A JOURNEY FROM THE PERSONAL TO POLITICAL

A JOURNEY FROM THE PERSONAL TO POLITICAL

Born in a middle class Mumbai-based Muslim family was made easy by a set of very educated, liberal and progressive parents. Both government workers, mother a teacher in a BMC school and father in Bombay Port Trust. Also surrounded and nurtured by maternal aunts added to the anchoring and a sense of security which a child needs in its formative years. I remember being very sensitive to poverty, partly because of the environment of charity in the house. Always wondering how poor lived and managed. Even now as an adult it is difficult to comprehend the travails of people who have no idea when there next meal will be. The sensitivity got support in the form of my college counselor who needed volunteers for a college campaign on drug addiction. I willingly joined her to make posters etc in the college. She suggested masters in social work if I was keen on joining a helping profession. Since that moment I got a direction and worked towards joining TISS to do MSW. Before that the college gave and I took the opportunity to understand various social issues through an NSS volunteership programme which lasted through the three years of senior college. The MSW gave a strong theoretical and academic base for understanding marginalization, deprivation, state structures and the role that needs to be played. 

What it did not prepare me was the whack I got as a mute spectator and survivor of the state sponsored communalization that happened post Babri masjid demolition. While me and my family remained untouched during the first phase post 6^thDecember 1992, we had to shift base during the January 1993 phase which rocked Mumbai. While no harm happened to life and property but the displacement for 4 months were not easy on me. As luck would have it during this period I worked with YUVA in Mumbai’s worse affected Jogeshwari doing relief and rehabilitation of the victims of India’s worst state sponsored pogrom against the Muslim community. As a sheltered and cocooned middle class Muslim it was eye opening to see how fellow community members lived in so much fear, insecurity, poverty and dispossession. The paradigm shift happened when for the first time in my 22-year-old life I realized that I am a Muslim. The consciousness of one’s religious identity in the nastiest of conditions!! This inward journey took a positive turn of taking responsibility and turning the churning into a movement for peace, justice and development.

Working with the Muslim women then was a conscious decision. With YUVA, through Anjuman-e-Islam, through WRAG, I worked only with the intention of empowering Muslim women. With founding of Bhartiya Muslim Mahila Andolan [BMMA], a new and focused phase began. As a Co-Founder of BMMA, we have managed to do the following activities:

1.    Spearheading the Muslim family law reform campaign, which culminated in the passing of the Muslim Women Protection of Rights on Marriage Act, 2019. Through researches, studies, public hearings and social media campaigns we now have a law, which prohibits one-sided divorce by men. 

2.    We managed to get a Supreme Court judgment in favour of women entering the sanctum sanctorum of Haji Ali dargah. A legal battle of 2 years preceded by failed negotiations and lack of political support made us reach out to the Mumbai High Court with the plea that women being debarred from the dargah sanctum is a violation of Article 14 of the Constitution. 

3.    Training women to become qazis who can solomnise marriages and undertake divorce proceedings. For the first time in the history of independent India that Muslim women formally instituted an organization to formally carry out a programme like this. The syllabus, the training module etc, all were done completely by Muslim women with absolutely no inputs from any male cleric or so-called experts. 

4.    Reaching out to young Muslim boys and girls through Udaan and Sehr Programmes to build up a new generation that is aware of its constitutional rights and their responsibility towards building up a strong and responsible community. 

5.    Setting up Karwaan Centres in 8 cities, we reached out to thousands of women with livelihood skills and other empowerment programmes around constitutional rights.

6.    Set up Aurton ki Shariat Adalat in 4 states, enabling Muslim women to access legal aid and guidance. Setting up an alternative space for women enabled a large number of them coming forward to lodge instances of triple divorce, halala, polygamy and many other social evils which needed to be addressed. 

By doing all of the above and so much more, Muslim women have been the instruments of change within the community. We have managed to set alternative systems which did not beg for change but became change agents themselves. Work did not just involve demanding change from the state, which we will continue to do, but also bringing about structural changes within the community. We led from the front breaking barriers, setting up new institutions and structures and provided a more humane alternative. Also we see no contradiction in being a Muslim and being an Indian or between following the Quran and following the Constitution. We refuse to get tied down to this binary. We are Muslims, women, Indian and so much more. As a Muslim woman, I will take my rights from the Quran, from the Constitution, and hey, even from the CEDAW because I am a world citizen. The voices, which restrict us, are passé; we are our own voices and architects of our own future. Men supporting us are most welcome but they cannot lead us anymore. 

In the last 12 years, BMMA has managed to awaken the consciousness of Muslim women and turned them from victims to change agents. This process needless to say has to continue. We are far away from our goal of achieving full equality, justice and freedom from archaic and obsolete mindsets. To achieve this we will continue to demand a fully codified Muslim family law, which will debar polygamy, halala, muta marriages, underage marriage, give equal inheritance rights and which will provide legal protection to Muslim women within the family. 

We still have to reach out to the 8 crore Muslim women with knowledge about her rights within the Quran and the constitution. 

We have to lead the community out of poverty and destitution, marginalization and deprivation. 

We have to reach out to the youth who are scared and disillusioned with the state and its own vested and useless leadership. 

We have to work further to decimate the hegemonic, domination and oppression of religious groups who have not only destroyed the lives of women but have also demonized Islam. 

We have to build more institutions and structures across the country, which become havens of freedom for women who can reclaim their spaces for a life of dignity. 

We have to continue to work for the legal, social, political, educational and economic empowerment of Muslim women through more structural additions, through awareness, through leadership, through advocacy, through agitation, through knowledge activism and through continued outreach to the most vulnerable from within the community.