INDIAN MUSLIM WOMEN’S ENGAGEMENT WITH THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION

INDIAN MUSLIM WOMEN’S ENGAGEMENT WITH THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION 

CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES IN WORK LIFE

Constitutional values, without reference to the Constitution was the core system that has guided my work. Through my graduation and post-graduation, I was known amongst my friend circle to be always supporting women’s rights. My work with marginalized communities especially my stint in YUVA helped me in getting a better and in-depth understanding of these values. It was also a time after the riots of 1992-93 which sowed the seeds of making these values the basis of my work with Muslim women.  

It was my stint in Anjuman-I-Islam that I realized how much the Muslim women has been deprived off. The mindset of the AI management was extremely conservative so much so that they could not accept my inter-religious marriage. I was sure by then that without the principles of equality and justice and freedom all work with the Muslim women would have no meaning. It also helped that in the course of my work I was able to imbibe the feminist values of always prioritizing and valuing the experiences of women.

In 2007 when BMMA was formed, the vision document itself made a reference to the Indian Constitution. Our vision statement talked about the values of equality, justice, freedom, wisdom and compassion which are an amalgamation of the values of the Constitution and the Quran. For us it was important that Muslim women recognize themselves as not just having a religious identity but also identify herself as a citizen of the country. BMMA’s core values come from the Constitution. Our work around demanding implementation of Sachar committee report or the demand to codify Muslim family law comes from the constitutional framework. In all our publications, public hearings, press releases we have constantly reiterated the need for constitutional protection for Muslim women. Bringing another dimension of Muslim women as a citizen has been crucial in our fight for legal justice for Muslim women. 

My work related to the constitution per say began very actively in 2014 after the current government came to power. The open lynching of the Muslim and dalit youth, the open talk of changing the constitution and the audacity of the ruling dispensation to upturn secular values was too much to ignore. Our first public protest happened in 2015-6 when the Shiv Sena talked of removing the word socialism and secularism from the Constitution. We had a dharna and later a submission to the CM lodging our protest. 

Invoking the constitution, we also protested against the beef ban in the state of Maharashtra. 6000 signatures in 2 days were submitted to the government demanding the revoking of the ban. 

We set up Aurton ki Shariat Adalat using the article 39A of the constitution which refers to free legal aid and equal justice. Close to 150 women every year access legal aid and guidance from our legal aid centres. 

Since then we have been training Muslim girls and boys on the constitution through our community volunteers. 

In the first of its kind when BMMA initiated Muslim women to become qazis, we included a chapter on the constitution. Muslim women who are fighting for their rights must know that as a citizen she has many rights and many of her rights are protected by the constitution of the country. In fact, we always say that as Muslim women we are very privileged to be born in this country which has given us universal human rights on a platter. 

CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES IN PERSONAL LIFE

Thankfully I did not have to struggle due to my given identities. That was probably because I stayed in a matrilocal family. My father shifted from his village to Mumbai in search of job and stayed with my mother's family which had only 6 sisters and no man. The eldest sister of my mother ensured that her two younger sisters, i.e. my mother and aunt went to school and college. My mother and aunt were first generation learners who travelled from Bhendi Bazaar to Jogeshwari then to get college education. My father was humble and strong enough to stay with his wife and her family. 

Both my parents being post graduates and liberal, I was given a very liberal and nurturing upbringing. There was no discrimination between me, my sister and my brother. Equal access to education in good school and later college ensured that we developed a cosmopolitan approach to people. 

From this family of maternal aunts and both parents through different interactions and observing their behaviour, I learnt the values of equality and justice and compassion. Zakat was given regularly to poor women. We were encouraged to speak respectfully to all our domestic supporters. In fact, we would call our domestic help, amma.We were made to greet her respectfully during festivals. There were male domestic helpers also played with my brother. Young female domestic helpers were my friends with whom I played. I still have photographs with all of them. There were not our helpers but friends with whom we spent our playtime. 

