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© 2008 American Bar Foundation.
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Law & Social Inquiry
Volume 33, Issue 3, 631–672, Summer 2008
Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKLSILaw & Social Inquiry0897-65461747-4469© 2008 American Bar Foundation.XXX
Original Articles
Legal Change and Gender InequalityLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY
Legal Change and Gender Inequality:
Changes in Muslim Family Law
in India
Narendra Subramanian
Group-specific family laws are said to provide women fewer rights
and impede policy change. India’s family law systems specific to religious
groups underwent important gender-equalizing changes over the last
generation. The changes in the laws of the religious minorities were unexpected,
as conservative elites had considerable indirect influence over these laws.
Policy elites changed minority law only if they found credible justification
for change in group laws, group norms, and group initiatives, not only
in constitutional rights and transnational human rights law. Muslim alimony
and divorce laws were changed on this basis, giving women more rights
without abandoning cultural accommodation. Legal mobilization and the
outlook of policy makers—specifically their approach to regulating family
life, their understanding of group norms, and their normative vision of
family life—shaped the major changes in Indian Muslim law. More gender-
equalizing legal changes are possible based on the same sources.
Narendra Subramanian
is an associate professor of political science at McGill University;
he can be reached at narendra.subramanian@mcgill.ca.
The author wishes to thank Josh Cohen, Lawrence Cohen, David Gilmartin, Akhil Gupta,
Wael Hallaq, Donald Horowitz, Nazia Yusuf Izuddin, Werner Menski, K. Sivaramakrishnan,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Sylvia Vatuk, and four anonymous referees for their comments on earlier
drafts; and Ashok Kotwal, Tuli Banerjee, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Akhil Gupta, and Tambirajah
Ponnuthurai for providing opportunities to present the article. Research support came from the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the International Development
Research Centre, and the
Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide a la Recherche
. Research
was undertaken in full accord with all pertinent Canadian regulations governing the conduct
of human subjects’ research. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the Association
for Asian Studies Annual Meeting (March 5, 2004), the University of British Columbia (April
15, 2004), the Association for the Study of Nationalities Convention (April 14–16, 2005),
the Workshop on the Post-Liberalization Indian State, Stanford University (June 5–6, 2005),
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (February 23, 2006).
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY632
INTRODUCTION
The application of distinct family laws to specific cultural groups is a
way in which cultural diversity is recognized. Multicultural institutions often
provide unequal rights to citizens, violate individual rights, impede policy
change, and restrict cultural exchange. Some argue that such outcomes are
inevitable aspects of multiculturalism. Such criticisms are particularly leveled
at plural family law systems.
1
This is because the norms of most groups give
the genders unequal rights in family life, or at least did so when plural family
law systems initially took shape. Policy makers particularly incorporated
gender-unequal norms into group law during crucial phases of state-formation
when they did not consider gender equality an important goal (Kandiyoti
1991; Glendon 1989; Hooker 1975).
Multicultural institutions and policies are particularly important in
accommodating India’s cultural diversities along axes such as religion,
language, caste, sect, and region. The use of distinct family laws to govern
various religious groups and some tribal groups is one of the ways in which
culturally inflected interests are represented. The colonial state introduced
a somewhat centralized system of plural family laws, in which the powers
of adjudication were shared by the state courts and various community courts.
The postcolonial political elite retained much of colonial-era family law to
accommodate the cultural minorities, especially Muslims. There were ten-
sions between this choice and constitutional commitments to promote gender
equality, as all of India’s family law systems provide unequal gender rights
in many respects. Although the Indian constitution included a directive to
homogenize family law in the indefinite future, leading to a Uniform Civil
Code (UCC), policy makers have not followed this course. The judiciary
also resisted appeals to systematically reform the various family laws with
reference to constitutional rights and transnational human rights law.
The plural family law system is the most widely criticized of India’s
multicultural institutions. One of the criticisms of this system is that
it provides limited scope for legal change. The claim that group law is unable
to keep abreast of social change seems to apply particularly to the laws of the
cultural minorities. This is because policy makers claim that the concerned
groups ought to initiate changes in these laws, but conservative religious and
political elites are often regarded as the relevant group representatives and
they are usually unwilling to initiate such changes (Sunder Rajan 2003;
Jacobsohn 2003; Menon 1998; Cossman and Kapur1996; Parashar 1992).
The major family laws underwent greater change over the last generation
than its critics suggest. The changes came primarily through judicial initiative
1. Okin et al. (1999) offered a controversial version of this claim, to which many offered
critical responses in the same volume. Parekh (2006) presented a more balanced account.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 633
and secondarily through legislation. Although the legislature focused on
changes in the laws of the Hindu religious majority in the first postcolonial
decade, the legal changes since the 1970s also extended to the laws of the
religious minorities and reduced the extent of gender inequality in these laws.
They produced convergence in some features of the different group laws,
although these legal systems continued to differ in many of their provisions
and rested on somewhat different jurisprudential foundations.
Criticisms of Indian family law particularly focus on Muslim law for
various reasons. Muslim elites voiced the most assertive demands for the
continued recognition of group law during the transition from colonial rule
and thereafter,
2
and the laws governing Muslims are less codified than those
applied to India’s other major religious groups. Thus, earlier religious texts
and traditions are standards of reference much more often in debates about
Muslim law than about India’s other family law systems. This leads such critics
to assume that Muslim laws give women the least rights and change the
least. However, Muslim laws neither give women fewer rights than India’s
other family law systems in every respect, nor are they more resistant to
change. For instance, Muslim women had greater rights to control shares
of ancestral property than Hindu women did in much of India until Hindu
inheritance law was changed in 2006.
3
(However, Hindu daughters have
rights to greater shares of their parents’ “self-earned” property than Muslim
daughters.) Additionally, it is easier for Muslim women than for Hindu
women to get divorce decrees in community courts. Moreover, Indian Muslim
law changed over the last generation to give women permanent alimony,
to restrict men’s right to unilaterally repudiate their wives, and to give earlier
wives the right to get a divorce if their husbands practice polygamy.
The experience of Indian Muslim law does not appear unusual when
viewed in a comparative perspective. Religious law is dynamic in many societies
when incorporated into contemporary state institutions. Women gained
greater rights over the last half century even while religious law and religious
norms remained influential in diverse countries such as Italy, Chile, Tunisia,
India, and Indonesia. Moreover, the versions of Islamic law, which contemporary
states recognize, vary considerably in the rights they grant women. While
some contemporary Islamic states give women greater rights than in India
(e.g., Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Bangladesh, Indonesia), others give women fewer
rights (e.g., Algeria, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, and until recently, Morocco).
2. See the contributions of Muslim political elites to the relevant sections of India’s
Constituent Assembly debates in Constituent Assembly Debates Official Report (1999,
vol. 7, 540–52, 829–39).
3. The Hindu Succession Act was earlier amended along these lines in four states: Andhra
Pradesh (1986), Tamil Nadu (1988), Karnataka (1990), and Maharashtra (1994). (The legal
abolition of the joint family in Kerala in 1975 had a similar effect on the inheritance prospects
of Hindu and Christian daughters.) Even after this change was extended to the rest of India
in 2006, the rights of Muslim daughters to ancestral property remained stronger than those
of Hindu daughters.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY634
It is worth noting that Muslims account for the majority of the popu-
lation in all the countries just mentioned. Similarly, Islamic law grants women
greater rights in India than in some other Muslim-minority countries (e.g.,
Sri Lanka, Britain) but fewer rights than in others (e.g., Israel). This negates
the frequently expressed view that the constraints are greater to promoting
women’s rights within Islamic law in countries where Muslims are a minority
or where the
ulama
(Muslim religious scholars, the most influential of whom
serve as religious leaders) are allowed more influence over state-recognized
Islamic law.
The variations in the versions of Islamic law that policy makers
recognize, the practices that Islamic law governs, the entities engaged in
Islamic adjudication, and the interaction of Islamic law with other sources
of law do not correspond with the percentage of Muslims in the population.
Islamic law governs only family life in countries like India and Sri Lanka
but extends to aspects of crime and commerce in other countries such as
Nigeria and Pakistan. The main adjudicative bodies are state courts in which
the judges are mostly non-Muslim and mainly trained in Western law in
Britain; state courts in which judges are Muslims trained in Islamic law in
Malaysia; community courts in Israel; and both state courts and community
courts in India. Moreover, the extent of women’s rights does not correspond
with the
madhab
(school of Islamic law/jurisprudence) that governs particular
groups, since the earlier texts of these schools are interpreted very differently,
especially in contemporary state institutions. For instance, the school of
Maliki
law gives women many more rights in Tunisia and Libya than in Algeria,
while the school of
Hanafi
law gives women more rights in Jordan and Iraq
than in Pakistan and India.
4
Legal mobilization influences women’s rights
under Islamic law. So do policy makers’ orientations, especially these elites’
approach to regulating family life, their normative vision of family life, their
valuation of cultural accommodation in family law, their understanding of
Islamic legal and cultural repertoires, and the extent to which they wish to
contain the authority of Muslim religious elites (Yilmaz 2005; Berman 2002;
An-Na’im 2002; Charrad 2001; Mir-Hosseini 2000).
This article outlines the major changes in Muslim law in India over
the last generation and the sources which fed these changes. It explains these
changes with reference to the patterns of legal mobilization and three features
of policy makers’ outlook: their approach to regulating family life, their
understanding of group norms, and their normative vision of family life. Policy
makers’ valuation of cultural accommodation in family law and their
4. The four main schools of Sunni jurisprudence are the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi, and
Hanbali schools. The Hanafi school applies to the majority of Indian Sunnis, among whom
smaller numbers are governed by the Shafi’i school and the more recent Ahl-i-Hadith school,
which claims to be guided solely by Islam’s founding texts, the Quran and the Hadith. The
main Shia school of jurisprudence is the Ithna Ashari, which governs the majority of Indian
Shias. The Musta’lian Isma’ili school governs some Indian Shias.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 635
inclination to contain Muslim religious authority have not changed much
since India’s independence in 1947, so they have not influenced the recent
legal changes.
Many observers claim that the passage of the Muslim Women’s
Protection of Rights Upon Divorce Act (MWPRDA) in 1986 arrested efforts
to reform Indian Muslim law by overturning a prominent instance of such
reform: the Supreme Court judgment in
Mohammad Ahmed Khan v. Shah
Bano Begum
(1985). This article corrects this misperception by demonstrating
that the state courts have been amending Muslim alimony and divorce laws
from the 1970s to present day and indeed that the Supreme Court actually
upheld the
Shah Bano Begum
judgment in its subsequent landmark verdict
on Muslim alimony in
Danial Latifi v. Union of India
(2001). However, the
article confirms that there are limits to change in Indian Muslim law. It shows
that changes have been introduced in Muslim law when policy makers found
credible justification in group laws, group norms, and group initiatives but
not when such justification has been found lacking. That is, gender-equalizing
changes were introduced but without abandoning concerns of cultural accom-
modation. Reformers did not change Muslim family law or the family laws
of other religious minorities—for example, Christians and Parsis—when they
found justification
only
in the sources of law applicable to all Indians. So,
policy makers did not introduce the far-reaching changes for which the Indian
constitution might offer support.
Section I outlines the major features of Indian family law, its sources,
and the most important changes introduced since the 1970s, especially in
Muslim law. Section II identifies the limitations of two interpretations of
these changes. Section III describes the changes in Muslim law in the state
courts and the sources of judicial reform. Section IV identifies the variables
that caused changes in Muslim law and elaborates on the changes in legal
mobilization and the outlook of policy makers that shaped these changes.
Section V points to the interactions of law reform with the orientations of the
organizations engaged in the formation of Muslim law. Section VI summarizes
the argument and indicates its implications for likely future changes.
I. INDIAN FAMILY LAW: OUTLINES AND RECENT
CHANGES
System of Adjudication
Different family laws apply to most of India’s religious groups (Hindus,
Muslims, Christians, Parsis, and Jews) and some groups classified as tribes.
