Gender Inequality In Muslim Personal Law

Government has taken no steps towards changing the law for over three decades because the public opinion in
Muslim community is not favoring a change. But this view cannot be reconciled with the declaration of equality and
social justice as ignoring the interest of the Muslim women will be denial of social justice. The right to equality like
right to free speech is an individual right and there can be no compromise on the basic policy of monogamy being
the rule for all communities in India. Any compromise in this regard will only perpetuate the existing inequality in the
status of women.

Earlier under Muslim a husband has absolute and unlimited right to repudiate the marriage at his will. This is known
as talaq ( talaq-e-biddat)- triple divorce. A muslim wife had no such right to dissolve her marriage. later it was
deduced that the husband’s pronouncement of talaq without informing the arbitration council was declared to be an
offence. And now recently judiciary tried to ameliorate their position by criminalizing triple talaq. This shows that if
society desires to preserve the status quo, the legislation can eliminate rigid traditionalism.

The law with evolving society and time realized that there is a need to make certain changes in the field of divorce in
muslim personal law. And therefore, the dissolution of muslim marriage act added some more grounds of divorce to
the uncodified law to make it more suitable for women.. but all the grounds of divorce in the case of women are
subject to proof and judicial scrutiny whereas a man need not assign any reason for divorcing his wife.

Legislation is the only instrument-the innovative role of which can bring muslim divorce law into line with not only
the needs of society but with the prevailing law and other Muslim countries.

Maintenance of the wife is the precept in the Quran and the highest obligation of the husband. But her right to
maintenance lasts only as long as she remains a wife. If she is divorced she looses her right of maintenance and is
only entitled to it after three months of the divorce (period of iddat) or during the period of pregnancy whichever is
longer. After this period she has no further claim and it is this which has created a discrimination between Muslims
and other Indian women. But now after the landmark judgement of the Shah-Bano case, the Muslim women is
entitled to maintenance from her husband even after,divorce, under section 125 of criminal procedure code the
measure which was introduced as a solace to a muslim wife who might have fallen prey to arbitrary male
hegemonism.

The Muslim law of inheritance is no less inequitable for whatever be the line of succession, the share of male is
higher at every level, shall be twice that of female heirs. Even if a Muslim dies leaving daughter as his only close
relative, she will not be allowed to take more than one half of his estate, the other half will go to some distance
agnatic relative. This primary principle of Muslim law grossly discriminates against women as even if there are male
and female heirs of the same degree like a son and daughter, the share of a female member is that half of the
female.

In short, the fundamental rights guaranteed to Indian women are taken away by these family(personal) law.

Sitting in Delhi or Bombay, the national leaders are absolutely positive that adoption is against their religious law and
yet in far away muslims serenely adopt and give-in adoption, even across religions. Most of the muslims believe
“islam is not a religion alone but a of life and uslim personal law consequentially is not only law but religion.
Interference wit.