Undoing idea of secular India
Muslim clerics and the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board have now a new cause to pursue - opposition to the mandatory registration of marriages as directed by the Supreme Court. The apex court ruled in favour of compulsory registration of marriages on February 14, 2006, and asked all States and Union Territories to make law in this regard.
The court’s order is meant to protect the rights of women, including their right to inheritance and maintenance, and check practices like child marriage. However, 20 months after the court delivered this judgement, it has found that a majority of the States were yet to comply with its directions. While just five States have laws for compulsory registration of marriages, some others have made laws which make the registration of marriages optional for Muslims. Taking stock of the situation, the court has now issued a fresh directive and told all States and Union Territories to make registration of marriages mandatory within 90 days for all citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation.
However, despite this fresh directive, representatives of the AIMPLB say that registration of marriages should not be made mandatory for Muslims because Muslim marriages are solemnised only in the presence of witnesses and local qazis maintain registers of all marriage contracts. Hence, Muslim marriages need not be registered afresh under a state-made law. These arguments carry no weight. Have not members of the AIMPLB attended Hindu marriages? Often Hindu marriages are solemnised in the presence of thousands of witnesses and many Hindu sects, religious orders and temples maintain records of marriages solemnised in their premises or by their priests.
Similarly, Parsis, the tiniest religious minority in India, and Christians have a system by which marriages are registered in their places of worship. So, what is so special or unique about Muslims that they be exempt even from this innocuous rule requiring registration of marriages? And, if the Indian state feels so helpless that it would rather violate a judgement of the Supreme Court than make the AIMPLB see reason, are we to presume that it has lost the capacity to govern and enforce Article 14 of the Constitution, which ordains equality before law and the equal application of the laws?
The AIMPLB has made a habit of objecting to progressive law-making in the social sector. Every time an attempt is made to make a national law to promote the interests of women and children, there is a howl of protest from Muslim clerics and the AIMPLB. They did this in a big way when Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Government introduced the Adoption of Children Bill in Parliament in 1972 to bring in a uniform law on adoptions.
The Government thought of this measure because under The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, only Hindus have the right to adopt children. However, Muslim clerics argued that adoption of children is prohibited in Islam and, therefore, the Government cannot make a law which gives all citizens, including Muslims, the right to adopt children. The AIMPLB was adamant. Its representative told a Joint Committee of Parliament that examined this Bill that though the Bill does not force anyone to adopt children, a common law on adoption applicable to all citizens would amount to “alluring” Muslims to take to adoption and thus violate their religious tenets.
Many scholars and politicians tried to reason with Muslim clerics to give up their objections. They said the proposed adoption law was only an enabling legislation. If adoption is “haram” in Islam, Muslims need not make use of the law and adopt children. Mr Tahir Mahmood, a noted authority on Islamic law, told the committee that he was of the view that adoption is not prohibited in Islam. “Islam is rather indifferent to adoption.” Second, the Bill is not asking anyone to adopt children. “It is only a permissive piece of legislation.” However, opinions like that of Mr Mahmood fell on deaf ears. The Government succumbed to the cacophonous protests from Muslim clerics and abandoned the Bill.
In the 1980s, Muslim clerics scuttled the Supreme Court’s efforts to provide relief to divorced Muslim women. When the court held that such women were entitled to alimony under law made by Parliament, Muslims launched a nation-wide agitation and forced the Rajiv Gandhi Government to amend the law and thus upturn the court’s judgement.
In recent times, Muslim clerics have even launched campaigns that have had an adverse impact on the health of Muslim children. While the Government is pumping in huge funds to educate parents across the country on the need for timely immunisation of children, Muslim clerics in Uttar Pradesh and some other parts of the country unleashed a vicious propaganda against the polio vaccine and advised Muslims not to allow healthcare workers to administer polio drops to their children. They spread the word that these drops would induce infertility and were actually meant to curtail the Muslim population! Thanks to this irresponsible conduct of Muslim clerics, 70 per cent of the polio victims in India in recent years are Muslim children, although Muslims constitute just 13.4 per cent of the population. There is no constitutional provision that exempts religious leaders from responsible conduct. The state must get this message across to religious leaders who raise demands and issue injunctions that are injurious to public order and health.
The latest manifestation of the maladjustment of Muslim clerics to a secular, democratic environment is their opposition to the registration of marriages. And while doing so, they are even ready to take on the Supreme Court. Sadly, this mischief is being abetted by the state. It now appears as if pseudo-secularism is a national creed and the Indian state has begun to practice it as if it were constitutionally ordained. How else is one to interpret the response of many States to the Supreme Court’s order?
If the State feels that it does not have the power to bring in and enforce even such an innocuous law; if in the face of protests from a few Muslim clerics, it feels so enfeebled that it disobeys the Supreme Court, we must conclude that the Indian state lacks the motivation to preserve the secular, democratic environment. If this be so, India’s unity and integrity will be in peril in the near future and the current generation of politicians will have to take the blame for undoing the idea of a united, secular, democratic India.