I don’t remember being told that I should or should not do a certain activity just because I am a girl. In college too I was encouraged to participate in all extra-curricular activities. I was never questioned when I came home late. I was never questioned on being with male friends who would also come home. 

I was the only Muslim girl in my college group which I never became conscious off till the riots of 1992-93. My father was part of a trilogy consisting of Hindu and Christian, who worked hard on setting up the housing society where we later shifted. In this society we were the only Muslim family and my parents ensured that all society neighbours got sheerkurmaduring Eid. During the riots in 1993, our Hindu neighbours supported us and my Hindu college friend helped us escape unhurt. 

Not even once did my parents object to my marriage to a Hindu. Till they passed away they had a wonderful relationship with my husband.

The Islam of my childhood was all about charity, compassion, belief in the goodness of God and its people. The damage began much later and I am glad I was able to ingrain the pre-Saudi Islam and now based on that I am challenging it. 

I have done my best to put those values in practice:

·      I officially added my mother’s name to my name 

·      I officially added my name to my children’s name 

·      I refused to change my name or add my husband’s name or surname after my marriage

·      I also refused to change my religious identity after my marriage 

·     One of my non-negotiables before marriage was that I will continue to work

·      I have taught these values to my children through stories and anecdotes

·     As they grew up talking about constitution become an important part of the upbringing. Time and again I keep telling them about the Indian constitution. 

There has been no major uproar in the family as that’s where I got these values from in the first place. My father was fine when I added my mother’s name and removed his surname. 

My husband was fine when I told him about my non-negotiables before marriage, which was not changing my religion and name and not adding his name and surname and continue to work after marriage. 

It took some time for my in-laws to come to terms with it which was largely my husband’s fight with them. I refused to take the burden of convincing them. It was my husbands’ job and he managed fine. 

CHALLENGES AS WE OPERATIONALISE THE CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES

Challenges:

1.    Constitutional values have always been devalued. Especially as a Muslim, we have been denied justice especially in hundreds of incidences of communal violence. The ShriKrishna Commission report which indicted the Shiv Sena remains to be implemented. The Sachar Committee report and the Mehmood Rahman report has not been implemented. The current political dispensation is openly anti-Muslim but the other so-called secular parties, largely Congress, has been equally responsible for the deprivation of the Muslim community. It has truly been a party siding with the conservatives within the Muslim community and also a soft-Hindutva party, conservative and right wing to the core but putting up a charade of secularism. These so-called secular parties are singularly responsible for the marginalization of the Muslim women. We all know what the congress did at the time of Shahbanu and the role that it played recently in not passing the triple talaak ordinance into a law. 

2.    Political parties behave in an unconstitutional way because the people in their constituencies have no idea about the constitution. Constitution is taught in the civics category of history/civics and we know as students it was taught in the driest and uninteresting way. Constitutional values cannot be merely a subject to be taught and got marks over. It has to be ingrained, imbibed and felt. 

3.    In the current times it is important that secular values are safeguarded most from the onslaught of the political class. Now looks like it is the ordinary citizens who will have to play that role. We cannot leave it to the so-called custodians. 

4.    The conservative sections of the Muslim community have always very conveniently invoked the Indian constitution for safeguarding their rights as minorities and rightly so. But when it comes to Muslim women, they have conveniently forgotten that Muslim women are also citizens of this country and they have right over it as much as they have. Invoking Article 25-26 of the Indian constitution is much the right of Muslim women as it is of the Muslim men and this the men of the community have to realize it, sooner the better. It is this very articles that was our basis for fighting the Haji Ali case where the women were barred from entering the sanctum, along with other articles 14, 15 and 21.  

The challenge itself is an opportunity. 

Conversations around constitutional values must be the talk of our drawing rooms and even bedrooms. It must be made common place. No conversation must happen without referring to them.