5
5. Hindu law governs Hindus as well as Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains, but it is not applied
to tribal groups, some of whom the census considers Hindu.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY636
The legislatures and courts share law-making authority. The powers of
adjudication are shared by state courts (whose personnel are not recruited
according to group membership) and community courts such as caste
associations, village councils, tribal councils, popularly recognized judges,
prayer groups, and churches. The judges in the state courts are primarily
trained in Western law, particularly in common-law traditions rather than
in religious law. Among the state courts, only the high courts of each state
and the Supreme Court may overrule sections of statutes. The decisions of
the Supreme Court set the definitive precedent for all other state courts,
and those of the high courts set precedents within the relevant state alone.
Only a higher bench of the Supreme Court, composed of more judges, can
override a prior Supreme Court decision.
6
High Court benches may depart
from the precedents of other benches of that court with fewer or the same
number of members.
Community courts do not rely on the same sources as the state courts
and do not necessarily follow the precedents set by state courts. But the
verdicts of community courts may be appealed in state courts, which uphold
some of these verdicts and overrule others. Litigants approach either state
courts or community courts initially; many approach community courts first
as they have better links with them, and the cost and duration of cases tends
to be lower in these courts. This is particularly true of the residents of smaller
towns and villages. The social power of litigants influences judgments more
directly in community courts than in state courts. Community courts vary
in their level of institutionalization, ranging from irregular meetings presided
over by powerful men with local influence who rely on the threat of force
to the court systems of large religious institutions with many branches and
some ongoing authority. While community courts reduce the load on state
courts, some see them as threats to state authority.
Three kinds of community courts play important roles in Muslim
matrimonial cases: local mosque
jama’ats
(councils); popularly recognized
qazis
(judges), a few of whom are appointed by the executive branch; and
the more formally organized
dar’ul quzats
(courts) that are part of prominent
Muslim religious institutions (e.g., the Darul Uloom Deoband and the Darul
Uloom Manzar-e-Islam of Bareilly, both in Uttar Pradesh). The judges in
the
dar’ul quzats
are formally trained in Islamic jurisprudence, especially the
school of Islamic law upheld by the institution; most litigants recognize the
same legal school. The largest
dar’ul quzat
network is part of the Imarat-e-
Shariah, an institution formed in 1917 that also provides religious education
and medical services. It is based in Phulwari Sharif in Bihar and has many
branches in the eastern Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, and Orissa.
6. A bench with a single judge may consider a Supreme Court case; its judgment may
later be overruled by benches with three, five, or seven judges.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 637
Some Changes in Family Law
In the first postcolonial generation, legislative change focused on Hindu
law as it was considered more appropriate for a predominantly Hindu
legislature to change the laws governing Hindus but not those applicable
to the other groups. Changes continued to be introduced thereafter in Hindu
law, in the criminal laws pertaining to family life and in the institutions
engaged in family law adjudication. Hindu daughters were given easier access
to their shares of ancestral property, indigent divorcees were given alimony
rights, and more stringent measures were adopted to punish those who
demanded dowry, received dowry, or inflicted domestic violence. Moreover,
family courts were established in many cities and towns to expedite matrimonial
adjudication (Agnes 1999; Menski 2001; Parashar 1992; Dhanda and Parashar
1999; Epp 1998).
The changes since the 1970s extended beyond Hindu law. The major
changes of this period gave Hindus, Christians, and Parsis the right to divorce
for a wider range of fault-based reasons, as well as on the basis of mutual
consent. Moreover, they gave these groups quicker access to divorce on the
grounds most frequently cited in divorce petitions such as cruelty, desertion,
or adultery. Additionally, unilateral male repudiation was less readily recognized
among Muslims, and Muslim divorcees gained permanent alimony rights.
The Major Sources of Family Law
The state courts draw from the following sources in family law cases:
(1) transnational “Western” law, (2) constitutional rights, (3) criminal laws
relevant to matrimonial life, (4) transnational Islamic law, (5) statutory
group-specific law, (6) uncodified group legal tradition, (7) other group norms,
(8) emergent group practices and initiatives, and (9) subgroup laws and customs.
(1)
Transnational Western law:
The most relevant features of transna-
tional “Western” law are the principles of the growing transnational human
rights regime and private international law. The Indian government signed
various transnational human rights agreements, including the Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW).
7
Rights organizations built networks with transnational human
rights institutions, and innovative lawyers used transnational law (Byrnes,
Connors, and Lum Bik 1996; Cook 1994; An-Na’im 1987–1988). However,
the globalization of law faced domestic constraints. When it signed the
CEDAW in 1980, as well as when it ratified it again in 1993, the Indian
government added the reservation that it would continue its policy of
7. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm (accessed April 6,
2008).
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY638
“non-interference in the personal affairs of any community without its
initiative and consent” (Merry 2006, 104–13). While the legislature did not
change family law in light of CEDAW, lawyers referred to CEDAW standards
in many family law cases, though without much effect.
(2)
Constitutional rights
: Many landmark family law judgments referred
to the fundamental rights in the Indian Constitution to amend statutes or
to depart from judicial precedent. The articles of the Indian Constitution
cited most frequently were Article14 (guarantees equality and equal pro-
tection), Article 15 (prohibits discrimination on various grounds including
sex and religion), and Article 21 (protects life and personal liberty, and has
been interpreted by the courts to also provide the rights to privacy and to
live in dignity). However, changes were not introduced based on constitutional
rights alone. The ruling of the Bombay High Court in
Narasu Appa Mali
v. the State of Bombay
(1952)—that unequal rights across religious groups
and gender, which Indian family law provided, were beyond the scope of
constitutional tests—shaped the approach of courts thereafter.
(3)
Criminal laws relevant to matrimonial life
: A good example is provided
by Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr. P. C.), requiring men
to support their wives, which became a major point of reference in alimony
cases after it was amended in 1973 to require husbands to maintain their
“ex-wives” too. Judges varied in the relative value they attached to the
criminal laws relevant to all Indians and to group-specific laws and traditions.
The two came into conflict with each other in Muslim alimony cases. Until
the above-mentioned criminal law amendment, the courts had given Muslim
divorcees maintenance only for
iddat
(a three-month period, after divorce
is initially pronounced, when men must support their ex-wives). Thereafter,
some decreed permanent alimony, following criminal law, while others
restricted maintenance to the three-month period, following precedents in
Muslim law.
(4)
Transnational Islamic law
: From the late 1970s, judgments and lawyers’
pleas have alluded more frequently to transnational Islamic law. They have
particularly referred to Islamic state law in countries where women enjoy
greater rights than in India, such as Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Indonesia,
and Malaysia, and sometimes to the innovative interpretations of Muslim
scholars in India and other countries.
8
(5)
Statutory group-specific law
: Statutes govern many aspects of family
life among Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, and Parsis. They govern
fewer features of family relations among Muslims and none among Jews.
8. Islamic law gives Muslim women more rights in Malaysia than in India in many respects
such as inheritance rights and constraints on unilateral male repudiation. But it influences
aspects of criminal law in Malaysia, unlike in India, and Islamic criminal law is particularly
gender-unequal in peninsular Malaysia’s eastern provinces of Kelantan and Terengganu, where
the Islamists are powerful. See Hooker (1983); Horowitz (1994); Siraj (1994).
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 639
(6)
Uncodified group legal tradition
: Precolonial legal texts influence many
aspects of family law in the state courts. Mitakshara and Hanafi texts are
the main nonstatutory sources of Hindu and Muslim law in India. Mitakshara
law governs the majority of India’s Hindus, while Hanafi law governs the
majority of India’s Muslims. Case law developed in the colonial courts
through a synthesis of religious and common-law traditions. Judges and lawyers
mainly rely on updated textbooks of colonial family law; they most often
cite Ameer Ali (1929), Mulla (1968), and Fyzee (1999) in Muslim law cases.
The state courts also recognize some laws specific to minority sects or schools
of law. Among Muslims, the Ithna Ashari (also called Jaf’ri) school of law
governs the majority of Shias, the Mustal’ian Ismai’li school governs a
minority of Shias, the Shafi’i school governs a significant minority of Sunnis
while the Ahl-e-Hadith school governs a smaller minority of Sunnis. Shia
women are allowed to retain their
mehar
(dower) after divorces they initiate,
contrary to the recognized practice of foregoing dower under the same
circumstances among Sunnis, who are the majority of Indian Muslims. Courts
do not often allow women governed by Shafi’i law to retrospectively repudiate
marital alliances to which they did not consent, while allowing those
governed by Hanafi law to do so until the consummation of their marriages
or until they turn eighteen.
Muslim community courts (especially the
dar’ul quzats
) rely more often
on precolonial legal texts. The Hanafi courts mainly consult the
Hidayah
(Guidance, the classic Hanafi juridical text of the twelfth century authored
by Burhan-ud-din Ali ben Abu Bakr al-Marghilani) and the
Fatawa-e-
Alamgiri
(the Compendium of Alamgir, composed in the seventeenth century
from the texts of various Islamic jurisprudential schools at the request of
the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb to guide the courts of the Mughal empire).
9
(7)
Other group norms
: The Qur’an, the Bible, and many early Hindu
texts provide guidelines for individual moral action. They are also considered
the foundations of later traditions of religious law. Some intellectuals and
activists argue that some of the guidelines in these texts should influence
legal regulation in contemporary contexts and such arguments inspired many
legal changes over the last century.
10
All schools of Islamic law claim that
they are based on the
sharia
, the moral guidelines indicated by the Qur’an
and the practices of the early Islamic community, which practicing Muslims
9. See Fyzee (1964). Based on interviews with Maulana Jaseemuddin, Chief Qazi, Imarat-
e-Shariah, August 1–2, 2006, in Phulwari Sharif, Bihar; and Maulana Mohammad Burhanuddin
Sambhali, Chief Qazi, Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, August 10, 2006, in Lucknow, Uttar
Pradesh. The author conducted all the interviews cited in this article and has transcripts or
notes of these interviews.
10. Stowasser (1994) and Kvam and Ziegler (1999) discuss reformist interpretations of
the founding texts of the Semitic religions. Hooker (1983), Mir-Hosseini (2000), Charrad
(2001), An-Na’im (2002), and Yilmaz (2005) document the influence of such interpretations
on Islamic law in many countries.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY640
take to be described in the
hadith
(oral traditions regarding the Prophet
Muhammad’s statements, actions, and endorsement of others’ actions).
However, they vary in their
ijtihad
(interpretation) of these sources, as well
as the freedom they give the religious literati and observant Muslims to
incorporate novel interpretations into
fiqh
(substantive law) and
usul al-fiqh
(jurisprudence/legal theory/method of legal reasoning).
11
Some recent reforms
in Indian Muslim law in the state courts were based on interpretations of
Islam’s founding texts which differ from those of most Hanafi
ulama
.
(8)
Emergent group practices and initiatives
: Courts sometimes draw from
emergent group practices and initiatives. For instance, some drew from the
extensive practice and acceptance of divorce in Protestant churches and
among Christian laity to give Christians more extensive divorce rights in
the 1990s.
(9)
Subgroup laws and customs
: In less systematic ways, courts also con-
sider long-lasting customs specific to caste, sect, or region legitimate grounds
for departure from some of the laws of the religious groups to which these
subgroups belong.
The first source is said to be universally applicable, and the second and
the third apply to all Indians. The last six govern only particular religious
or cultural groups, although some claim that the ethical considerations
underlying them have universal relevance. As none of the sources provides a
definite answer to every matrimonial dispute, and these sources frequently suggest
different judgments, there is considerable room for judicial interpretation.
