The contentious Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill lapsed when the term of the present Lok Sabha ends as it could not be passed in the Rajya Sabha, which adjourned sine die on February 13. Over the last few months, Muslim women activists were protesting the Bill, raising concerns over specific points. They were saying that there were a lot of issues such as their representation in the Parliament, average daily income, standard of living and so on which the government did not address for their upliftment. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said that the Bill was politically motivated, while the central government says that it ensures Muslim women’s right to live with dignity.
There is a point which I would like to bring to notice: how the government failed to understand that there are other issues which should have been discussed in Parliament to ensure the dignity of Muslim women, rather than a bill which contains no provisions that would actually empower them. It was proposed to provide them subsistence allowance in the Bill.
Let’s say I calculate the amount of subsistence allowance a woman is given as below ₹7 per day. The average per capita spending a day is ₹32.66 and the size of the average Muslim household is 5.15 members. Each member of the family would get ₹6.34 to survive. If I apply the provision of this proposed bill in a Muslim household, with this daily spending, a divorced Muslim woman would be given a very little amount of Rs. 6.34 to spend a day on her basic necessities. Now imagine ₹6.34 as the daily budget for food, medicine, education, transport, communication, rent, utilities, cooking fuel, clothing, footwear, and entertainment. With this daily allowance, a woman cannot even afford food, which is the primary thing a person needs to survive. Without ensuring the right to food (which is a human right) and freedom from hunger, the Bill will not ensure Muslim women the right to live with dignity.
About half of all Muslim women in India are illiterate, even after 70 years of Independence. The government should have discussed this in Parliament, as well as social inequality, but, unfortunately, it did not happen. The government should have proposed to add a new article in the Directive Principles of State Policy to ensure the dignity of Muslim women so that every state would be bounded to frame its law under the guidelines of the article which ensures every right of Muslim women.
Indian women have been fighting for 33% reservation in Parliament and legislative assemblies for more than a decade. After Indonesia and Pakistan, India has the third largest Muslim population in the world. At 24.1% of the over one billion people in the world, Muslims are the largest minority in India. Not only by virtue of their numbers but with community- and gender-specific problems of their own, Muslim women need to have representation in Parliament. This is more so because the few male Muslim members in Parliament do not think that Muslim women have any problems. So, why did the government not think about this means to ensure the rights and dignity of Muslim women? In India, there only are three Muslim women members in the Lok Sabha.
The following are the two main obstacles preventing Muslim women from becoming members of the Parliament:
- When the selection of the candidates is done by a group of men, women do not receive much support.
- Opposition from the spouses in the case of married women.
In the previous decade, the share of Muslim women in the workforce was less than 101 out of every 1000 women in India’s labour force. And, of course, gender continues to be a significant parameter in determining salaries in India. The socio-economic inequality which prevails in society plays a huge role in the suppression of Muslim women. The government should think about this situation, but no government seems to ever do that.
As per Jeremy Bentham, “offences must be classified solely on the basis of the harm perpetrated, and there must be an appropriate proportion between crimes and punishments.”
The quantum of punishment proposed in the Bill suggests that pronouncing “talaq” three times is as cruel an offence as lynching someone. The punishment is up to three years’ imprisonment. On the other hand, in India, there is no strict law for mob lynching.