As an activist have always used the constitutional basis for Muslim law reform and have introduced the same in our training curriculum for women qazis. For us a Muslim women’s organization it is crucial that we talk about in the communities where we work. It is especially crucial for the Muslim youth to know that the country’s constitution stands with them as citizens.  

Constitution as a basis for advocacy of our rights is another opportunity. BMMA fought it for entry into the Haji Ali dargah. We filed a PIL against triple divorce and got a good judgment which is the basis for ordinance against triple divorce. We are in the process of filing a PIL against polygamy and halala again invoking the constitutional values. The larger demand of a Muslim Code Bill is also based on the provision in the constitution. That fight will take a long time and we are already on our way. 

Muslim male youth especially must be reached out with this values as they are right now only reached out to as a Muslim. Invoking their sense of citizenship is a challenge and an opportunity. 

                       

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. 

Reclaiming sacred spaces - Muslim Women's Struggle for Entry into Haji Ali Dargah

Reclaiming sacred spaces - Muslim Women's Struggle for Entry into Haji Ali Dargah 
https://notionpress.com/read/reclaiming-sacred-spaces

This book captures the journey of Muslim women led by BMMA to gain entry into the sanctum sanctorum of the Haji Ali Dargah. In 2012, BMMA activists could not enter the sanctum as women were barred from accessing and offering prayers near the tomb. This was the first time in the 400 years of the history of this dargah that someone was barred from offering prayers while standing inside the inner room where the tomb lies. For those women living in Mumbai and visiting Haji Ali as part of their growing up years, this restriction came as a shock. It was not only regressive from a gender perspective but also was indicative of more restrictions which might be imposed in future, killing the syncretic spirit of dargahs which have been home to all, irrespective of class, gender, religion or any other category.

The following two years were a struggle outside the court when women tried to negotiate and sort out the issue by demanding the restoration of the status quo through dialogue. When those initiatives failed to give any result, then BMMA approached the Mumbai High Court.

Chapter 1 of the book outlines both, the struggle outside the court and then the struggle within the court. It also looks closely at the role of state and its various agencies whose primary responsibility is to fulfil their constitutional obligation of protecting women’s rights.

Chapter 2 looks at the debate based on the Indian Constitution. The intersectionality of Constitution, religion and women’s rights and how Muslim women invoked the various articles of the Constitution to regain entry into the dargah.

Chapter 3 is about Islam and women’s rights. Quran, as the book of God has emphasized on gender equality unequivocally. It is the Quranic values of justice, equality, kindness, wisdom and compassion which are at the core of Islam. Patriarchal interpretations stand exposed as women themselves begin reclaiming religion from the clutches of conservative religious organizations.

Many annexures capture the journey and the final message of the judiciary. Many individuals and groups came forward to support and show solidarity which is again captured in the annexures. Media played an important role in highlighting the issue and women’s perspective throughout.

In all, this book captures all that one needs to know about the Muslim women’s fight for gender justice followed by a victory which was their first foray into the religious arena. It is a book about the struggle and triumph of Muslim women as Indian citizens, as women, as Muslims.

Nobody imagined that a democratic struggle by ordinary Muslim women would hit patriarchy at its core and yield a great step forward towards gender justice. The ‘Haji Ali Case’ not only challenged the patriarchy within the Muslim community but also created space for an alternative voice which was desperately trying to speak the language of equality, justice and democracy. This struggle created space for an open debate on women’s rights and religion which hitherto was confined to certain academic circles.

Muslim women in India, led by BMMA, are today at the forefront of reforms, especially those emanating from religion. They have kept it simple- Muslim women will take from the Constitution, from the Quran, from CEDAW, from UDHR and from any other document all that will facilitate their betterment and equality. A Muslim woman is a world citizen today and she has all the right to reach out to all quarters so that she can lead the change not just for herself or for her community but for all humankind and indeed for the entire world.

It is hoped that this book which captures the struggle to reclaim sacred spaces from patriarchal forces inspires other similar movements led by women.