The sources of family law judgments changed over time. In the colonial
and early postcolonial periods, these verdicts drew mostly from statutory law,
texts of Anglo-Indian religious law, and case precedent. Judges did not engage
in much independent interpretation of uncodified traditions. This was
specifically true in Muslim law cases as judges’ knowledge of Islamic traditions
and transnational Islamic law was limited and conservative Muslim elites
opposed novel interpretation, especially by those they did not consider
experts in Islamic law. The choice not to engage in independent interpretation
also drew authority from the injunctions of Sunni orthodoxy against the
reinterpretation of Islam’s founding texts. It had two implications relevant
to subsequent change. First, the courts restricted the obligation of Muslim
men to support their ex-wives only for the three-month
iddat
period, and
made the ex-wife’s natal kin or
waqf
boards (religious or community welfare
trusts) responsible to provide for her thereafter if she became indigent. They
did so although verses of the Qur’an suggest that the husband provide for
11. The Shia and the Ahl-i-Hadith
ulama
usually grant religious scholars and others the
right to engage in
ijtihad
more readily than do the majority of Sunni
ulama
. A variety of Sunni
ulama
and partly Westernized intellectuals have engaged more extensively and consciously in
ijtihad
since the nineteenth century.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 641
the ex-wife’s future or require such provision according to some interpretations.
Second, the courts recognized the so-called triple
talaq
(men’s immediate
unilateral and irrevocable repudiation of their wives), typically pronounced
by the husband with the verbal or written statement “talaq, talaq, talaq”
(“I divorce you,” repeated thrice). The courts recognized this triple
talaq
procedure, although unilateral male repudiation was deemed
raja’i
(revocable)
in the early Islamic community, by some influential Hanafi jurists and some
schools of Islamic law governing many Indians (the Ithna Ashari, Musta’lian
Isma’ili, and Ahl-i-Hadith schools). Other schools of Islamic law preferred
different divorce procedures. All schools of Islamic law prefer that the
husband’s initial pronouncement of divorce be considered revocable for a
three-month period, during which they recommend efforts at spousal
reconciliation. The restriction of the obligation of men to support their
ex-wives to a three-month period worked against the interests of Muslim
divorcees, as their heirs and natal kin were often unable or unwilling to
support them thereafter. The prospect of the husband’s unilateral repudiation
taking immediate effect could make marital relations seem very unstable,
especially for women of limited independent means. Only a small minority
of Muslim women enjoy the right to unilaterally terminate their marriages:
those whose husbands gave them the
talaq-e tafwid
(delegated divorce right)
in their
nikahnama
(marital contracts) (Carrol 1997).
Over the last generation, some judges in the higher courts became more
familiar with transnational Islamic law, Islamic legal and normative traditions,
and recent reformist interpretations of these traditions. The increased reliance
of rights organizations on such sources in propaganda and litigation, the
growth of links between these organizations and the legal elite, and the
increased involvement of some of India’s legal elite in transnational legal
networks contributed to this change. Moreover, some judges became more
inclined to promote gender equality. As a result, some recent landmark
judgments gave women more rights by drawing from Islamic legal and
normative traditions and transnational Islamic law. Some judgments that
granted permanent alimony drew from a Qur’anic verse and Islamic law in
the state courts of Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and those
that ended the immediate recognition of unilateral male repudiation drew
from Qur’anic verses and recent commentaries.
II. INTERPRETATIONS OF INDIAN FAMILY LAW
Many scholars argue that the recognition of cultural diversity in Indian
family law seriously inhibited gender-equalizing change, especially in the laws
of the religious minorities. Indeed, Parashar (1992, 160) claims that “there
has been no reform of Islamic personal law in the independent state of India,”
and Singh (1994, 375) writes that most of India’s family laws “have either
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY642
remained static or have changed in retrogressive ways.” Reform is said to
have been inhibited by the authority of conservative elites and the close
links that many felt between group identity and group law (Parashar 1992;
Sunder Rajan 2003; Kapur and Cossman 1996; Jacobsohn 2003). This
interpretation suffers from many problems.
First, the above understanding ignores the changes in Muslim, Christian,
and Parsi law over the last generation. Second, it inaccurately suggests that
Hindu law gives women greater rights than other Indian family laws. Contrary
to this claim, Muslim and Christian women had greater rights to control
shares of ancestral property than Hindu women did in much of India, until
Hindu inheritance law was changed in 2006. Third, this approach does not
recognize or explain the partial convergence of India’s different family law
systems since the 1970s. For instance, divorce became more readily available
to both Hindus and Christians and on much the same grounds—mainly
cruelty, desertion, adultery, or mutual consent. Fourth, this view does not
adequately recognize the increased challenges to the gendered visions
of conservative minority religious elites. Challenges emerged from women’s
organizations and rights organizations among both Muslims and Christians.
They urged some Muslim religious elites to oppose the immediate recognition
of unilateral male repudiation and pressed Christian churches to accept more
equal and extensive divorce rights (Dhanda and Parashar 1999; Menski 2001;
Gandhi and Shah 1992).
Finally, this interpretation assumes that religious laws and group-specific
family laws are hard constraints to gender-equalizing change. Evidence from
various countries does not support this premise. Women gained greater rights
after decolonization in many countries where family laws were rooted
in religion. State elites found such legal changes a means to gain greater
autonomy from religious elites and kin structures in Tunisia, Jordan, and Iraq
(Charrad 2001; Joseph 2000; Joseph and Najmabadi 2005). Such changes
helped the state elites demonstrate their commitment to modernization in
a wider range of countries, including countries with plural legal systems like
Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India (Hooker 1983; Agnes 1999;
Goonesekere 2004). While these changes fell well short of the aspirations
of the feminists of the time, this was due more to the limits to which policy
makers prioritized gender equality than because family laws were partly based
on religious traditions. The subsequent growth of women’s organizations and
other rights’ organizations led policy makers to grant women further rights
in some of these countries while retaining religious or plural legal systems.
Shankar (2002, n.d.) attributes the onset of reform in Indian Muslim law
to an increase in judicial autonomy. She claims that the judicial elite were not
in accord with the political elite’s prioritization of cultural accommodation
over gender equality—indeed that judiciaries in all liberal democracies
prioritized individual rights to political equality over practices based on group
culture. Once the judicial elite gained sufficient autonomy from the political
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 643
elite in the 1990s, the Indian judiciary is said to have promoted women’s
rights in family law. This argument is seriously flawed.
First, Shankar claims that judicial autonomy increased from 1996, when
multiparty coalition governments ruled India, but the judicial reform of
non-Hindu law actually started two decades earlier. The coalition governments
have been reasonably stable since 1999, and one of them significantly
changed Christian divorce laws in light of judicial suggestions, some of which
date from the 1960s; another revised Hindu inheritance laws based on reforms
made by five state governments (the state reforms date from the 1980s).
Although the judiciary gained greater powers of judicial review starting in
the 1960s, it had enjoyed considerable autonomy in its interpretation
of family law since India’s independence in 1947. It had particularly great
autonomy in the adjudication of Muslim law cases because of the limited
codification of Muslim law. The most important legislation regarding Muslim
law, the Muslim Personal Law Application Act of 1937, merely stated that
the Sharia governs Muslims in family matters without specifying which
version of Islamic law it recognized. Of the other two Muslim law acts (the
Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act and the MWPRDA), the latter took
effect only in 1986. So, much of the content of India’s Muslim law was left
to the judiciary’s discretion (Mahmood 1997; Agnes 1999; Verma 2002;
An-Na’im 2002).
Second, judiciaries accepted sharp inequalities across race, gender, and
religious group in various liberal democracies. The acceptance of racialized
slavery and then racial segregation in the United States is particularly notable
(Kluger 2004; Cottrol, Diamond, and Ware 2003). In India, judges accepted
unequal rights across religious group and gender in family life since
Narasu
Appa Mali v. the State of Bombay
(1952), although they had the autonomy
to rule otherwise. They did so because they valued cultural accommodation
in family law, much as the legislators did, and because they felt it was more
appropriate that the executive and the legislature decide whether and when
to override recognized cultural norms to promote equality. Third, the reform
of minority law was mainly grounded in the group-specific sources of law.
III. CHANGES IN MUSLIM LAW
Alimony
Through the colonial and early postcolonial periods, the courts required
Muslim men to provide for their ex-wives only for three months, in addition
to returning their dower, which the man’s family typically controlled while
the couple was married. Maintenance was decreed for longer periods only
in exceptional cases when marriage contracts required this (
Muhammad Muin-
ud-din v. Jamal Fatima
1921). The period through which the man was obliged
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY644
to support his ex-wife was dependent upon when the courts ruled the divorce
took effect. Courts varied in when they ruled unilateral male repudiation
(the most frequent form of divorce among Indian Muslims) took effect, which
was when witnesses attested that the man pronounced divorce (even if in
the wife’s absence), when the man wrote a divorce statement, when the woman
was informed of the divorce, or when the man stated in court that he
had repudiated the woman. The men were then required to provide main-
tenance until three months after the date on which the divorce took effect.
12
The amendment of Section 125 of the Cr. P. C. in 1973, requiring men
to pay permanent alimony, was meant to apply to all religious groups. But
Section 127(3)(b) of the Cr. P. C. deducted any amount the husband may
have already given his ex-wife—following the requirements of the personal
law governing the couple—from the payment the husband owed. This clause
was introduced in response to the demands of some Muslim legislators for
the deduction of the dower from the maintenance obligations of Muslim
men (Parashar 1992, 16468).
13
However, some Muslim men argued that
the clause meant that they were obliged to support their ex-wives only for
three months.
The state high courts varied in their responses to such pleas between
1973 and 1985. The husbands were required to pay permanent alimony in
more of these cases until 1985, and three judgments of the Supreme Court
from 1979 to 1985, including one by a Constitution Bench, lent this inter-
pretation authority.
14
The courts required Hindu husbands to pay permanent
alimony in all maintenance cases after 1973, in contrast with their varying
responses in similar cases involving Muslims. In some, but not all, cases,
they deducted the maintenance payments that Hindu husbands had already
made, based on statutory or uncodified Hindu law, from the further amount
the husband owed the wife.
12. The divorce was dated when the man declared that he divorced the woman in
Sarabai
v. Rabiabai
(1905),
Ma Mi v. Kallander Ammal
(1927), and
Ahmad Giri v. Masarat Begha
(1955);
on the date of the man’s written divorce statement in
Asmata Ullah v. Khatun-unnisa
(1939),
Chandbi v. Bandesha (1961), Mohammad Haneefa v. Pathummal Beevi (1972), and Jaitunbi
Mubarak Shaikh v. Mubarak Fakruddin Shaikh (1999); when the woman learned of the divorce
in Kathiyamma v. Urathel Marakkar (1931) and Abdul Khader v. Aziza Bee (1944); and the
day the man told the court that he had divorced the woman in Syed Jamaluddin v. Valian Be
(1975) and Shaikh Jalil v. Bibi Safrunnisa (1977).
13. Conservative Muslim legislators did so although Islamic legal traditions clearly
distinguish the husband’s obligation to pay dower from his maintenance obligations. Judges
nevertheless distinguished between the two obligations in Hamira Bibi v. Zubaide Bibi (1916),
Syed Sabir Husain v. Farzand Hasan (1938), Mohammad Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985),
and Abdul Khader v. Smt. Razia Begum (1990).
14. Some of the high court cases following this pattern were Khurshid Khan Amin Khan
v. Husnabanu (1976) and Mehbubabi Nasir Shaikh v. Nasir Farid Shaikh, (1976). The relevant
Supreme Court judgments were Bai Tahira v. Ali Hussain Fisalli Chothi (1979), Fuzlunbi v. Khader
Vali (1980), and Mohammad Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum (1985). The courts required
the payment of maintenance for just three months in other cases such as Rukhsana Parvin v.
Sheikh Mohammad Hussain (1977) and Aluri Sambaiah v. Shaikh Zahirabi (1977).
