or of the Board, will be accepted as final and binding.
Q: In order to circumvent the authority of the courts to interpret Muslim personal law, and also to ensure cheaper and faster justice, some ‘ulama and Islamist organizations are now talking about setting up a chain of shari‘ah courts or dar ul-qazas to deal with family-related issues. What are your opinions on this?
A: Some dar ul-qazas have been set up in recent years in different parts of the country, but no comprehensive study has been made to examine how they actually function and whether they actually do provide justice to women. It certainly is a way to have disputes judged in far less time and at considerably less cost than through the courts. I fear, however, that the qazis in these courts have been reared in a very sternly patriarchal tradition and that, therefore, they may not be sensitive to women’s concerns and may not be willing to interpret Muslim law in a gender-sensitive way. I think one way to help remedy the situation is to have more Muslim women scholars who are well-versed in the nitty-gritty of Muslim jurisprudence and can interpret it in a women-friendly way.
