MUSLIM WOMEN AS MEDIATORS

Inspite of the fact that the Muslim community does not have a comprehensive law and the poor state of implementation of all laws, how have Muslim women find a breakthrough? 

Muslim women led by BMMA, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan have done three important things:

1. It drafted its own personal law, a comprehensive Muslim family law after a nationwide consultation spanning over 8 years. In the absence of a law, this draft shows the way to our volunteers who provide legal aid. 

2. We have set up Aurton ki Shariat Adalats to provide legal aid to distressed women. Hundreds of cases get registered here. Our team of trained volunteers provide legal aid to women. 

3. We set up the Darul Uloom-e-Niswaan, an organization that has trained 20 women who have become certified qazis. 

We have created structures by which we can support the victim and help her get justice. 

Do these Adalats / individual qazis work as mediators?

Yes the formally trained women qazis as well as other volunteers of the Aurton Ki Shariat Adalat are mediators who help the women victim. They follow the draft law prepared by BMMA, they take the help of other NGOs, clerics and lawyers if need be. They do home visits, do joint family meetings, engage with the police, community leaders and other stakeholders. Their work is very hands on. They are very mobile. The volunteers visit the police station multiple times if required. If the husband does not come for joint meeting, they visit his home as well. This helps in quick resolution of the cases. They are also trained in feminist counseling processes by which she can emotionally support the victim. She is made aware of her rights within the Quran and also about the other laws which are applicable to her. 

In this Qazi training, our trained Qazi are required to do joint meetings with the couple before the marriage. So all issues like mehr, conditions by either parties, post-marriage residence of the couple, groom’s income etc. The qazi must also ensure free consent of both the parties, especially the woman. She must ensure that they are of legal age of marriage, which is 18 and 21 years. She must ensure that this groom is not indulging in a polygamous marriage. A lot of that work is supposed to be done by the Qazi trained by us. So far we have had one opportunity to do that. But as we move ahead and as more and more women come forward to get married through a woman Qazi, she would be expected to do this work. 

Are the Muslim women legal aid workers strictly mediators? 

BMMA legal aid volunteers are based in the centres which are based in the communities. Women, victims, volunteers come in and go out of the centre. Trainings, meetings happen here. Counseling and Adalat work also happens here. So there is a thin line or no lines. I am a mediator and in a few minutes turn into a counselor or even a therapist. Sometimes the victims needs a shoulder to cry on and a patient hearing, in which case, I turn into her friend or a sister. This support is given not just to the victim but also to her father, mother, brother and other members of her family who are equally traumatized. So a community legal aid volunteer is all rolled into one. She does a lot of so-called pre-litigation work which actually is litigation work but out of the court. Her works helps those clients who would have otherwise burdened the already overburdened courts. 

What values do these women mediators adhere to?

The Adalat volunteers and women qazis are trained to believe in the values of equality, justice, freedom, democracy, compassion and goodness, liberty and fraternity; values enshrined in the Quran and the Constitution. They also function on feminist principles which requires that they hear out the women without judging and support her in any way that she wants to be supported. 

So what is mediation? 

Without getting into a formal technical definition, mediation is intervention by a third party to resolve issues between two people. Mediation is age old. In earlier times, if a person had a problem, the family would be the first mediation group. Family even now continues to be the first mediator. Forums like Nyaya panchayats, gram panchayats, caste panchayats, jamaats existed and exist even now. How gender and caste sensitive they are is another story. But mediation has always been there. 

Today we have a plethora of such forums. We have the formal courts, mediation and arbitration groups, counseling centres within courts, NGOs, community and caste groups, women’s organizations etc. Other than the formal courts, none of the other groups are formally trained in these legal processes. Native wisdom, intellect, basic common sense and a bit of training and knowledge has helped non-formal mediators to emerge. 

Why did such forums emerge, what ails our justice systems? 

We have three aspects of governance; the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. All three are important for justice to become accessible to all citizens. Having a good legislation is important. It’s implementation is equally important and if there are disputes then the dispute resolution systems like the police and the courts must also function optimally. 

Largely our laws are quite good. They are made in the Parliament after a lengthy and healthy debate, there are Parliamentary committees who sit on it and after much deliberation we come up with a fairly good law. And there is also a possibility of amendments to these laws as society evolves and time goes by. 

But when it comes to its implementation, the systems are very poorly managed. When a certain legislation is in place and if one has to access it, the first place that a person goes to is the police station and it is no secret how our police stations work. They are not just not friendly for women. They are not friendly for anybody. Complaints are not written down, FIRs not taken etc. To sum up, the implementation and execution of these legislations is extremely poor. And this becomes one of the main reasons for non-formal justice delivery systems to emerge. 

Is there any synergy between these groups who do mediation? 

That is where the challenge is and that should be the future thrust. How can we make such seemingly disparate groups to work with each other to help the victim? The victim may go to the court, to an arbitrator, to NGO or to a Qazi, wherever she goes, how do we join hands with each other to help her. 

Justice is a basic right mentioned in 39A of the Indian Constitution. The poorest of the poor must be able to access justice. But for this to become a reality, a synergistic approach is needed. We are working in our own silos, in isolation. The lawyers do not feel the need to reach out to community based group and the religious groups want to work in isolation, cut off from formal processes. Can we develop a synergistic system where the cleric, the lawyer and legal aid workers, work together? 

It requires a shedding of egos, acceptance and understanding of each other. We will need to develop a system which is institutionalized and where all the above work in tandem with each other, building on each other’s strengths and work for the victim. Can we all be working as complimentary systems in the larger scheme of helping the most vulnerable get justice?