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 645
The verdicts between 1973 and 1985, granting Muslim women permanent
alimony, relied on the argument that legislators meant the criminal law
requiring permanent alimony to apply to all Indians, as well as on interpreting
verses of the Qur’an to require husbands to provide permanent maintenance.15
The use of the first standard appeared to give criminal law primacy over
Muslim law. But the reference to the Qur’an justified permanent alimony
with reference to Islamic norms. For instance, the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano
Begum judgment relied on the interpretations of some Qur’anic verses offered
by Arthur Arberry (renowned British scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies)
and Allamah Khadim Rahmani Nuri (the author of a widely cited commentary
on the Qura’n) to require husbands to provide for their ex-wives and rejected
the claims that this was a requirement only for the particularly righteous
rather than for all Muslim men. Additionally, the judgment added that Islam
disregarded women’s dignity, that a UCC should be introduced, and that
instead of wasting their energies in exerting theological and political
pressure in order to secure an “immunity” for their traditional personal
law from the State’s legislative jurisdiction, the Muslims will do well
to begin exploring and demonstrating how the true Islamic laws, purged
of their time-worn and anachronistic interpretations, can enrich the
common civil code of India. (Mohammad Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano
Begum 1985, 959)
Conservative Muslims responded to this judgment with the most
extensive legal mobilization seen in India since the 1950s. They opposed
the following features of the judgment: commonly applicable laws overriding
provisions of group law, the courts presuming to interpret the Qur’an rather
than following recognized commentaries, the recommendation that the
legislature introduce a UCC, and the characterization of Islam as incompatible
with women’s dignity.
The Indian Parliament passed the MWPRDA in 1986 to contain con-
servative Muslim mobilization against the 1985 Shah Bano Begum judgment.
Although conservative Muslim leaders participated in framing this act and
supported it, some of the act’s provisions did not clearly fit their position
that Muslim husbands should be required to pay alimony only through the
iddat period.16 While Section 3 restricted the husband’s maintenance
15. The relevant verses in the Qur’an read: “For divorced women, maintenance should
be provided on a reasonable scale” (Sura 2 (Baqara): 240– 42) and “Let the divorced women
dwell where ye dwell, according to your means, and do not harm them, to reduce them to
straits” (Sura 65 (Medinah): 5).
16. Makhan Lal Fotedar, who was an adviser to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, is said to
have pressed the conservative Muslim leaders into accepting the act’s ambiguous wording, using
the threat that the act would not be placed before parliament unless it was approved in the
form that the Law Ministry had drafted it. Interview: Yusuf Hatim Muchhala, Convenor, All India
Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) Legal Committee, July 1, 14, and 31, 2007, in Delhi.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY646
obligations to the iddat period, Sections 3(1)(a) and 4 called for the husband
to pay for his ex-wife’s “fair and reasonable provision” (perhaps in addition
to maintenance) for an unspecified length of time “within the iddat period.”
The intent of legislators, as reflected in the positions taken by most of the
act’s supporters and opponents in the Indian Parliament, was to restrict the
husband’s economic obligations to his ex-wife to just three months.17 However,
the act lent itself readily to the interpretation that the husband should make
a lump-sum payment to support his ex-wife for an indefinite period within
three months of pronouncing divorce. So, the passage of the MWPRDA
did not end contestation in the courts over Muslim alimony regulations.
Lawyers contested the MWPRDAs possible restriction of the husband’s
maintenance obligations to the iddat period in a number of maintenance
cases filed on behalf of Muslim divorcees between 1986 and 2001. They did
so with reference to the wording of the MWPRDA, which they took to dictate
permanent maintenance, the alleged incompatibility of inadequate provision
for indigent women with the constitutional rights to life and dignity (Article
21) and the presumed incompatibility of authorizing different alimony rights
according to religious group membership with the rights to equality and non-
discrimination (Articles 14 and 15). In addition, they reiterated the claims
made in similar cases filed before the MWPRDA’s passage regarding the
legislative intent behind the 1973 amendment of Article 125 of the Cr. P. C.
The high courts responded differently to these permanent alimony
plaints, much as they had before the MWPRDA was passed. Minimalist courts
interpreted the MWPRDA to require nothing of the ex-husband but
maintenance during iddat and the payment of dower, resisted interpreting
the Qur’an otherwise, and left it to legislators to resolve tensions between
such alimony guidelines and the Constitution.18 Some of them drew more
from uncodified Muslim law than the MWPRDA to restrict alimony rights
(Usman Khan Bahamani v. Fathimunnisa Begum 1990), while others granted
maintenance for just three months, even if the marriage was conducted before
17. However, some women legislators who supported the act did suggest that the act
would enable satisfactory provision for Muslim divorcees. Some conservative Muslim leaders
say that they foresaw the dangers in the draft wording and suggested to Rajiv Gandhi, then
Indian Prime Minister, that the phrase “for the iddat period” replace “within the iddat period”
to clarify the period for which provision was required. Interviews (all conducted in Delhi):
Dr. Qasim Rasool Ilyas, Secretary, AIMPLB, April 10, 2003; Maulana Jalaluddin Umri, Vice-
President, Jamaat-i-Islami Hind, April 10, 2003; Yusuf Hatim Muchhala, Convenor, AIMPLB
Legal Committee, July 14, 2007; Zafaryab Jilani, AIMPLB lawyer, July 23, 2006; Syed
Shahabuddin, former President, Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, July 24, 2006.
18. See Ramzan v. Smt. Salma (1987), Abid Ali v. Mst. Rasia Begum (1988), Mohamed
Ibrahim v. Ramzan Begum (1993), Mrs. Nazimunnissa Begum v. Abdul Majeeth (1994), Shaikh
Dada Saheb v. Shaikh Mastan Bee (1995), Noor Jehan v. State of Maharashtra (1996), Abdul
Haq v. Yasmin Talat (1998), and Aziza Khan v. Dr. Amir Hussain (1999). Some courts allowed
divorcees to enjoy parts of their husband’s immovable property until the husband paid the
dower (Md. Nayeem Khan v. Union Law Secretary, Government of India 2002).
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 647
the passage of the MWPRDA (G. M. Jeelani v. Shanswar Kulsum 1992),
though not if lower courts had ruled in favor of permanent alimony before
the MWPRDA was passed (M. H. Hameed v. Arif Jan, alias Shahida Begum
1990; Abdul Khader v. Smt. Razia Begum 1990). In most of these cases, the
courts did not direct the divorcee’s heirs or waqf boards to support the woman,
although the MWPRDA called for one or the other to assume maintenance
responsibilities after iddat. In the few cases in which the courts required this,
they did not ensure that this responsibility was fulfilled (Syed Fazal Pookaya
Thangal v. Union of India 1993; Sadique Ali v. Apar Sessions Naiyai Dheesh 1995).
Other courts ruled in favor of more generous provisions for Muslim
divorcees. The majority of them found justification for their verdicts in the
MWPRDA’s call for “fair and reasonable provision,” which they took to apply
to the period until the divorcee’s remarriage or death, the claims to protect
Muslim women’s rights in the act’s preamble, and by reading the act in light
of the Constitution’s guarantees of the rights to life, dignity, and equality.19
Some courts considered such provision compatible with the Qur’an (for
instance, Arab Ahmedhia Abdullah v. Arab Bail Mohmuna Saiyadbhai 1988;
Danial Latifi v. Union of India 2001), and others took the MWPRDA to supersede
uncodified Muslim law in this context, if the latter indeed restricted alimony
rights to the iddat period (Ali v. Sufaira 1988; Aliyar v. Pathu 1988). Yet
other courts grounded permanent alimony decrees for Muslim divorcees on
the argument that the mandate of Section 125 of the Cr. P. C. (that husbands
provide permanent maintenance) overrode the MWPRDA (Abdullah Rauf
Khan v. Halemon Bibi 1989; Noor Saba Khatoon v. Mohammad Quasim 1997).
In some of the cases in which women were given maintenance beyond iddat,
the maintenance payments were well in excess of the maximum amount
decreed under Section 125 of the Cr. P. C. for non-Muslim divorcees, which
was five hundred Indian rupees per month (about $10 U.S.). This was crucial
as, with the passage of time, inflation had rendered 500 rupees per month
insufficient for an individual’s maintenance.
The Supreme Court resolved the differing signals given by high courts
in Danial Latifi v. Union of India (2001), in which the lead lawyers who had
represented Shah Bano Begum earlier successfully argued that Muslim men
owed their ex-wives permanent alimony even after the passage of the
MWPRDA. This made the alimony claims of Muslim women potentially
stronger than those of non-Muslim divorcees as the judgment placed
no ceiling on maintenance payments for Muslim divorcees. Only a legislative
amendment to Section 125 of the Cr. P. C., passed later in 2001, removed
19. Some of the high court judgments along these lines were Ahmed v. Aysha (1990),
Abdul Khader v. Smt. Razia Begum (1990), Jaitunbi Mubarak Shaikh v. Mubarak Shaikh (1993),
Kunhammed Haji v. K.Amina (1995), Kaka v. Hassan Bano (1998), Shaikh Babbu v. Sayeda
Masarat Begum (1999), Karim Abdul Rehman Shaikh v. Shehnaz Karim Shaikh (2000), Abdul
Latif Mondal v. Anuwara Khatun (2001), Hasenara Begum v. Fazar Ali (2002).
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY648
the ceiling on maintenance payments and brought the alimony rights of
non-Muslim women on par once again with those of Muslim women.
Nevertheless, books published as late as 2003 said the MWPRDA was “regressive”
(Sunder Rajan 2003, 14849), and an important political philosopher
claimed it should be called the “The Protection of Muslim Husbands’ Rights
on Divorce Bill” (Okin 2001).
The court’s full bench in the Danial Latifi case justified permanent
alimony with reference to the MWPRDA, the Qur’an, the Indian Constitution,
and Islamic law as applied in Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
It proclaimed the Shah Bano Begum judgment a definitive precedent even
after the passage of the MWPRDA, although the MWPRDA seemed
intended to overrule the latter judgment. Justice S. Rajendra Babu, the author
of the main Danial Latifi judgment, indicated that the bench was unlikely
to have decreed permanent alimony in this case on the basis of constitutional
provisions alone, but litigants and prior judgments had made the bench aware
that the MWPRDA lent itself to being interpreted in favor of the verdict
and that verses of the Qur’an could be read to favor permanent alimony.20
This restrained exercise in judicial reform resisted pleas to invalidate sections
of the MWPRDA, although this act seemed intended to deny Muslim women
permanent alimony, as well as to rule some features of uncodified Islamic
law irrelevant. The court’s restraint in the Danial Latifi case was in contrast
with the calls of earlier Supreme Court Benches for a UCC in Shah Bano
Begum and Sarla Mudgal. It was in keeping with the court’s approach in more
recent cases in which activist lawyers demanded widespread changes in family
law: Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group v. Union of India (1997) and Lily
Thomas v. Union of India (2000). These later judgments underlined that the
courts were willing to amend features of group-specific law but not to
introduce far-reaching changes based on constitutional principles.21
20. Interviews in Delhi: Justice S. Rajendra Babu, former Chief Justice of India and Chair,
National Human Rights Commission, July 2–3, 2007; Justice Shivaraj Patil, former Supreme
Court judge, on Danial Latifi bench, June 21, 2007; Justice G. B. Pattanaik, former Supreme
Court judge, on Danial Latifi bench, June 30, 2007; Justice M. B. Shah, former judge on Gujarat
high court and Supreme Court, author of Arab Ahmedhia Abdullah (1988), the first high court
judgment to award permanent alimony to a Muslim divorcee after the passage of the Muslim
Women’s Act, July 5, 2007. Interview in Chennai: Justice Doraiswamy Raju, former Supreme
Court judge, on Danial Latifi bench, August 7, 2007. Justice Rajendra Babu said that some
members of the bench might have been inclined to overrule aspects of the Muslim Women’s
Act based on constitutional rights, even if reasons for reform were not found in the wording
of the act and Islamic norms. But, he added, it could have been difficult to achieve consensus
on the bench under these circumstances, and the political elite might have found it difficult
to support such a judgment in the face of the strong opposition it was likely to have faced
from many Muslims.
