{"id":35457,"date":"2018-10-31T17:40:28","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T12:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=35457"},"modified":"2018-10-31T17:40:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T12:10:28","slug":"two-cheers-for-the-supreme-court-the-hindu-editorialsummary-understanding-context-of-sc-ruling-on-triple-talaq-divorce-rate-of-muslim-women-is-thrice-that-of-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/two-cheers-for-the-supreme-court-the-hindu-editorialsummary-understanding-context-of-sc-ruling-on-triple-talaq-divorce-rate-of-muslim-women-is-thrice-that-of-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Two cheers for the Supreme Court: (The Hindu, Editorial)summary &#038; Understanding context of SC ruling on triple talaq: Divorce rate of Muslim women is thrice that of men:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/two-cheers-for-the-supreme-court\/article19549322.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two cheers for the Supreme Court<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: (The Hindu, Editorial)summary &amp; <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/understanding-context-of-sc-ruling-on-triple-talaq-divorce-rate-of-muslim-women-is-thrice-that-of-men-4810719\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Understanding context of SC ruling on triple talaq: Divorce rate of Muslim women is thrice that of men<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By a majority decision, instantaneous triple talaq is now invalid, a significant victory that is the result of many decades of struggle by the Muslim women\u2019s movement for gender justice.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Welcomed gesture<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That is something that must be welcomed. However, the value of a Supreme Court judgment lies not only in what it decides, but also in the possibilities and avenues that it opens for the future, for further progressive-oriented litigation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In that sense, the triple talaq verdict is a disappointment, because even the majority opinions proceeded along narrow pathways, and avoided addressing some crucial constitutional questions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>The 1937 Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 1937 Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act had codified all Muslim personal law, including the practice of triple talaq.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This brought it within the bounds of the Constitution. It is so because because talaq-e-biddat allowed unchecked power to Muslim husbands to divorce their wives, without any scope for reconciliation, it was \u201carbitrary\u201d, and failed the test of Article 14 (equality before law) of the Constitution. The practice, therefore, was unconstitutional.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under India\u2019s constitutional jurisprudence, personal law that has been given a statutory form, such as the Hindu Marriage Act is subject to the Constitution.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, uncodified personal law is exempted from constitutional scrutiny.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The moment the state legislates on personal law practices, its actions can be tested under the Constitution, but if the state fails to act, then those very practices which, for all relevant purposes, are recognized and enforced by courts as law need not conform to the Constitution.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This jarring position, which had first been advanced by the Bombay High Court in a 1952 decision called Narasu Appa Mali, and has never seriously been challenged after that, has the effect of creating islands of \u201cpersonal law\u201d free from constitutional norms of equality, non-discrimination, and liberty.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Swing vote<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a separate opinion, this turned out to be the \u201cswing vote.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was mentioned that talaq-e-biddat found no mention in the Kuran, and was no part of Muslim personal law.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This brings us back to the dissent. Not only did the dissenting opinion privilege community claims over individual constitutional rights, it also conflated the freedom of religion with personal law, thereby advancing a position where religion could become the arbiter of individuals\u2019 civil status and civil rights.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Data from the Census of India, 2011<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Data showed that while among all religious communities, the rate of divorce was significantly lower among men than among women; the disparity was particularly stark among Muslims.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So while the \u201crefined divorce rate\u201d, or rate of divorce per 1,000 marriages, was 1.59 among Muslim men, among Muslim women, it was more than three and a half times higher \u2014 5.63.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are no concrete data on the prevalence of this form of divorce, the impact of the judgment is, therefore, difficult to measure.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Muslim couples can divorce in other ways too, including through the intervention of religious institutions such as the Qazi and Dar-ul-Qaza.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among Muslim women, the largest percentage of divorces take place in the age group 20-34 (43.9%), in which only 24% of the total Muslim female population lies.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">9% of Muslim women divorcees are of age 19 and below, the most among all communities in this age group.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As per Census 2011, the total number of divorcees in India was only 13.2 lakh, a severely underreported figure, according to activists.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There were 9.09 lakh women divorcees (68% of the total divorcee population) and 4.52 lakh divorced men.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two cheers for the Supreme Court: (The Hindu, Editorial)summary &amp; Understanding context of SC ruling on triple talaq: Divorce rate of Muslim women is thrice that of men:\u00a0 Context By a majority decision, instantaneous triple talaq is now invalid, a significant victory that is the result of many decades of struggle by the Muslim women\u2019s&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/two-cheers-for-the-supreme-court-the-hindu-editorialsummary-understanding-context-of-sc-ruling-on-triple-talaq-divorce-rate-of-muslim-women-is-thrice-that-of-men\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Two cheers for the Supreme Court: (The Hindu, Editorial)summary &#038; Understanding context of SC ruling on triple talaq: Divorce rate of Muslim women is thrice that of men:\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704842684},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}