21. Interviews in Delhi (all are lawyers): Sona Khan, April 28 and May 1, 2003; Indira
Jaising, July 20, 2006; Kirti Singh, April 11, 2003.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 649
The Danial Latifi judgment did not evoke conservative Muslim
mobilization for the legislature to overrule it, as the Shah Bano Begum and
Sarla Mudgal judgments had, partly because of its restraint. Conservative
mobilization was also deterred by the changed political context since Shah
Bano Begum in 1985—by the greater strength of Hindu nationalism, the
increase in violence against Muslims, and the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP)
leading the national coalition government. The lack of concerted conservative
opposition to the Danial Latifi judgment makes it unlikely that Muslim women
will lose their rights to permanent alimony in the higher state courts. The
knowledge of judges and lawyers in the lower courts is uneven about such
recent landmark judgments, however, and some lower courts continue to
restrict maintenance for Muslim divorcees to a three-month period.
If, in the future, the judiciary interprets the MWPRDA’s requirement
that Muslim men provide “fair and reasonable provision” to their ex-wives
to give them shares in matrimonial property, this would place Muslim
divorcees in a stronger position than non-Muslim divorcees. (The Protection
of Women from Domestic Violence Act, which the parliament passed in
2006, gives all Indian women the right to reside in the matrimonial home.
But this is still far short of a right to share in all matrimonial property.)
The considerable sums that the courts awarded a few Muslim divorcees with
wealthy ex-husbands suggest that this might be possible. The language of
the MWPRDA lends itself to such an interpretation, while Section 125 of
the Cr. P. C. (which governs non-Muslims, and in light of the conflicts in
case law already discussed, perhaps Muslims too) does not.
Unilateral Male Repudiation
Courts often assessed the validity of unilateral male repudiation when
considering the claims of Muslim women for maintenance from their
husbands. This was because until 1973 all courts recognized maintenance
rights beyond a three-month period only if the marriage continued to exist
in the court’s view, and many courts took that position even thereafter,
especially between 1986 and 2001. The man often minimized his obligations
in such maintenance cases by declaring that he had already divorced the
woman or that he was divorcing her immediately. The effects of the courts
accepting the validity of unilateral male repudiation varied. Women litigants
lost post-iddat maintenance in all cases until 1973 and in many cases between
1986 and 2001. But in some cases after 1986, the MWPRDA was interpreted
to require the men to give their ex-wives substantial provision for the future,
while leaving the women free to marry someone else. The invalidation of
unilateral male repudiation sometimes favored men, as it did in Furzund
Hossein v. Janu Bibee (1878), in which the man gained the right to his wife’s
conjugal company.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY650
The judiciary initially recognized unilateral male repudiation uncondi-
tionally and later introduced some conditions for its validity. Adjudication
on this issue was based on uncodified Muslim legal traditions, the Qur’an,
and colonial precedent, not on legislation or the constitution. Indeed, there
was no legislation about male repudiation. Judges recognized unilateral male
repudiation to be irrevocable in colonial times, although this neither
concurred with their normative vision of durable marital bonds nor with
the practices valued in the early Islamic community and by all schools of
Islamic law. A judgment in 1905 standardized the rationale for this position,
saying that the irrevocability of the triple talaq was “good in law, though
bad in theology” (Sarabai v. Rabiabai 1905, 537). The courts followed
this precedent until 1978, varying only on whether the divorce may be
pronounced in the wife’s absence and the standards of proof (from none to
oral or written evidence).
Some judges expressed misgivings about the ready availability of
unilateral male repudiation, yet recognized the practice on the claim that
Islamic tradition provided no alternative (Sarabai v. Rabiabai 1905, Asha Bibi
v. Kadir Ibrahim 1909). In doing so, they based their decisions on the rules
of the Hanafi school, which governs most Indian Muslims, rather than
promote the durability of the conjugal family by drawing from other schools
(the Ithna Ashari, Musta’lian Isma’ili, and Ahl-i-Hadith), which govern a
significant minority of Indian Muslims.22 Colonial judges did not resort to
such eclecticism, although talfiq (an eclectic method of borrowing from other
Islamic legal schools) was widely recognized for a long time in Islamic
jurisprudence, if done judiciously by highly trained Islamic jurists. Muslim
religious elites occasionally resorted to talfiq to help frame reformist legisla-
tion, notably in drawing from Maliki law to provide women greater divorce
rights in the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act of 1939, but not to restrict
unilateral repudiation (Zaman 2002).
Some judges ruled in the 1970s that the talaq-ul ba’in was incompatible
with Islamic traditions. Justice Krishna Iyer opined so in an obiter dictum in
A.Yousuf Rawther v. Sowramma (1971), and Justice Baharul Islam further ruled
22. Courts sometimes recognize the different treatment of the triple talaq in Shia
jurisprudence, if urged by lawyers, but do not do so in a systematic fashion. This is in contrast
with the more systematic application of different inheritance laws to Shias. Some Shia ulama
and the recently formed Shia Personal Law Board demand that courts recognize the
distinctiveness of Shia law more systematically. The triple talaq seems to be widely practiced
among Indian Shias, much as it is among the Sunnis, although the schools of Shia law do
not support this practice. Interviews in Lucknow: Shiko Azad, founder, Shia Personal Law Board,
August 10, 2006; Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, Vice-President, AIMPLB and the most prominent
Shia leader of the AIMPLB, August 11, 2006. Interviews in Delhi: Yusuf Hatim Muchhala,
Convenor, AIMPLB Legal Committee, July 1, 14, and 31, 2007; Justice Aziz M. Ahmadi,
former Chief Justice of India and the most prominent Shia judge, July 17, 2007; Maulana
Aqeel al-Gharavi, Shia religious scholar, AIMPLB member, and Vice President, Muslim Majlis-
e-Mushawarat, July 30, 2007.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 651
in Jiauddin Ahmed v. Anwar Begum (1978) that the triple talaq is revocable.
The latter judgment quoted relevant verses from the Qur’an, and some
commentators, to conclude that:
the correct law of talaq as ordained by the Holy Qur’an is that talaq
must be for a reasonable cause and be preceded by attempts at re-
conciliation between the husband and the wife by two arbiters—one
from the wife’s family and the other from the husband’s. If the attempts
fail, talaq may be effected. (Jiauddin Ahmed v. Anwar Begum 1978, 388)
It established two conditions for the validity of repudiation—the
husband indicating a reasonable cause and an attempt having been made
at reconciliation.
The verdict against the irrevocable nature of the triple talaq initiated
not only similar verdicts from some other high courts but also declarations
of support from some conservative Muslim religious institutions (Jamaat
Ahl-i-Hadith) and political organizations (Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat).
Conservative Muslim elites were less unanimous in their opposition to the
restriction of unilateral repudiation than to permanent alimony because the
Qur’an provided a clearer basis for the first than for the second (Jamaat
Ahl-i-Hadith 1994; Shahabuddin 1992; Mahmood 1998; All India Muslim
Personal Law Board 2002).23 As a result, the All India Muslim Personal Law
Board (AIMPLB), the most important defender of Muslim law precedent,
did not intervene in the cases in which the validity of the triple talaq was
contested. Smaller associations of Muslim religious elites or lawyers defended
the maintenance of precedent in some of these cases but had fewer resources
at their disposal.24 The support of some conservative Muslim elites lowered
the obstacles to the consolidation of Muslim divorce law reform.
The high courts responded differently to cases regarding the validity
of unilateral male repudiation from 1978 until the Supreme Court delivered
23. Interviews in Delhi: Maulana Abdul Wahab Khilji, former General Secretary, Jamaat
Ahl-i-Hadith, May 4, 2003; Syed Shahabuddin, former President, Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat,
July 24, 2006; Justice Badr Durrez Ahmed, author of a judgment against the triple talaq, August
1, 2007. Interviews in Chennai: Habeebulla Basha (lawyer), January 24, 2003; Justice S. A.
Kader, February 2, 2003; Justice A. Abdul Hadi, February 24, 2003.
24. For instance, the Islamic Shariat Board (based in Kerala) intervened in Shamim Ara,
and the Tamil Nadu Advocates Meelad Forum intervened in Parveen Akhtar. Interviews in
Delhi: Justice Ramesh Chandra Lahoti, former Chief Justice of India and author of the Shamim
Ara judgment, June 26, 2007; Justice P. Venkatarama Reddi, former Supreme Court judge,
who sat on the Shamim Ara bench, July 2, 2007; Dr. Tahir Mahmood, prominent scholar of
Islamic law and religious law in India, Member, Law Commission, former Chairman, National
Commission for Minorities, and former member, National Human Rights Commission, April
5, 2003 and July 21, 2006. Interviews in Chennai: Zaffarullah Khan (lawyer), February 6, 2003;
Habeebulla Basha (lawyer), January 24, 2003; Bader Sayeed (lawyer) January 20, 2003; P. V.
S. Giridhar (laywer), February 6, 2003; K.A. Sukkur (litigant), February 18, 2003; Justice S.
A. Kader, February 2, 2003.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY652
its definitive verdict in Shamim Ara in 2002.25 (The first two judgments
restricting the acceptance of unilateral male repudiation were not widely
noticed and the next one was issued over a decade later, in 1993.) Even
after recent increased awareness among some judges about Islamic traditions,
judges remained far more aware of legislation. Hence, more judges were
willing to decree post-iddat maintenance based primarily on the MWPRDA
or Section 125 of the Cr. P. C. than to invalidate divorces pronounced
through the triple talaq. Thus, there were twenty-two reported cases of high
court decrees of post-iddat maintenance in the fifteen years between the pas-
sage of the MWPRDA and the definitive Supreme Court judgment in 2001,
but only ten reported cases in which the triple talaq was deemed revocable
in the twenty-four years between the first such high court decree and the
Supreme Court judgment in 2002. Between 1978 and 2002, the high courts
accepted the irrevocability of the triple talaq in the majority of cases in which
it was challenged, in contrast with their permanent alimony decrees in a
little over a half of such cases between 1986 and 2001 (see notes 18, 19,
and 25). This was the case even though conservative opposition to legal
reform was weaker regarding repudiation than regarding alimony.
The Shamim Ara judgment settled the question for the formal courts
in 2002, repeating the conditions specified in Jiauddin Ahmed v. Anwar Begum
(1978) for the validity of male repudiation. Neither this judgment nor the
preceding high court judgments clarified how courts would interpret these
conditions before they accepted the validity of male repudiation, partly
because these verdicts invalidated divorce claims. They did not indicate what
would be considered good reasons for a Muslim man to want to divorce his
wife—for instance, whether they would be the same grounds on which
Muslim women are permitted judicially mediated divorce (in which case
divorce could be equally accessible to men and women) or if men could
repudiate for a wider range of reasons. These verdicts left unclear the course
courts should follow if they determined that appropriate efforts had not been
made to effect spousal reconciliation—whether to merely refuse to recognize
the repudiation or to appoint mediators to attempt reconciliation. The lower
courts will need to address these questions over the next few years, while
25. The following judgments deemed the talaq-ul ba’in invalid in this period: Rukia Khatun
v. Abdul Khalique Laskar (1981), Zeenat Fatema Rashid v. Md. Iqbal Anwar (1993), Motiur Raha-
man v. Sabina Khatun (1994), Rahmat Ullah v. State of U. P. (1994), Shaikh Mobin v. State of
Maharashtra (1996), Saleem Basha v. Mumtaz Begum (1998), Kadar Mian v. Jahera Khatun (1998),
Sairo Bano v. Mohd. Aslam Ghulam Mustafa Khan (1999), Zulekha Begum alias Rahmathunnisa
Begum v. Abdul Raheem (2000), Shamim Ara v. State of U. P. (2002). The triple talaq was still
considered irrevocable in the majority of such cases, including Ramzan v. Smt. Salma (1987),
Abid Ali v. Mst. Rasia Begum (1988), Sayed Newaj Ali alias Neti v. Rasida Begum (1991), Jaitunbi
Mubarak Shaikh v. Mubarak Fakruddin Shaikh (1993), Sheikh Saber Ali v. Smt. Sahmim Banu
(1996), Aziza Khan v. Dr. Amir Hussain (1999). The lower courts seem to have accepted the
triple talaq in a higher proportion of cases.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 653
basing judgments upon the Shamim Ara precedent. However, my interviews
show that some judges and lawyers in the lower courts were either unaware
of or misunderstood this landmark judgment.
The courts regarding the triple talaq as revocable made for partial con-
vergence with Hindu divorce law. While Hindu law statutes do not recognize
unilateral divorce, a legislative amendment in 1964 enabled litigants to base
their divorce claims on their own choice to live apart from their spouses
for two years, after decrees of judicial separation, or for the restitution of
conjugal rights. This meant that disaffected spouses could unilaterally end
their marriages, though only after living separately for two years (reduced
to one year in 1976), an option used almost entirely by men.26 The constraints
placed on the validity of unilateral male repudiation may have a similar effect
by requiring the passage of some time before Muslim men can unilaterally
gain divorces.27
Patterns and Limits of Change in Muslim Law in the State Courts
The courts justified the changes they introduced in Muslim law over
the last generation with reference to features of statutory Muslim law, Islamic
legal and normative traditions, and transnational Islamic law. They also
alluded to constitutional rights, but departed from precedent only when they
felt that group law and group norms also offered plausible support.
Judges’ perceptions of group norms limited the extent of legal change.
Their perceptions restrained judges from invalidating unilateral male
repudiation altogether, allowing either woman-initiated no-fault divorce
through judicial mediation or unilateral female repudiation, giving separated
and divorced women shares in matrimonial property, and extending daughters’
shares of familial property equal to those of sons. These perceptions led judges
to recognize the inheritance rights of agnatic kin despite the ongoing
nuclearization of families.28 Islamic normative repertoire limited reform in
all these respects.
26. Section 23(1)(a) of the Hindu Marriage Act required judges to ensure that people
petitioning for divorce were not taking advantage of their “own wrong,” such as refusal to
follow a judicial order to resume cohabitation. However, judges only began to pay more systematic
attention to this requirement from the 1980s, granting divorce only if they found that the
petitioner had not caused the couple to live apart (Menski 2003, 450; 2001, 115–19).
27. I am grateful to Werner Menski for alerting me to convergence in this regard.
28. Some Indians of all religious groups favor their daughters over their siblings and nephews
as successors due to family nuclearization. As a result, some Muslim couples with daughters
but no sons register their marriages under the Special Marriage Act (as all Indian couples
may, but very few do), to be able to will their property to their daughters alone. Interviews
in Chennai: Justice S. A. Kader, February 2, 2003; Bader Sayeed (lawyer), January 20, 2003;
Zaffarullah Khan (lawyer), February 6, 2003. Interview in Delhi: Sona Khan (lawyer), April
28 and May 1, 2003.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY654
However, cultural accommodation was not the sole constraint to legal
change. This is illustrated by the more modest scope of Islamic law reform
in India than in Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Bangladesh, Indonesia, or
Malaysia. Moreover, the Indian courts rejected many lawyers’ pleas based
on reformist interpretations of Islamic tradition. Some of the reformist
demands justified in terms of Islamic tradition, which policy elites did not
accept, are a ban on polygamy, a requirement that male repudiation take
effect only upon judicial approval, and the extension of rights to inherit
agricultural land to women in all states. Additionally, the courts did not
recognize the matrilineal inheritance practices of some Muslim groups that
live in Kerala. These demands were not accepted because they were not
backed by sufficient mobilization and litigation, judges did not consider them
part of a widely shared sense of group tradition among Indian Muslims, or judges’
normative vision of family life did not urge them to accept these demands.
The limited accommodation of demands made on the basis of group
tradition shows that there is considerable room for further gender-equalizing
change within the constraints set by cultural accommodation. The diversity
of Indian Muslim traditions and the imaginative ways in which scholars and
activists appropriate and transform cultural traditions indicate that the
bounds set by tradition will keep shifting.
IV. EXPLAINING THE PATTERN OF CHANGE IN MUSLIM
FAMILY LAW
Why did Indian Muslim law change as it did over the last generation?
The following factors influenced the patterns of adjudication and legislation:
(1) legal mobilization, especially by women’s organizations and other rights
organizations for women’s rights and cultural pluralism, and by community
organizations to promote visions of group identity and to uphold particular
versions of group law; and (2) policy makers’ orientations toward the regulation
of family life, their understanding of group norms and group initiatives, and their
normative vision of family life. Changes in these factors over the last generation
contributed to gender-equalizing changes in the laws of India’s religious
minorities.
Legal Mobilization
Changes in social practice and public opinion do not determine legal
change because the influence of groups and opinions over policy varies.
Legal change depends specifically on legal mobilization; that is, on the
movements for social change that mobilize the law in new directions, the
patterns of litigation associated with these movements, the nature of
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 655
implementation of court decrees, and the visions of the concerned activists
(McCann 1994; Rosenberg 1991).
Women’s organizations increased in number and membership, and more
of them became autonomous of political parties and religious elites starting
in the 1970s. Until then, the main women’s organizations had been affiliated
with political parties and had focused on urging their parties to introduce
gender-equalizing legislative changes. This strategy enjoyed limited success
as these organizations had limited influence over voting patterns and their
representatives enjoyed limited voice within political parties. This outcome
urged women’s organizations to become more autonomous of political parties,
engage in more grassroots mobilization, and gain greater direct input into
policy making. Other rights’ organizations also grew and built networks with
legislators, judges, and bureaucrats (Gandhi and Shah 1992; Epp 1998).
Legal mobilization increased among women’s organizations, rights’
organizations, and community organizations starting in the 1970s. Women’s
organizations made this shift as they gained considerable influence over the
legal elite and the bureaucracies engaged in gender-relevant policy making.
Intellectuals associated with these organizations became members of the Law
Commission and the newly formed Women’s Commission and thereby pressed
their demands. Women’s organizations also attended more to litigation to urge
the judiciary to grant women more rights, and many of them established
legal aid cells to help women facing matrimonial problems. This led to the
resolution of some disputes through informal arbitration and in community
courts, and gave more women good legal representation if they approached
the state courts (Mazumdar 1999; Gandhi and Shah 1992).
Some community organizations also paid greater attention to family law.
Various conservative Muslim elites formed the AIMPLB in 1972 to defend
judicial precedent in Muslim law, to prevent the introduction of a UCC,
and, more immediately, to block the uniform adoption law that the parliament
was then considering, despite the absence of provisions for adoption in
Islamic law. The AIMPLB coordinated conservative Muslim legal mobilization
thereafter and intervened in crucial matrimonial cases (All India Muslim
Personal Law Board 2001).29
Hindu nationalists particularly criticized gender-unequal practices
among Muslims and some gender-unequal features of Muslim law, but did
not mention the prevalence of similar practices among Hindus and the
recognition of some of these practices in Hindu law. They gave increased
attention to a demand for a UCC as a means to consolidate the Indian nation
behind their cultural vision of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). They especially did
29. Also see the All India Muslim Personal Law Board Web site, at http://www.aimplboard.org/
introduction.html (accessed April 6, 2008).
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY656
so after the Supreme Court’s 1985 permanent alimony verdict in Shah Bano
Begum, though without devising concrete proposals.30
More direct and extensive challenges to the authority of conservative
Muslim elites emerged over the last generation. Associations of Muslim
women and liberal Muslims grew and demanded extensive changes both in
Muslim law and in many gendered practices. Most of these associations were
based in major cities but had activists in smaller towns. The All India Muslim
Women’s Rights Network, the Muslim Women’s Forum, the Awaaz-e-Niswan,
the Committee for the Protection of the Rights of Muslim Women, the Tamil
Nadu Muslim Women’s Jama’at Committee, STEPS Women’s Development
Group, the Bazm-i Shama-i Niswaan, the Progressive Muslim Association,
the Hindustani Muslim Forum, and the Muslim Satyashodhak Samaj were
among these organizations.
These organizations advocated the reforms that the state courts later
granted in alimony and divorce laws. But their demands were more ambitious,
including the invalidation and perhaps the criminalization of polygamous
marriages, an end to the recognition of unilateral male repudiation or the
inclusion of the woman’s right to unilateral repudiation in all marital
contracts, the extension of inheritance rights in agricultural land to women
in all Indian states, the abandonment of the requirement that Sunni women
forego their dower if they initiate divorce claims in community courts, a
substantial increase in dower amounts, giving women control over their dower
after their marriages rather than leaving the dower in the control of their
husbands’ natal families, an end to the practice of dowry, giving women the
right to reject marital alliances forged by family patriarchs against their will
or when they were minors, community courts becoming more open to
women’s pleas for divorce (both in the form of khul’ (with the husband’s
consent) and faskh-i-nikah (without the husband’s consent)), and the
inclusion of women in prayer groups and thus in mosque councils (or the
establishment of separate mosques for women). Some of them incorporated
their proposals into model marital contracts for Muslim couples to adopt.
The first such initiative came from the Women’s Research and Action Group
in Mumbai in 1993, beginning a debate among Muslims about the appropriate
rules to govern marriages.
Four new organizations were formed in 2005 to offer perspectives
different from that of the AIMPLB regarding Muslim law. In response to
representatives of the influential Darul Uloom Deoband dominating the
AIMPLB, two alternative boards emerged, which claim to represent the
followers of the Darul Uloom Manzar-e-Islam of Bareilly—the All India
Muslim (Jadeed) Personal Law Board and the Shias’ All India Shia Personal
30. Ram Jethmalani and Arun Jaitley, who were the law ministers when the Hindu nationalist
BJP led the national coalition government, admitted that they had no concrete plans for a
UCC. Interviews in Delhi: Ram Jethmalani, July 24, 2006; Arun Jaitley, April 15, 2003.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 657
Law Board. These organizations have significant support in northern India,
especially in Uttar Pradesh. Moreover, two other boards emerged to represent
the concerns of Muslim women. One board, the Muslim Women’s Personal
Law Board is active in parts of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, and established a
women’s court that considered some matrimonial cases; the second board,
the Shia Women’s Personal Law Board, is currently inactive (Deccan Herald
2005; Ali 2005; Radiance Viewsweekly 2005; Sikland 2005; Sharma 2005).31
The new organizations weakened the claim of the AIMPLB to represent
Muslim opinion, although the AIMPLB is much stronger than these other
organizations.
The growth of reformist mobilization among Muslims urged conservative
Muslim elites to engage with community reformists in order to retain their
support among Muslims. Moreover, the increased influence of Hindu
nationalism pressed these elites to cultivate greater respect for Muslims among
non-Muslims. The most influential Islamic religious organizations, the Darul
Uloom Deoband and the Darul Uloom Manzar-e-Islam, launched a social
reform movement in the 1990s in which they highlighted their opposition
to some practices that they did not consider rooted in Islamic tradition,
notably dowry and caste endogamy. Many influential Muslim religious
scholars formed the Islamic Fiqh Academy in 1989 to build a loose consensus
on social practices and adjudicative approaches. This academy adopted
flexible approaches to legal reasoning. It readily accepted ijtihad (the inter-
pretation of Islamic law in view of contemporary circumstances), contrary
to the tendency of most Sunni ulama to largely rely, until recently, on author-
itative commentaries on the Qur’an, the major texts of specific madhabs
(schools of Islamic law), and qiyas (reasoning by analogy). It advocated that
women gain the rights to reject marital partners chosen by family patriarchs
and to inherit agricultural land in all Indian states; that the dower be specified
in gold, silver, or shares of property; and that provisions in marital contracts—
allowing the practice of dowry or absolving husbands of alimony obligations—
be deemed invalid.32 This represented a departure from the positions taken
31. Deccan Herald (2005); Sharma (2005). Interviews in Lucknow: Shiko Azad, founder,
All India Shia Personal Law Board, August 10, 2006; Maulana Mohammad Burhanuddin Sam-
bhali, President, Fiqh Committee, AIMPLB, August 10, 2006; Maulana Khalid Rashid, Naib
Imam, Firangi Mahal, August 10, 2006; Shaista Amber, President, All India Muslim Women’s
Personal Law Board, August 11, 2006. Interviews in Delhi: Abdul Rahmin Quraishi, Secretary,
AIMPLB, July 22, 2006; Syeda Saiyadain Hameed, former President, Muslim Women’s Forum,
July 16, 2006; Dr. Sughra Mehdi, President, Muslim Women’s Forum, July 18, 2006. Interview
in Chennai: Daud Sharifa Khanam, President, STEPS Women’s Development Group.
32. Islamic Fiqh Academy (http://ifa-india.org/english/importantDecisions.html, accessed
April 10, 2008); Islamic Fiqh Academy 2004; Qalandar (http://www.islaminterfaith.org/
march2005/article2.htm, accessed March 5, 2006, site no longer active). Interviews in Delhi:
Maulana Amin Osmani, Vice-President, Islamic Fiqh Academy, July 18 and 29, 2006; Maulana
Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, President, Islamic Fiqh Academy and Convenor, AIMPLB
Nikahnama Committee, July 16, 2007; Dr. Tahir Mahmood, scholar of Islamic law and Member,
Law Commission, April 5, 2003 and July 21, 2006.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY658
by the conservative ulama, although the leaders of the Islamic Fiqh Academy
emerged from this group.
The AIMPLB formally consulted reformist Muslim women activists for
the first time in 2002. Although the women activists were disappointed with
the Board’s failure to sustain such consultation, the AIMPLB began to
demand that all Muslim women be given inheritance rights in agricultural
land and a share in family agricultural income. Additionally, in 1999 it pub-
lished a booklet specifying the forms of family life and Islamic adjudication
it favored, as well as publishing a model marital contract in 2005.33 The
booklet did not support major changes in adjudicative precedent; for instance,
it expressed the preference that unilateral male repudiation be initially
deemed revocable, but did not support the invalidation of the triple talaq.
The initial draft of the AIMPLB’s model marital contract gave women the
right to unilateral repudiation, added to the conditions under which women
may seek divorce in community courts, required the approval of community
courts if men were to legitimately engage in bigamy, gave wives the right
to a separate home if their husbands married someone else while married
to them, and gave divorcees the right to retain all the gifts they received
while they were married. These provisions were included to respond credibly
to the more gender-equal marital contracts that reformist organizations had
proposed earlier. However, these clauses of the initial draft were deleted
after internal debate because of the resistance of more conservative ulama.
Moreover, the board’s model nikahnama did not influence adjudication in
India’s largest dar’ul quzat network, associated with the Imarat-e-Shariah,
whose leaders are part of the AIMPLB.34
Some other conservative Muslim organizations supported more extensive
reform than did the AIMPLB. For instance, the Shia Personal Law Board
advocated divorcees being given alimony until they become self-sufficient
and entitling women to seek divorce on grounds such as husbands restricting
their efforts to gain education or employment. The Muslim Majlis-e-
Mushawarat (a political organization) and the Jamaat Ahl-i-Hadith (a
minor religious school) highlighted their opposition to unilateral, irrevocable
male repudiation via the triple talaq. As a result, the AIMPLB did not
33. Interview in Delhi: Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, former President, Muslim Women’s
Forum, July 16, 2006. Interview in Lucknow: Maulana Ateeq Ahmed Bastvi, Convenor, Darul
Qaza Committee, AIMPLB, August 10, 2006. See All India Muslim Personal Law Board (2002);
Telegraph (2005); Hameed (2001).
34. Indeed, Maulana Jaseemuddin, the Chief Qazi of the Imarat-e-Shariah, admitted that
the central dar’ul quzat of the Imarat-e-Shariah did not have a copy of this model marital
contract. Interview in Phulwari Sharif, Bihar: Maulana Jaseemuddin, Chief Qazi, Imarat-e-
Shariah, August 2, 2006. Interviews in Delhi: Maulana Nizamuddin, President, Imarat-e-Shariah,
July 23, 2007; Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, Convenor, AIMPLB Nikahnama Committee
and President, Islamic Fiqh Academy, July 16, 2007. Interview in Lucknow: Begum Naseem
Iqtedar Ali, only female member, AIMPLB Executive Committee, August 11, 2006.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 659
intervene in the crucial case in which the irrevocability of male repudiation
was contested in the Supreme Court, contrary to the board’s usual practice of
defending conservative precedent (Jamaat Ahl-i-Hadith 1994; Shahabuddin
1992; Mahmood 1998; Sikand 2005a).35
Hindu nationalist growth also influenced conservative Muslim leaders
by forcing them to shift their attention from Muslim law to responses to
Hindu nationalist attacks against Muslims and their places of worship
(notably the Babri Masjid, a mosque, in Ayodya, northern India, which was
destroyed in 1992). Even the AIMPLB shifted its attention over the last
decade from defending Muslim law precedent to preventing the construction
of a Hindu temple at the former site of the Babri Masjid.36
Changes in organizations not primarily based among Muslims also
contributed to Muslim law reform. Many women’s organizations, other rights’
organizations, and reformist lawyers’ associations came to value cultural
accommodation more since the 1980s in response to the growth of Hindu
nationalism, the attendant increase in attacks on non-Hindus, and the
increased emphasis of Hindu nationalists on the need for a UCC. They
specifically recognized the relevance of cultural accommodation in family
law and ceased to consider a UCC feasible in the foreseeable future. So,
in the 1980s, these organizations shifted their immediate goal from the
introduction of a UCC to the reform of group-specific family laws. Some
of the activists of these organizations explored the richness and variation
in Islamic traditions to rebut Hindu nationalist criticisms of these traditions
and to incorporate their more gender-equal features in family law. The
reliance of these organizations on the more gender-equal features of group
tradition restricted the conservative elites from effectively opposing these
reforms as attacks on group identity (Mazumdar 1999; Agnes 1999; All India
Democratic Women’s Association 2000).37 The plaints of reformist lawyers
referred more often to the more gender-equal features of group norms and
transnational Islamic law.
35. Interviews in Delhi: Maulana Abdul Wahab Khilji, former General Secretary, Jamaat
Ahl-i-Hadith, May 4, 2003; Syed Shahabuddin, former President, Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat,
July 24, 2006.
36. Interview in Lucknow: Maulana Syed Mohammad Rabey Hasni Nadwi, President,
AIMPLB and Rector, Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama, August 10, 2006. Interviews in Delhi:
Dr. Qasim Rasool Ilyas, Convenor, AIMPLB Babri Masjid Committee, April 10, 2003; Maulana
Jalaluddin Umri, Vice-President, Jamaat-i-Islami-Hind, April 10, 2003; Maulana Mehmood
Madani, President, Jamiat ulema-i-Hind, July 7, 2007; Maulana Abdul Wahab Khilji, President,
All India Milli Council, May 4, 2003.
37. Interviews in Delhi: Jyotsna Chatterjee, former President, Joint Women’s Programme,
July 19, 24 and 31, 2006; Subhashini Ali, Vice-President, All India Democratic Women’s
Association, August 4, 2006; Maimoona Mollah, Convenor, Muslim Women Sub-Committee,
All India Democratic Women’s Association, April 1, 2003; Pramila Loomba, National Federation
of Indian Women, June 16, 2007; Mary Khemchand, former President, Young Women’s Christian
Association, August 14, 2006.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY660
The Outlook of Policy Makers
Intentionalist analysis recognizes that policy makers are autonomous of
social change and legal mobilization, and highlights the significance of the
ideas familiar to policy elites and the ends these elites value (Watson 1982–
1983; Horowitz 1994; Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1996). The increased
inclination among the judiciary to change family law, the growing awareness
of some policy makers regarding the legal and normative traditions of the
concerned groups, and the normative vision of family life among the policy
elite influenced the changes introduced in the family laws of India’s religious
minorities.
Orientations Toward the Regulation of Family Life
The changes in legal mobilization and the experience of the authoritarian
interlude of the mid-1970s (called the Emergency) urged greater judicial
activism in support of the rights of weaker groups, including women. As a
result, judges changed family law more often. They did so to promote the
ends they valued, which did not always coincide with the promotion of gender
equality. As many legislators remained resistant to women’s empowerment,
legislative reform was more restrained than judicial reform.
Understanding of Group Norms and Group Initiatives
Policy makers continued to feel that the family laws of the religious
minorities had to recognize group norms and be linked to group demands.
So, the nature of change in these laws depended on policy makers’ under-
standing of group norms and group initiatives. The increased emphasis of
reformist mobilizers and reformist litigation on the normative traditions of
the religious minorities and the growth of transnational legal networks made
some policy elites more aware of Islamic traditions. Such policy makers
became especially aware of the reformist interpretations of these traditions,
particularly those interpretations that some governments had recognized.
These individuals did not account for the majority of the judiciary or
the legal policy bureaucracy, but they played important roles in legal change.
They included both observant Muslims who felt that the social climate gave
them more space to draw on their reformist understandings of Islamic
tradition, and non-Muslims whose knowledge of Islamic tradition had grown.
Justice Baharul Islam is a good example of a Muslim reformist judge. Justice
Islam developed his reformist interpretation of authoritative Islamic texts
through his extensive reading of the relevant scholarship. He provided the
first High Court judgments invalidating unilateral male repudiation and later
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 661
became a Supreme Court justice. Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, a non-Muslim,
belonged in the latter category. He was the first judge to observe, from a
bench of the Kerala High Court, that irrevocable unilateral male repudiation
was contrary to early Islamic traditions, and later authored the first two
Supreme Court verdicts in favor of permanent alimony for Muslim women.38
Justice Krishna Iyer was a widely known forerunner of judicial activism, whose
judgments advanced the rights of various underprivileged groups, including
prisoners, urban squatters, and tribal forest dwellers. He had extensive contact
with rights activists during his long career in the judiciary. This helped him
develop considerable knowledge of transnational law and some awareness
of Islamic tradition. As a result, he incorporated his reformist understanding
of the conditions for the validity of unilateral male repudiation as an obiter
dictum in his judgment in A. Yousuf Rowther v. Sowramma (1971) while he
served in the Kerala High Court. Other central figures in landmark Muslim
law cases, like Justice S. Rajendra Babu (who authored the authoritative
Supreme Court judgment on permanent alimony), were neither consistent
reformists nor particularly knowledgeable about Islamic traditions. However,
they carefully crafted verdicts grounded in group norms by drawing from the
record of pertinent judicial reform that had accumulated by the time of their
verdicts and basing their rulings on interpreting the statutes of Indian Muslim
law in light of constitutional rights.39
The sources cited in some recent landmark judgments indicate the
growth of understanding of Islamic legal and normative traditions among
some legal elites. Reformist interpretations of Islamic law find more extensive
mention in recently authored textbooks of Indian Muslim law, such as Verma
(2002), Kader (1998), and Mahmood (1997), than in those that the state
courts most often used in Muslim law cases through much of the twentieth
century (cf. Ameer Ali 1929; Mulla 1968; Fyzee 1999). The benches of the
higher courts referred with some frequency to the more recently authored
textbooks and directly consulted some of these authors in Muslim law cases.
The BJP led the national coalition government from 1998 to 2004, and
Hindu nationalism’s influence has been significant among the legal elite for
over a decade (Cossman and Kapur 2002). Those with Hindu nationalist
sympathies were not attentive to non-Hindu norms; nevertheless, some of
them enabled the reform of non-Hindu law, sometimes claiming that these
38. The relevant judgments of Justice Baharul Islam were Jiauddin Ahmed v. Anwar Begum
(1978) and Rukia Khatun v. Abdul Khalique Laskar (1981). Those of Justice Krishna Iyer were
A. Yousuf Rawther v. Sowramma (1971), Bai Tahira v. Ali Hussain Fisalli Chothia (1979), and
Fuzlunbi v. Khader Vali (1980). Krishna Iyer (1992) provides a glimpse of the author’s under-
standing of Islamic law.
39. Interview in Delhi: Justice S. Rajendra Babu, July 2–3, 2007. Interview in Kochi:
Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, August 29, 2006. Interview in Chennai: Justice K. Chandru, December
15, 2002.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY662
changes were steps towards a UCC. The most prominent Hindu nationalist
who piloted non-Hindu law reform was Arun Jaitley, the law minister from
2000 to 2004. In 2001, he pushed through the legislative changes in Christian
law that significantly increased divorce rights and equalized them across
gender.40
The Hindu nationalist sympathies of some judges urged them towards
reformist judgments, in the course of which they attacked Muslim practices
and called for a UCC. This was true of the Supreme Court judgment in
favor of permanent alimony in Shah Bano Begum and the judgment of the
Allahabad high court against the irrevocability of the triple talaq in Rahmat
Ullah v. State of U. P. (1994).41 However, Hindu nationalist inclinations urged
other legal elites to block Muslim law reform as a means to reinforce their
critique of Muslims. The Attorney General of India is said to have acknowledged
that this was one reason why he opposed efforts in 2001 to urge the Supreme
Court to grant Muslim women permanent alimony in Danial Latifi, when
the BJP led the national government.42
Normative Vision of Family Life
Of the demands raised with reference to group tradition, judges and
legislators accommodated only those that promoted the forms of family life
they especially valued. Policy makers’ normative vision of family life changed,
to give greater value to the heterosexual, monogamous, nuclear family and
conjugal autonomy. Conjugal autonomy is the autonomy that individuals
enjoy from kin elders, social elites, and community norms in their choice
of mates, regarding the nature of their conjugal relationships and the duration
of these relationships. Policy makers’ normative vision of family life was based
substantially on the predominant orientation of family law in North America
and Western Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
(Glendon 1989; Goode 1993; Diduck 2003).
Policy makers’ normative vision shaped Hindu law even in the 1950s
but acquired significant influence over Muslim law only starting in the late
40. Interviews in Delhi: Arun Jaitley, April 15, 2003; Jyotsna Chatterjee, former President,
Joint Women’s Programme, July 19, 24 and 31, 2006; Dr. John Dayal, President, All India
Catholic Union, July 26 and 29, 2006; Dr. Julian Francis, Legal Counsel, National Council
of Churches of India, July 24, 2006; Jos Chiromel, Legal Counsel, Catholic Bishops Conference
of India, August 5, 2006; Rev. Richard Howell, President, Evangelical Fellowship of India,
August 19, 2006 and July 4, 2007; Justice Vikramjit Sen, July 24, 2007.
41. See Rahmat Ullah v. State of U. P. (1994). Interview in Delhi: Dr. Rajeev Dhavan
(lawyer in Rahmat Ullah), April 1 and 3, 2003 and July 8, 2006.
42. Interviews in Delhi: Sona Khan (lawyer in Danial Latifi), April 28 and May 1, 2003;
Dr. Tahir Mahmood, April 5, 2003 and July 21, 2006.
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 663
1970s. The vision underlying the Hindu law reform proposals of the modernist
legislators of the first postcolonial decade, such as Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s
first postcolonial prime minister) and B. R. Ambedkar (the first law minister),
was similar to the outlook driving the later reforms of non-Hindu law.43 Only
some of these proposals were adopted in the 1950s due to the need to accom-
modate conservative resistance. Polygamy was banned, intercaste marriages
were accepted, the previously stringent restrictions on marital partners were
relaxed, divorce rights were introduced, and the inheritance rights of many
Hindu women were increased. But the control of joint-family coparcenaries
over much of ancestral property was retained, and divorce was made possible
only after a period of judicial separation in most contexts.
The reformist vision expressed in the policy debates of the 1950s
influenced further gradual changes in Hindu law and in some criminal laws
relevant to family life between the 1950s and the late 1970s. Not only was
mutual consent divorce made available, divorce became available immedi-
ately to Hindus on the grounds of cruelty, desertion, or adultery. The criminal
law was amended to give divorcees rights to permanent alimony. Judges set
lower standards for findings of cruelty and adultery. This reflected a shift
from emphasizing the maintenance of the nuclear family to valuing conjugal
autonomy. The preference to maintain the nuclear family remained salient,
however, and restricted legislators and judges from granting divorces under
conditions of marital breakdown in the absence of mutual consent. Policy
makers did not promote conjugal autonomy systematically either, as shown
in their continued recognition of a right to the conjugal company of a reluctant
spouse.
The vision of desirable forms of family life reflected in Hindu law and
criminal law since the 1970s influenced the changes introduced in Muslim
law. It led to the requirement in Muslim law of permanent alimony, the
restriction of the right to unilateral male repudiation, and the recognition
of the divorce claims of earlier wives if their husbands engaged in polygamy.
These changes had the potential to strengthen the position of women in
marriages and upon divorce. However, a variety of other demands justified in
terms of group tradition were not accepted. Although they valued monogamy
and required it among non-Muslims, policy makers did not ban Muslim
polygamy, as they considered the right to engage in polygamy part of a sense
of group tradition among Indian Muslims. They were wary of closely
regulating divorce because they were aware of the legal system’s limited
capacity to regulate this practice and so wished to grant social institutions
some autonomy to do so. As a result, they did not require the judicial approval
of male repudiation among Muslims, much as they recognized customary
43. See the Hindu Code Bill debated in the Indian Parliament from 1948 to 1951. See
Constituent Assembly of India (Legislative) Debates (1948, 1949) and Parliamentary Debates
(1950, 1951), all listed under “Statutes Cited.”
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY664
divorce among all religious groups, albeit inconsistently. As their normative
vision of family life did not urge them to enable the division of family
property, they did not extend rights to inherit agricultural land to Muslim
women in all Indian states.
Some features of policy makers’ normative vision may restrain the future
promotion of gender equality. Among these are the maintenance of the
nuclear family (which abridges women’s access to divorce) and state non-
intervention in familial authority relations (which constraints action in favor
of free choice of conjugal partners and against domestic violence). The recent
reform of Hindu law to enable daughters to claim their shares of ancestral
property shows that policy makers have become less opposed to the division
of family property. This suggests that Muslim women may soon gain the right
to inherit agricultural land.
V. EFFECTS OF LAW REFORM ON ACTIVIST
ORIENTATIONS AND SOCIAL PRACTICE
Reformist organizations did not demobilize after some of their demands
were met, as the changes fell well short of their aspirations. Rather, there
are signs that legal mobilization changed activist notions of what Islamic
law ought to be. Such mobilized aspirations maintain pressure for further
gender-equalizing change and continue to challenge conservative elites.
Conservative Muslim opposition to the reform of state law became
weaker. Some conservative Muslim elites accepted the reforms for which they
found a credible basis in Islam’s founding texts, such as the constraints on
the validity of unilateral male repudiation. A larger proportion voiced their
opposition to the practice of triple talaq without either supporting judicial
reform along these lines or urging community courts to follow this precedent
set in state courts. They also supported other social changes, such as increases
in the amount of the dower and the abandonment of the practice of dowry,
though without effectively promoting these changes. Even these limited and
half-hearted changes showed the weakening of conservative opposition to
reform.
In response to their losses in the state courts, conservative Muslim elites
urged Muslims to take matrimonial disputes to the community courts, over
which they had far more influence, particularly the more institutionalized
dar’ul quzats. The AIMPLB urged this preference since its inception but gave
this added emphasis from 1993 onward, after more than a decade of judicial
reform. Some conservative Muslim elites also demanded that the state give
Sharia courts exclusive jurisdiction over Muslim family law cases. These
Sharia courts would perhaps be an expanded network of the current dar’ul
quzats. If this happens, state courts would have no role in Muslim law cases
but would share the adjudication of other family law cases with community
Legal Change and Gender Inequality 665
courts.44 Legislators are unlikely to accept this demand, as much of India’s
political elite shows no inclination to give Muslim institutions greater
autonomy. In recognition of this, some conservative Muslims accept the dual
authority of state courts and community courts, but demand that state courts
recognize all community court verdicts and direct the police to aid their
implementation. The state courts are most likely to continue considering
appeals of community court verdicts. However, the efforts to urge Muslims
to seek community courts may meet with some success, as community courts
are more embedded among less privileged social groups, and the cost and
duration of cases are lower in these courts than in state courts.
The limited number of court cases since the recent reformist judgments,
and the patchy knowledge of these judgments among judges and lawyers in
the lower courts, makes it difficult to estimate the likely effects of these
reforms on patterns of adjudication in the lower courts. Tracing the impact
of judicial reform on matrimonial relations is further complicated as litigants
in family law cases initially approach either the lower state courts or
community courts. Community courts vary more in their approaches than
do the formal courts and do not follow the precedents of state courts (Imtiaz
Ahmad 2003; Vatuk 2001). If the ongoing efforts of conservative Muslim
elites to urge Muslim litigants to community courts succeed, the recent judicial
reforms may have a relatively limited effect on the way many matrimonial
disputes among Muslims are resolved. Litigants who are disappointed with
the verdicts of community courts may then approach the formal courts.
Nevertheless, if Muslims resort to community courts often, verdicts along
the lines of the recent reformist judgments would at least be delayed. The
state courts have limited powers of implementation, and the executive and
the police show no strong commitment to the effective implementation of
the recent reforms. So, the changes in state law are likely to only slowly
influence gender relations in society.
VI. PATTERNS, SOURCES, AND EFFECTS OF CHANGE IN
INDIAN MUSLIM LAW
This article showed that the crucial factors shaping changes in Muslim
law in India’s state courts were legal mobilization, both within and beyond
44. While the AIMPLB’s first President, Maulana Qari Muhammad Tayyeb, consistently
raised this demand, some AIMPLB leaders have stressed it more over the last two years. But
some other conservative Muslim elites fear that this arrangement may lead to greater state
control over Muslim religious institutions (Communalism Watch 2005; Sikand 2005b; Dhimmi
Watch 2007). Interview in Lucknow: Maulana Mohammad Burhanuddin Sambhali, Convenor,
AIMPLB Fiqh Council, August 10, 2006. Interviews in Delhi: Dr. Qasim Rasool Ilyas, Secretary,
AIMPLB, April 10, 2003; Maulana Jalaluddin Umri, Vice-President, Jamaat-i-Islami-Hind,
April 10, 2003.
LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY666
the Muslim community, and changes in policy makers’ orientations. The
features of the policy makers that mattered most were their orientations
toward the regulation of family life, their understanding of Muslim norms
and initiatives, and their normative vision of family life. As cultural
accommodation remained a crucial consideration in family law, policy
makers only introduced gender-equalizing legal changes if legal mobilization,
litigation, and transnational legal networks brought to their attention
a credible basis for change in group law, group norms, and group initiatives.
Judges and legislators introduced only those changes that they felt were sorely
needed, rejecting various demands grounded in group tradition. Their visions
of the desirable forms of family life especially deterred them from giving
women greater access to property.
The changes that took place in some features of Muslim law resulted
in partial convergence with India’s other major family laws—Hindu law and
Christian law. There was convergence in divorce rights and alimony rights,
though not in inheritance rights. As visions of group norms shape legal
change and Muslim law rests on rather different jurisprudential foundations,
the partial convergence we have seen is unlikely to start the homogenization
of family law.
The basis of policy making influenced the choice of many reformers to
press their demands in terms of group norms. However, the limits of policy
change did not restrain reformist ambition. The piecemeal changes weakened
direct conservative resistance to changes in state law, but they also encouraged
conservative efforts to urge litigants away from state courts. These trends
suggest that both the pressures for further gender-equalizing legal change and
the efforts to urge the avoidance of state courts are likely to get stronger.
The patterns of change since the 1970s suggest that some changes in
policy makers’ visions may soften the constraints within which Indian Muslim
law is made. These are changes in policy makers’ visions of group norms,
desirable forms of family life, and patterns of regulation of family life. Ongoing
legal mobilization will contribute importantly to these changes.
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